After more than 30 years at Booklist, editor and publisher Bill Ott continues to edit the crime fiction section of the magazine and still delights in discovering new hard-boiled writers. Follow him on Twitter at @Booklist_Bill.
Fans of Scandinavian crime fans were hit with some very sad news yesterday upon learning of the death, at 84, of Maj Sjöwall, coauthor with Per Wahlöö, of the vastly influential Martin Beck series of police procedurals. Set in Stockholm from 1965 through 1975, the series is widely regarded as the progenitor of what we […]
In the May 1, 2019, Booklist, I wrote the first of what I promised would be a series of pieces about my 40 years of reading and reviewing crime fiction for Booklist. The second installment of that proposed series is arriving a bit later than planned, but here it is. I’m moving on to the […]
If you’re looking for trends in today’s crime fiction, look no further than one word: stand-alone. Was it Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train—the explanation du jour for everything in the genre—that prompted the explosion of stand-alone thrillers, and especially those utilizing unreliable narrators and emphasizing psychological suspense? Time will tell, of course, but […]
The news of novelist Philip Kerr’s death on March 23 from cancer at the young age of 62 came as a blow to the author’s devoted fans across the world. As one of those fans and a reviewer of Kerr’s books for many years, I was shaken by the news, especially as I had only […]
For the past 21 years, Booklist has published a Mystery Showcase issue in spring. For the past eight, The Booklist Reader has augmented that showcase with Mystery Month, which lasts throughout May. As we embark on our 2017 celebration, we bring you this list of the year’s best crime fiction from the May 1 issue of […]
Editor’s note: Happy 101st birthday, Frank Sinatra! This piece first appeared last year, but we’re making Uncle Frank’s birthday an annual tradition at Booklist, so here it is again. Please note we’ve included a playlist below. I fell in love with jazz in high school and became something of an obnoxious purist, convinced that violins belonged only in classical music. […]
In this new feature, we’re asking Booklisters to give themselves a “shelf evaluation.” The rules are simple: pick any shelf in your home library, take a picture of it as is (no alphabetizing, no dusting), and then . . . explain your shelf! “Oh, my pounding heart, the jackets, it made my scrotum tingle just […]
In The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe famously said, “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.” Sleuths live […]
Mystery writers are forever looking for ways to seduce high-minded readers into dipping their toes in the fetid waters of genre fiction. Nothing works as consistently to accomplish this goal as serving your murder and your mayhem with a side of fine art. Genre writers were luring the PBS crowd by burying clues in the […]
For the past 20 years Booklist has published a Mystery Showcase issue in spring. For the past seven years, we’ve enhanced that coverage online during May—which we’ve dubbed Mystery Month. As we launch the 2016 edition, we’re reprinting this list from the May 1 issue of Booklist. Comic caper novels, psychological thrillers, and history-mystery blends dominate the best […]