So how did we go from small-town country boys to uniformed police officers in our local communities, to U.S. federal drug agents, to being “the guys who inspired the hit Netflix series Narcos,” to authors? Believe us when we say, no one is more surprised by all of this than we are! Javier grew up…
The painter Paul Cézanne was never comfortable with the Paris art scene, despite claiming he would change it “with an apple” (and he did). He was mal à l’aise with people, especially the fashionable, the wealthy. He once said, “The world doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand the world, that’s why I’ve withdrawn from…
Join New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble for a look back at four iconic women and their equally memorable sleuths who would change the Gilded Age mystery genre forever and inspired her new novel!
From a writer’s perspective, the mystery genre is often a rigid one—someone committed a crime that needs solving, and the protagonist will methodically work through the clues to do so. And while that rigidity might seem downright restrictive, it’s also played into the hands of authors who want to introduce outlandish concepts and worlds: the…
As president of the Atlanta Writers Club and director of its twice-yearly Atlanta Writers Conference, I have the privilege of getting to know a diverse blend of authors in every genre. I’m particularly struck by the varied backgrounds of our mystery, suspense, and thriller writers: police officers, lawyers, journalists, soap opera assistants, corporate executives, teachers,…
There are two kinds of readers, as far as I can tell, when it comes to 1997’s Edgar Award-winner, The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook. There are those utterly perplexed by a crime novel that moves at what they deem a glacial pace and bears contents as literary as they are mysterious, and…
The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams What is the British government to do with an abdicated king and his unpopular wife who both have Nazi sympathies and are living in exile in Paris when Germany invades? Send him off to the British colonial Bahamas as its appointed Governor! And it is here that Williams’s protagonist…
Celebrating its 100th birthday this year, The Haunted Bookshop—a fun little novella by prolific bibliophile Christopher Morley—remains in print to this day, and continues to make its welcome presence felt in the world of literature. Although the title implies ghosts, there are no supernatural elements to be found, though it does contain crime novel tropes…
I’ve always loved thrillers and science fiction stories, especially those that occur in the near-future rather than hundreds or thousands of years from now. As I worked on my latest novel Synapse, I ended up thinking a lot about my favorite near-future films, especially thrillers. Here is a list of my top eighteen (with a…
I don’t read crime fiction just for the crimes. Well, sometimes I do. When I pick up an Agatha Christie novel, I’m usually in it solely for the intricacy of the plot—to see how the whodunit was done. But there are other instances when the murder(s), adventures, thrills and suspense of each book—usually in a…
