Crimespree issue 67 featuring Bill Crider, Mickey Spillane   In our next issue we’ve got Bill Crider on the cover, we celebrate Mickey Spillane’s 100th birthday and two articles from Eryk Pruit along with our regular features.   If you need to subscribe or renew information is RIGHT HERE  ...

INTO THE NIGHT by Sarah Bailey has Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock returning in this follow up to THE DARK LAKE.  A very interesting aspect to the plot is how a celebrity gets all the attention in today’s society, while someone who is not famous is quickly dismissed. Bailey noted, “I read about accidental deaths that are eventually ruled as homicides.  I imagined what if there were hundred people present, but no one knew what actually happened.  I wanted to have the two deaths in the book really contrasted, a wealthy man versus someone homeless.  When I was in Los Angeles, I noticed that there were many homeless people, almost one on...

  The mystery community is infested with drummers.   I thought I had a unique angle. I thought that being a rock drummer who published crime fiction would set me apart from the crowd. I was very wrong. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a crime-writing musician these days. Ian Rankin fronts an Indie rock band called Best Picture. Lee Child recently teamed up with the songwriting duo Naked Blue to co-write a Jack Reacher-inspired album. There’s even a crime fiction super group in the U.K. called the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers featuring Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Chris Brookmyre, Stuart Neville, Luca Veste and Doug Johnstone. Just...

When done well, pulpy crime fiction is one of the most entertaining genres in the world. Nick Kolakowski knows how to construct narratives that offer enough action and violence to keep readers interested and enough humor, likeable characters, and mayhem to infuse his work with that highly entertaining, undeniably cinematic feel that only comes from top-notch pulp.  Jake Halligan is a bounty hunter who knows what he’s doing and is almost always in control. However, that changes when he comes home to a dead body stuffed in his gun safe. Since his entire life is spent putting bad people behind bars, Jake thinks the body could be a warning, but...

  WRANGLER’S RESCUE by B. J. Daniels is the last in the Montana Cahills series.  It is filled with a little romance, tension, emotion, suspense, and a lot of mystery that involves betrayals, murder, and distrust. The readers try to put the pieces of the puzzle together along with the characters. This story has a new twist as AJ, a city gal turned cowgirl, battles Juliette, a seductive sociopath black widow, while the hero is an ‘aw shucks’ type of shy quiet man. The plot has Cyrus Cahill traveling to Denver to buy a bull.  Approximately a week later, his family receives a phone call that he married a total stranger, a woman he knew...

I’m a science guy when all is said and done, and as I could never get myself focused enough in grade school or high school to make a career out of it, I am left with only a qualitative understanding of how the universe works. Don’t make me try to dissect formulas on a whiteboard in front of people. I will leave that to the people who actually knew what they wanted to be in grade school and obtained the grades necessary to follow their dreams. But I always love a good conversation about what we, as homo sapiens, know or think we know about the world in our small amount of time on this planet. There are two popular explanations of how the...

Kia ora and haere mai; hello and welcome to the third edition of Māwake Crime Review, a new initiative here at Crimespree Magazine in 2018. Each issue I’ll be featuring great crime writers and crime novels from beyond the borders of North America and Europe. For those who missed the first edition, Māwake is a word from the Māori language (the indigenous people of my home country, New Zealand) which translates to ‘south-east sea breeze’.  In this column we’re harnessing that breeze, so to speak: highlighting terrific tales ‘blown in’ for crime-loving readers from the southern and eastern continents: Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania...

  SUMMONED TO THIRTEENTH GRAVE by Darynda Jones is number thirteen and the last in the series.  But thirteen is a lucky number for her and those that have followed the Grim Reaper Charley Davidson. This book opens with Charley returning to earth after being exiled for a hundred years in another realm.  But like dog years having a one to seven ratio, there is a one to ten ratio since 100 actually is ten days on earth. After returning the first thing she does is rekindle the desire and love she has for everyone in her family including her daughter, husband, and Uncle. She then combats with her husband Reyes those trying to take over...

This week, CrimeSpree and  Friday Reads Facebook page  are offering up copies of MARILLA OF GREEN GABLES by Sarah McCoy and THE DISAPPEARING by Lori Roy MARILLA OF GREEN GABLES A bold, heartfelt tale of life at Green Gables . . . before Anne: A marvelously entertaining and moving historical novel, set in rural Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century, that imagines the young life of spinster Marilla Cuthbert, and the choices that will open her life to the possibility of heartbreak—and unimaginable greatness. Plucky and ambitious, Marilla Cuthbert is thirteen years old when her world is turned upside down. Her beloved mother dies in...