Women Crime Writers
Even the whitest of picket fences can hide a twisting darkness. And that very pressure could itself serve as one of the most complex themes of noir — that of dreams deferred and decisions made with extreme regret.
Crime
Crime novels.
Crime is a genre.
You can view all genres, or you can search by language/region, editor/translator, era/movement, book authors, or year of edition.
Crime Novels: Thrillers from the 1960s Part 2
As the 1960s began to fade into the 1970s, noir took a fascinating and complex turn. It wasn’t enough to just be about a crime — now it was about being relevant to the current moment.
Crime Novels: Thrillers from the 1960s Part 1
Readers begin to ask the question — what happens when your job is crime? What happens when people decide to make money ‘the easy way’?
Crime Novels American Noir of the 1950s
Here we are moving away from looming dread of war and toward the disillusionment of what was waiting for those that returned from overseas.
Crime Novels of the 1930s and 1940s
For July, I’m going to take a deep dive into American crime noir novels from the 1930s to 1960s, give them a bit of context, and maybe mention a film or two along the way.
Blood Meridian
I’ll leave it up for you to decide whether the novel lives up to its extensive praise. For my part, despite the book being outside my literary comfort zone, I did see what made it so ground-breaking and so influential. It was worth the read — as long as the graphic violence (including sexual violence) is something that you can tolerate as a reader.
The Mad and the Bad
You know just enough about the characters — no more, no less. You are provided with just enough background information. It keeps the story tight and moves things along in ways that longer works often struggle with. Perhaps if you look closely you can see the traces of a formula, but it is applied so skillfully that it doesn’t detract from the enjoyment or impact of the narrative.
Millennial Crime Trilogy
The three books are substantial, but not overbearing at 300–375 pages each. Each of them is based on a criminal case and uses that case as roman à clef to explore a snapshot of different aspects of society at the turn of the last century through the lens of real events barely veiled.
BUtterfield 8
The body of a young woman named Starr Faithfull was found dead on a Long Island beach on the morning of June 8th, 1931. Speculations concerning how and why she met her end inflamed the imagination of the general public and Faithfull became a tabloid sensation posthumously.
They Hanged My Saintly Billy
When I saw Robert Graves’ They Hanged My Saintly Billy and realized that it was a novel about William Palmer case, I leapt at the chance to read it.