"Sensational Literature.—Immense." [STUD]
Let's just get this out of the way: we're big fans of Literary Hub (aka LitHub). If you're not familiar with LitHub, it's a site that updates daily with all sorts of links and articles related to literary life. Their daily and weekly newsletters contain everything that serious readers and literary types could hope for, curated in one place.
So when we learned that LitHub was launching a site related to crime, mystery, and thriller genres, we were intrigued.
We first discovered their Twitter handle @CrimeReads and followed along from our own account, @IHearofSherlock, curious as to what was brewing. Then we received an email from Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Bookshop and Mysterious Press, letting us know that he was involved in this new project to create a premier literary destination. Inveterate IHOSE followers may recall Otto from Episode 17 and Episode 87 of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.
And so it was that CrimeReads launched their site yesterday, to much fanfare. Editors Dwyer Murphy and Molly Odintz shared their vision for the site:
CrimeReads is a culture website for people who believe suspense is the essence of storytelling, questions are as important as answers, and nothing beats the thrill of a good book. It’s a single, trusted source where readers can find the best writing from the worlds of crime, mystery, and thrillers—a literary culture that’s more robust than ever, but diffuse. Like its founding website, Literary Hub, CrimeReads is an organizing principle, curating and cultivating a daily slate of high-quality writing, a digital space where readers and writers can gather and engage. With the help of its editorial partners, CrimeReads is a site readers can rely on for smart, entertaining writing about the culture they love. Each day, alongside original content and exclusive excerpts, CrimeReads is proud to showcase an editorial feature from one of its many partners from across the literary crime community, from publishers big and small, bookstores, non-profits, librarians, and more.An impressive raison d'être. And a useful one. In our hurried, harried lives, as reading material – both digital and analog – proliferates in our lives, having a source that says "this is worth reading; that is worth sharing," is a time-saver. Curation is a low-key but essential role in any information-rich industry, and frankly, is one that librarians have occupied professionally for some time. It's gratifying to see this coming to life in a specific niche.
Some of those editorial partners include the Mystery Writers of America, Doubleday, G.P. Putnam, Penguin, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, Houghton Mifflin, the Baker Street Irregulars, and many more.
On the site itself, there's much to explore. Top-level sections include: Features, Culture, True Crime, Daily Thrill, and Genres. Drilling down, here's what you can find in each section:
- Features
- Essays
- Interviews
- Reading List
- New Nonfiction
- Culture
- TV & Film
- Podcasts
- Craft
- Awards/Festivals
- True Crime
- Daily Thrill
- Genres
- Mystery
- Noir/Hardboiled
- Suspense
- Espionage/Thriller
- Legal/Procedural
We won't belabor each section, as there is so much to explore on the CrimeReads site. It's clean, well-organized, and easy to find the content that matters to you, as it's cross-indexed so some pieces are filed in multiple sections. And if surfing the site is too much for you, you can sign up for their email newsletter.
Detective fiction – a larger, catch-all phrase that includes most of the genres above – is necessarily diverse. Sherlock Holmes fans are typically fans of various other forms of literature, and when it comes to detective fiction, our interests range from Sam Spade to Hercule Poirot, George Smiley to Lord Peter Wimsey, Kinsey Millhone to Jim Chee, and more. Taking on the curation of one of the largest and most diverse segments of the literary world is admirable and a Sisyphean task.
The good news is that CrimeReads is up for the challenge.
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Detective fiction – a larger, catch-all phrase that includes most of the genres above – is necessarily diverse. Sherlock Holmes fans are typically fans of various other forms of literature, and when it comes to detective fiction, our interests range from Sam Spade to Hercule Poirot, George Smiley to Lord Peter Wimsey, Kinsey Millhone to Jim Chee, and more. Taking on the curation of one of the largest and most diverse segments of the literary world is admirable and a Sisyphean task.
The good news is that CrimeReads is up for the challenge.
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