Burn What Will Burn by C.B. McKenzie is a gritty, gripping mystery and an enthralling character study of its poet-protagonist (Available June 21, 2016). Bob Reynolds doesn't recognize the body in the creek, but he does recognize the danger of it. He's a newcomer to town, not entirely welcome, and not entirely on good footing with…
Riot Most Uncouth by Daniel Friedman is the first in a new series featuring the 19-year old Lord Byron, a brazen poet and student with questionable behavior that decides solving a murder is more important than attending class (available December 1, 2015). 1807, Cambridge, England. A young woman is murdered in a boarding house, and…
Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, and no one knows how. But a much more important mystery surrounds Poe’s life and his works. What most people think they know is way off the mark. Here’s a quiz designed to spark your interest in discovering the real Poe. Select True or False: …
April is National Poetry Month, which for us, always means a tip o' the fedora to the crime poetry blog, The Five-Two, from which we're pleased to share this evocatively sparse verse: “The Morning Of” by Tom Brzezina On the morning before the morning of, tension knotted the muscles between my shoulder blades. In…
If modern robots can write your letters, why not poetry, and what richer fodder for auto-verse than CrimeHQ's tweets could there be? Submitting our thread to the genius of Poetweet (meaning Edgar Allan, we'll assume, rather than some merely generically tormented garret-dweller), the following mashed-up sonnet was generated. It's loosely rhymed stanzas are odd enough…
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita, Ada, or Ardor) is not what one would call a traditional mystery story. You won’t find it among the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Father Brown, or Phillip Marlowe in the mystery section of your local bookstore. Instead it’s shelved in the classics section with Ulysses, The Adventures…
From the Charred Remains, by Susanna Calkins, is the second book in the Lucy Campion Mysteries Series set in 1666 London where a body found amidst the debris of the Great Fire turns out to be a victim of murder (available April 22, 2014). London, 1666. Just days after the Great Fire, former chambermaid Lucy…
Pop artist as crime poet? Well, Claes Oldenburg's work repeatedly makes monuments out of the everyday detritus of living, from apple cores to clothespins. By aggrandizing the humble, he offers a fresh perspective and dispels complacence, which is what I think crime stories do. They delve into what's tawdry, venal, cruel, or tragic with such…
We're fans of the outsider creds and coolness of Peter Gunn, and also fans of the 30 days of the 5-2, a celebration in honor of National Poetry Month curated by Gerald So of The 5-2, the crime poetry weekly. Every day features a touring selection from the world of crime poetry, and for our…
