Dark Passages: An Archive of Columns

In Tom Franklin’s Southern gothic tale “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter,” two men find their long friendship complicated by secrets and misunderstandings.

In ‘A Stranger Like You’ and ‘Chosen,’ criminal impulses collide with wishes for Hollywood success and a baby of one’s own.

On dangerous ground: In Justin Peacock’s thriller “Blind Man’s Alley,” intrigue and murder involve commercial property deals.

With ‘Hailey’s War,’ Jodi Compton makes a comeback — of sorts.

‘So Cold the River’ is a departure from the author’s previous crime novels that heads straight for supernatural territory.

Her novels are contemporary noir tales full of jagged, splintered edges.

In new mysteries by Jesse Kellerman and Angela S. Choi, the most unreliable part of the story isn’t the situation -- it’s the narrator.

The idyllic environment of school life in Carol Goodman’s ‘Arcadia Falls’ is undercut by secrets of the most threatening kind.

Four new thrillers show that the class of 2010 is already off to a great start.

In ‘Talking About Detective Fiction,’ P.D. James digs at the bedrock of the genre.

Fans of mystery series often think they know certain characters better than the authors who created them.

Give the sleuth a vacation, kill someone close to them or, in Marcia Muller’s case, try something even more drastic.

In Stuart Neville’s ‘The Ghosts of Belfast,’ a former IRA killer tries to quiet the restless spirits of the people he killed by hunting those who gave him his orders.

A mystery series featuring the globe-trotting adventurer is just the right antidote for grim headlines.

Crime-solving heroines explore queasy territory in new books by Karin Slaughter and Teri Coyne.

Why do some publishers release some serial mysteries out of order? The unfortunate case of Fred Vargas.

A talk with bestselling mystery writer Lawrence Block about his career, his obsession with racewalking and his legacy when he’s gone.

YA mysteries by Robert B. Parker (left), John Green, Caroline B. Cooney and John C. Ford

Hanna Berry’s graphic novel ‘Britten and Brülightly’ acknowledges the noir classics that inspired it even as it develops a style all its own

In the adventures of p.i. Bernie Gunther, Philip Kerr applies noir techniques to Hitler’s Germany.

There’s a whole slew of mysteries featuring animal detectives. Does that mean bookstores should have a section marked ‘anthropomorphic noir’?

The 200th anniversary of his birth arrives with many cities waging ‘the Poe Wars’ and the publication of tributes, stories in his honor and new editions of his work.

Pan-Asian crime fiction may have began with the characters of Charlie Chan and Judge Dee, but writers today are exploring unexpected, interesting aspects of the genre

Novels about kidnapping by Laura Lippman, Jennifer McMahon, Stewart O’Nan and others consider the lives of those left behind.

“Leaves From the Note-Book of a New York Detective” collects stories of a resourceful sleuth who appeared in fiction years before Sherlock Holmes.

Something was lost in the 20 years separating Katherine Neville’s thriller “The Fire” from the earlier “The Eight.”

“The Book of Murder” and “The Killing Circle” consider a very lethal set: the writers’ group

‘The Curse of the Pogo Stick’ and ‘The Case of the Missing Books’ join the ‘No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency’ series as beach reads that are light on the grisly crime.

Installment by installment, ‘The Lemur’ by Benjamin Black follows an old trend that has become--at least among writers--popular again.

Can nothing bridge the gap separating readers of true crime and crime fiction? Consider “The Monster of Florence,” “The Girl with the Crooked Nose” and “The Forger’s Spell.”

When literary figures are turned into detectives, there’s great promise in the material--and little margin for error

Two complex new mysteries explore the continent’s darker side

Three debut authors didn’t live long enough to see their novels published.

The tropes of the P.I. novel may have been exhausted long ago, but the genre isn’t dead. Hardly, as succeeding generations of mystery writers have shown.

The genius presiding over forensic thrillers is still the one and only Sherlock Holmes

John Bingham not only wrote fascinating spy novels -- he also inspired one of John Le Carre’s singular characters

Thomas Harris has a lot to answer for.

In February 2004, former New York Times Book Review editor Charles McGrath created a minor controversy with an essay in which he wondered why most contemporary thriller writers “don’t seem to be interested in the post-9/11 landscape.”

Mysteries and thrillers hinge on basic questions: whodunit, whydunit and the dreaded had-I-but-known.

A pair since the days of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

One might not have expected Comic-Con International, the extravaganza held in San Diego every July, to become a major promotional vehicle for mystery writers.