Thriller Marketing/Review/Comments: Comments
It's been a while. I re-injured my knee while recovering from the arthroscopy and I may not more done on my eye to further correct the astigmatism. I'm doing three reading sessions a day in a large print book and a big screen movie with an eye patch over my "good" eye. Hopefully my brain will forge new connections to the "new" eye and people will be nicer to each other or something.
So, back to thrillers...
One of the last actual "can't put it down" books I've read was Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. Whoo boy, it starts off with a man, more dead than alive, washing ashore and nursed back to health by a disgraced doctor. When the man makes his first appearance in town, people look at him in shock and say things like, "You! You're supposed to be dead!" And then they try to make him that way but, using skills the patient didn't know he had, he easily beats the hell out of his attackers. When the doc finds a piece of subcutaneously inserted microfilm containing a Swiss bank account number, off the patient goes. And the book doesn't slow down from there.
Although I've read the book four times, it still sweeps me away in a page turning frenzy so much so that I always forgive the very end where he's trapped in a house with a man who turns out to be his arch-foe. I could probably read the book fifty more times and still not figure out what the hell happened.
Sadly and coincidentally, this turns out to be Ludlum's last good book. His two sequels to Bourne turned out to be crap, forgoing the care put into his previous novels and devolving to a coincidence laden pastiche, not parody, of his earlier style. Yuch. It's painful to give up on a previously favorite author but when they begin to let you down, they usually don't stop. And to add insult to injury, they keep bringing out books from Ludlum, even though he died in 2001, which may or may not have had much to do with him. I'll even admit to reading one of them (but just one).
In his prime, no one wrote a chase scene like Ludlum, and there was one in almost every book. The hero would be trying to make his way to some place safe through a very crowded, very public setting like a train station or a hotel. Bad guys were everywhere and they all seemed to know who he was while to him, they remained faceless and anonymous. Until they made their move. The tension and suspense created by this was painful and yes, it made it nearly impossible to put down. My favorite is probably the sequence in The Aquitaine Progression...
In recent years publishers have seen the popularity of thrillers rise. There's now an association of thriller writers with their own awards program. Writers not previously thought of as thriller writers have swelled its ranks while early practitioners such as Ludlum and Tom Clancy seem to have had their reputations fall on relatively hard times. Yes, Ludlum lost it after The Bourne Identity but he still had a dozen books before that. Clancy may be hit or miss but The Hunt for Red October and my favorite, Red Storm Rising, are still solid books.
On the whole, though, the label of "thriller" seems to be stuck on to books that are typically implausible, carelessly plotted, ignorant of character development, and increasingly formulaic. This is a bad thing. As long as something blows up every third page, or someone is assassinated in each three page chapter, and the entire globe is in peril, all other tenets of good writing can be excused. Indeed, they may even get in the way.
I used to think that I wrote thrillers. Now I jiggle to the side and if I have to produce a label I'd utter something like "crime fiction." In the past I would have been thrilled (forgive the pun) to be associated by genre with a Robert Ludlum or a Tom Clancy but not any more. Perhaps when people start "co-writing" in your own fictional universe the bell has tolled. Or when an author creates a framework for other writers, where a shadowy internal governmental organization can go out and fight the brilliantly evil terrorist who has found a way to deploy a postage stamp nuke in the White House gift shop.
You get what I mean. Thrillers seem to have fallen to the genre equivalent and formulaic process of historical romance novels. I hate this. It means that as soon as a book is labeled a thriller, I become suspicious and immediately lower my standards. I want more pre-Bourne Ludlum. I want more Red Storm Rising. I don't want Man from U.N.C.L.E. retreaded plots dressed up with Al Qaeda operatives and published by writers without the skill or talent to create their own original universes and the courage to have their own name as the only by-line.
Bring back original, intelligent, well plotted and well written thrillers. Shovel the new style crap into the furnace. In the meantime, I'll be working on my "crime fiction" novels which, hopefully, have a lot more in common with an earlier Ludlum than most things written by members of the ITW - the International Thriller Writers.
Yes, Clancy and his ilk have been criticized for obsessively writing about technical details. Is that bad? Not so long as it helps immerse me in the story. This is what I'm after, a serious, encompassing reading experience. Suck me in, involve me, keep me from sleeping at night. Heroes who get themselves shot three times then leap off a five story building onto the awning below, bounding off the rebound and catching the laundry line in their one good hand to slide the rest of the way to safety are not thrilling to me. They're simply dumb. Keep that crap in Hollywood. The trailers tell me all I need to know and I can save my money.
