Blog Posts by Subject: Mysteries, Crime, Thrillers

Are you making your New Year's Resolutions? Is one of them to read more or to connect more with other readers? We would love to see you in the Reader's Den, NYPL's online book discussion, in 2015!

Adler-Olsen admits in an interview that growing up in the mental hospitals in Denmark where his father worked had a big influence on his writing and his life.

The plot revolves around an attractive, popular Member of the Danish Parliament, Merete Lynggaard, who disappeared from a ferry in 2002 while on a holiday trip to Germany with her brother Uffe.

Our reader asked us to recommend a good page turner for a long plane ride. Here are some titles you will want to read in one sitting from a variety of genres.

There is something about the sinister, shadowy, gray atmosphere of The Killing that is unforgettable. Detectives eat in the rain and smoke in the rain. Rain falls heavy on the windshield day and night. Here are some books with this same sense of atmosphere.

Maybe because Kitty Genovese's story conjures up questions of how crimes are committed, and the emotional struggles we live with from such events, this story hasn’t quite come to an end even after fifty years. We talked to the author of a new book about the famous murder.

Summer's almost gone, and I haven’t been able to travel very far out of the city, so I’ve been doing the next best thing, vicariously experiencing far flung locales, and occasionally time periods, in the company of some of my favorite sleuths. Enjoy visiting these detectives' beats from your couch, in the park, on a beach, on the subway, or anywhere else you like to read.

Summer in New York can leave you melting into the pavement. That's why a mystery that chills you to the bone may be the best thing you do to beat the heat this season.

With the recent appearance of several movies and television series based on the stories of Sherlock Holmes, the popularity of the enigmatic detective does not appear to be slowing down one bit.

Here are three books about some of our fine city's bad guys, lying, cheating, and stealing their way through the 1890s.

Recently I had occasion to spend a lot of time in the Mystery section on the second floor at the Mid-Manhattan Library. After looking at many, many titles there, I noticed a plethora of puns.

I recently had the distinct honor and utter delight of posing interview questions to an author as talented as she is gracious, Ms. Victoria Thompson. This Edgar and Agatha award-nominated writer is the author of over thirty books, including one that is the featured work (Murder in Chelsea) of the upcoming Great Kills Library Book Discussion Group, scheduled to convene on Saturday, February 8 at 

Have you ever wondered what happens when a ghetto is unmade? Or what the future of Saudi Arabia means to the rest of the world? Or how overachievers do it? Do you think you know what real New Yorkers look like? Do you want to believe that

"An ungodly pummeling on the door of my grandmother's house at 19 Washington Square North brought first the maid and then my grandmother herself to the doorways of their bedrooms at two o'clock on the morning of March 3, 1896."

The gruesome case at the heart of Caleb Carr's The Alienist begins at this ungodly hour in an ungodly time of New York City's history, the turn of the 20th century, that brutal period when Teddy Roosevelt served as New York City Police Commissioner. This is 

I hope you are enjoying the Reader's Den selection for November, The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye. The year is 1845 and the story revolves around the establishment of the first official New York City Police Department. I just finished re-reading it and found it retained its interest and 

This month in the Reader's Den we are reading a mystery set in New York City, The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye. The year is 1845 and the story revolves around the establishment of the first official New York City Police Department, what was happening then to initiate its existence, and who 

Mark Fuhrman investigated OJ Simpson's murder, along with his partner, Brad Roberts, who recovered more evidence than him, yet he was never questioned on the stand at the murder trial.

Recently, while I was mentally present in the early 1900s while ensconced in an absolutely riveting historical mystery, my physical body answered the insistent trill of my cellular phone. I was rather unhappily jolted out of the land of gramophones and petticoats by a question from a friend, inquiring concerning the health of one of my cats who is afflicted with allergies.

"It had become habit, leaving the Dakota, to walk out and back into the winter of 1882."

Welcome back to the Reader's Den! I hope you enjoyed taking a trip to the New York of 1882 along with Si Morley, the protagonist in Jack Finney's classic 1970 novel, Time and Again. If you've been reading the book, why not share your thoughts with us through the comments form at the end of the post? There are some discussion questions (which include a few spoilers!) that can be used as a starting point, but