This rough justice often carries readers and viewers along to cheer for the law breakers. Maybe they enact our taboo impulses, maybe not. But there's something deeply satisfying in watching characters you like cross the line and work out their own form of justice.

The Intercept reads like a first draft, or as if nobody bothered to edit it carefully, because, well, he's Dick Wolf.

Vera Caspary wrote thrillers -- but not like any other author of her time, male or female. Her specialty was a specific type that she pioneered -- the psycho thriller.

Even with hot, humid Los Angeles as its setting, No One Knows You're Here gave me the chills.  And I mean that in the best of ways.  

I have no criticisms of Robert Crais' writing, other than I wish he could write as fast as I devour his work, which would require him to crank out -- at the very least -- a new book every week.

The White Devil ingeniously mixes literary detective work, a horror story, young love, academic satire, and cultural conflict between Americans and Brits. It is truly one of the most compelling thrillers I've read in the last few years.

Susan Fleet's new killer thriller, Diva, is subtitled "a novel of psychological suspense." That's an understatement.

Over the thirty years of my publishing career, I've learned that book snobs come in all shapes and sizes. And their snobbery often seems more about them than the genre they've picked for their disdain.

Writers have limits when it comes to the amount of violence they'll tolerate in fiction. This is because in order to write a scene, a writer not only has to put themselves inside the action, they have to go deep inside their characters' heads.

I've asked six of the most renowned crime fiction critics in the country to weigh in with their thoughts on the state of the crime novel. I hope you find their responses as interesting as I did.