Read The Aquitaine Progression or The Bourne Identity and you'll see what I mean. Of course you still need to dispel your disbelief but that's reading fiction, isn't it? The trick is to not feel insulted while you do it.
So, back to thrillers...
One of the last actual "can't put it down" books I've read was Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. Whoo boy, it starts off with a man, more dead than alive, washing ashore and nursed back to health by a disgraced doctor. When the man makes his first appearance in town, people look at him in shock and say things like, "You! You're supposed to be dead!" And then they try to make him that way but, using skills the patient didn't know he had, he easily beats the hell out of his attackers. When the doc finds a piece of subcutaneously inserted microfilm containing a Swiss bank account number, off the patient goes. And the book doesn't slow down from there.
Although I've read the book four times, it still sweeps me away in a page turning frenzy so much so that I always forgive the very end where he's trapped in a house with a man who turns out to be his arch-foe. I could probably read the book fifty more times and still not figure out what the hell happened.
Sadly and coincidentally, this turns out to be Ludlum's last good book. His two sequels to Bourne turned out to be crap, forgoing the care put into his previous novels and devolving to a coincidence laden pastiche, not parody, of his earlier style. Yuch. It's painful to give up on a previously favorite author but when they begin to let you down, they usually don't stop. And to add insult to injury, they keep bringing out books from Ludlum, even though he died in 2001, which may or may not have had much to do with him. I'll even admit to reading one of them (but just one).
In his prime, no one wrote a chase scene like Ludlum, and there was one in almost every book. The hero would be trying to make his way to some place safe through a very crowded, very public setting like a train station or a hotel. Bad guys were everywhere and they all seemed to know who he was while to him, they remained faceless and anonymous. Until they made their move. The tension and suspense created by this was painful and yes, it made it nearly impossible to put down. My favorite is probably the sequence in The Aquitaine Progression...
In recent years publishers have seen the popularity of thrillers rise. There's now an association of thriller writers with their own awards program. Writers not previously thought of as thriller writers have swelled its ranks while early practitioners such as Ludlum and Tom Clancy seem to have had their reputations fall on relatively hard times. Yes, Ludlum lost it after The Bourne Identity but he still had a dozen books before that. Clancy may be hit or miss but The Hunt for Red October and my favorite, Red Storm Rising, are still solid books.
On the whole, though, the label of "thriller" seems to be stuck on to books that are typically implausible, carelessly plotted, ignorant of character development, and increasingly formulaic. This is a bad thing. As long as something blows up every third page, or someone is assassinated in each three page chapter, and the entire globe is in peril, all other tenets of good writing can be excused. Indeed, they may even get in the way.
I used to think that I wrote thrillers. Now I jiggle to the side and if I have to produce a label I'd utter something like "crime fiction." In the past I would have been thrilled (forgive the pun) to be associated by genre with a Robert Ludlum or a Tom Clancy but not any more. Perhaps when people start "co-writing" in your own fictional universe the bell has tolled. Or when an author creates a framework for other writers, where a shadowy internal governmental organization can go out and fight the brilliantly evil terrorist who has found a way to deploy a postage stamp nuke in the White House gift shop.
You get what I mean. Thrillers seem to have fallen to the genre equivalent and formulaic process of historical romance novels. I hate this. It means that as soon as a book is labeled a thriller, I become suspicious and immediately lower my standards. I want more pre-Bourne Ludlum. I want more Red Storm Rising. I don't want Man from U.N.C.L.E. retreaded plots dressed up with Al Qaeda operatives and published by writers without the skill or talent to create their own original universes and the courage to have their own name as the only by-line.
Bring back original, intelligent, well plotted and well written thrillers. Shovel the new style crap into the furnace. In the meantime, I'll be working on my "crime fiction" novels which, hopefully, have a lot more in common with an earlier Ludlum than most things written by members of the ITW - the International Thriller Writers.
Yes, Clancy and his ilk have been criticized for obsessively writing about technical details. Is that bad? Not so long as it helps immerse me in the story. This is what I'm after, a serious, encompassing reading experience. Suck me in, involve me, keep me from sleeping at night. Heroes who get themselves shot three times then leap off a five story building onto the awning below, bounding off the rebound and catching the laundry line in their one good hand to slide the rest of the way to safety are not thrilling to me. They're simply dumb. Keep that crap in Hollywood. The trailers tell me all I need to know and I can save my money.
Read The Aquitaine Progression or The Bourne Identity and you'll see what I mean. Of course you still need to dispel your disbelief but that's reading fiction, isn't it? The trick is to not feel insulted while you do it.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 10:34 AM
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