Noir is the punk rock of the book world. It’s a niche genre that has been exploited to the point that the term it is meant to describe has been so watered down as to be unrecognizable and indistinguishable from the mainstream it rebels against. And, if Noir is punk rock, then Raymond Chandler is…
I can’t read a book of any kind—thriller, literary fiction, memoir, biography, even history—unless the setting speaks to me. I need to feel, with all my senses, the physical world in which the writer is trying to involve me. Often, that’s what I’m left with years later when I think of the work: not the…
Read this exclusive guest post from Max Allan Collins, author of Better Dead, comparing his own Nate Heller series to finishing Mickey Spillane's posthumous Mike Hammer manuscripts, and then make sure you're signed in and comment for a chance to win a copy of his newest Nate Heller thriller! I have been writing about my fictional P.I.…
Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn by Ace Atkins is the newest Spenser novel, where Boston PI Spenser faces a hot case and a personal crisis (Available today!). An assessment of a new Spenser novel requires this reviewer to reveal a bit of my adoration for series creator, Robert B. Parker, and why I was initially…
Lily Gardner, author of Betting Blind—the 2nd Lennox Cooper Mystery—was kind enough to answer some of Criminal Element's questions about her beginnings as a writer, her inspirations, and living in Portland, OR.
International novelist Haruki Murakami’s first novel, Hear the Wind Sing(1979) was an immediate success, and since then, he has developed a fanatic worldwide following that eagerly anticipates each new release. Other critical and commercial bestsellers include Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995), Kafka on the Shore (2002),…
Pennycook’s Poppycock – A new scientific study has been released in Judgment and Decision Making that is garnering headlines (most of them overblown, sensationalist, and reactionary) that attempts to measure peoples’ susceptibility to “pseudo-profound bullshit.” Gordon Pennycook and colleagues used a sentence generator that takes words and phrases lifted straight from Deepak Chopra’s Twitter feed…
Stolen from Mount Sinai – Crime fiction has seen its fair share of variety in style and content throughout its long history, but just like any specific genre, a general archetype is often established. Over at Sydney Morning Herald, Jane Sullivan shows us that certain pivotal authors, such as Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, actually…
When I moved to New York City, there were three mystery-centric bookshops still in operation—now that (tragically) only one remains, you have to assume Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Bookshop must be doing something right. All four of my novels were launched at his store, but I first got to know Otto by making the…
Martin Amis hails from distinguished literary stock, his father being Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim), and his stepmother Elizabeth Jane Howard (The Cazalet Chronicle). A writer himself since the 1970s, he’s noted for The Rachel Papers (1973), Money (1984), and London Fields (1989). He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was up for the…
