I have always been drawn to stories that get inside people's heads. Not just the crime. Not just the chase. But the why. Why does someone do the things they…
True crime's got this wild pull, doesn't it? You start reading about serial killers, and suddenly you're knee-deep in what makes 'em tick. Not just the bloody details, but the…
Ever stayed up way too late flipping pages on a killer's story? True crime does that to me every time. These aren't made-up tales—they're pulled straight from real cases that…
Just asking: If I can’t get chosen for jury duty in a no-drama lawsuit, how come a serial killer manages to be seated in a double murder case? According to…
Here’s a gentle warning: Don’t think about the circular saw. Seriously, don’t think about it. Because it gets quite a workout in THE CHESTNUT MAN (Harper/HarperCollins, $28.99), Soren Sveistrup’s cunningly…
A little boy nicks his grandfather’s skiff and ventures out alone on Caddo Lake, a “wetland maze” of “bayous, tributaries and inlets like a tangle of snakes,” possibly haunted by…
Just listen to this: “The days march by and extraordinary things happen all around us. Small miracles, haphazard events, bursts of joy, revelations. … We hunker down in our daily…
Don’t you just love a funeral? In detective fiction, I mean. Because at a good funeral, somebody is always passing a mission of honor along to somebody else. Harry Bosch…
Martha Grimes’s novels are a hybrid of mystery forms, all of them hugely entertaining. THE OLD SUCCESS (Atlantic Monthly, $26) is a perfect example. The plot starts off as a…
If this is a Martin Cruz Smith mystery, we must be in Moscow, maybe in Gorky Park. But in a thrilling change of pace, THE SIBERIAN DILEMMA (Simon & Schuster,…
Lisa Sandlin’s irresistible mystery THE BIRD BOYS (Cinco Puntos, paper, $16.95) is set in 1973 in Beaumont, a bustling city on the Texas Gulf Coast where a freshly minted private…
Poor Riley Wolfe, the devilishly charming antihero of Jeff Lindsay’s witty caper mystery JUST WATCH ME (Dutton, $26), the first volume in a new series — now that Dexter, the…
