Storm by Stephanie Merritt review – pacy poolside read
An unexpected guest disturbs a widow’s holiday with old friends in this blistering literary thriller
The joy of crime fiction: authors from Lee Child to Paula Hawkins pick their favourite books
Val McDermid, Nicci French, Anthony Horowitz and more reveal what makes a great novel, celebrating writers including Patricia Highsmith, Donna Tartt and Dennis Lehane
Cate Blanchett and Harry Styles to head to Venice for 2022 edition of film festival
Competition slots for jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi, Martin McDonagh and Darren Aronofsky, while actors on show range from past winner Blanchett to Bill Nighy and Harry Styles
The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
The Partisan by Patrick Worrall; More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez; The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda; All I Said Was True by Imran Mahmood; The Cliff House by Chris Brookmyre
Frederick Nolan obituary
Thriller writer and publisher who became an authority on the American old west and Billy the Kid
The best recent crime and thriller writing – review roundup
The tensions of a small community inspire a couple of ‘island noir’ crackers, while three female authors explore revenge
Mick Herron: ‘I’m interested in incompetence, things going wrong’
The Slow Horses author on the ‘virtue of limitations’ and drawing life lessons from The Wind in the Willows
Keep Her Sweet by Helen Fitzgerald review – a thriller packed with monsters and misery
This compelling page-turner follows a therapist who delights in her clients’ crises – but the tension breaks when plausibility is stretched too far
Corrective Measures review – Bruce Willis flexes his mind control in superpowered prison drama
Splicing X-Men and Suicide Squad shouldn’t really work, but director Sean Patrick O’Reilly adds a subtle layer of social commentary to the comic-book schlock in a distinctive debut
The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
Murder Before Evensong by Richard Coles; Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto; Wake by Shelley Burr; Sun Damage by Sabine Durrant; Aurora by David Koepp
Minority Report at 20: Cruise and Spielberg test their limits in top-tier thriller
The director and star both played with their images in a knotty and exciting adaptation of Philip K Dick’s prescient short story
Thrillers of the month – review
The Rev Richard Coles makes his cosy-crime fiction debut in convincing style, while Robin Morgan-Bentley offers a tense spin on the locked-room mystery
The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin; Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister; Oxblood by Tom Benn; The Island by Adrian McKinty; Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson
Thrillers of the month – review
This month, in clever, tense tales by Gillian McAllister and Jack Jordan, two mothers are on a mission to save their sons
Firestarter review – soggy Stephen King remake struggles to ignite
Zac Efron tries his best in an otherwise regrettable retread of the horror author’s tale of a girl with superpowers