Guns for Hire-The Modern Adventure Thriller Read online

  GUNS FOR HIRE

  The Modern Adventure Thriller

  Barry Forshaw

  © Barry Forshaw 2012

  Barry Forshaw has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published 2012 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  THE AMERICAN THRILLER

  Cross- Genre Hopping

  New Directions

  Reacher Rides In

  The Thriller Writer’s Thriller Writer

  Box of Pleasure

  Brand Clancy

  The James Patterson Factory

  Sidelining the Sport

  Top of the Tree?

  Coals to Newcastle

  Biotechnological Mayhem

  Fortissimo Violence

  Father of the Technothriller

  Miami Menace

  On the Slopes of Parnassus

  Life After Death

  THE BRITISH THRILLER

  The Master

  An Interloper

  Encapsulating a Genre

  Contrarians and Killers

  Sweeping Panoramas

  The Tory We Can All Admire

  The Art of the Thriller

  The Thinking Reader’s Dan Brown

  Dance of Death

  The Prolific Mr Higgins

  New Fears

  In the Grand Manner

  Moving in on McNab

  AUTHOR QUESTIONNAIRES

  Gerald Seymour

  Sam Christer

  Robert Ryan

  James Craig

  James Renner

  Emlyn Rees

  Matt Lynn

  T.S. Learner

  Matt Rees

  Matthew Dunn

  James Becker

  Andy McNab

  Sam Eastland

  Steve Berry

  Robert Wilton

  Chris Ryan

  T.D. Griggs a.ka. Tom Maculay

  Tom Harper

  Dean Crawford

  Stephen Leather

  Peter Millar

  Brian Freeman

  The Modern Adventure Thriller: authors included

  INTRODUCTION

  Over the years – in several books and for a variety of newspapers and magazines – I've written extensively about crime fiction, always attempting to communicate my enthusiasm for the genre as well as making the best possible case for its virtues. However, only when appropriate; after all, as the writer Theodore Sturgeon once said: '90% of everything is crap’ – let’s not use the more mealy-mouthed ‘crud’ this adage sometimes gets. A certain resolve was necessary, in the teeth of some literary snobbery, to keep talking up the genre; the notion that such popular forms of entertainment could be taken seriously in terms of their craft is a relatively recent one and the cultural respectability of the crime novel owes much to the example of such writers as PD James. But what about the thriller – the novel of adventure? There, the situation is markedly different. Admittedly, certain thriller writers from the last century have achieved great critical acclaim, notably such talents as Eric Ambler, but there have been nothing like the kind of critical encomiums accorded to this more kinetic form of popular writing as to its less sanguinary bedfellow in which dogged coppers solve crimes in the teeth of their bosses’ disapproval.

  This study will attempt to deal with novels which do not fall into the category of straightforward crime, detective, legal or police procedurals -- in other words, the books discussed here will sport a picaresque, (possibly) globetrotting element with an emphasis on action and danger; it might be said to be a snapshot of the genre which began with John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps and continued through Frederick Forsyth's Day of the Jackal up to such modern-day thriller writers as Gerald Seymour and those novelists who specialise in books featuring special forces operatives etc. The brief will be very wide.

  However, John Buchan and his followers from Geoffrey Household onwards will not be discussed (except en passant) – and there is a reason for that.

  For The Modern Adventure Thriller, I have opted to concentrate on writers at work in the late 20th and early 21st century. There is no question that certain names – such as the aforementioned Gerald Seymour – have achieved the kind of gravitas that their great predecessors did but there are a host of writers who, while not attempting the complexity of characterisation of Seymour and co., still produce highly efficient, totally professional pieces of popular entertainment in which the emphasis is on action and adventure, customarily set against a globetrotting background. Many of these writers are yet to achieve literary respectability and they are generally perceived to be largely read by a male readership – although not always; the massively successful Lee Child, for instance is read by both sexes. Their detractors tend to take a reductive approach to the form – suggesting often that this can thriller writing is forever bound by its self-imposed limitations. Part of the purpose of this study is to treat these writers who may be neglected critically but are certainly not neglected commercially, to closer attention than they have received before. Yes, Gerald Seymour will be found within the following chapters, but so are writers who are largely neglected by the critical establishment. If I manage to do a little redressing of the balance here, I will be happy.

  It should be noted that this study makes no attempt to be totally comprehensive. I have concentrated on writers whose achievement ranges from the quotidian to the Olympian but who, regarded together, may constitute something of a snapshot of the genre today. To that end, I’ve concentrated on one or two books per author – and not necessarily those authors’ signature titles covered elsewhere. I proffer in advance the mea culpas for the necessary omissions and I have no doubt that the alert reader will be wondering why a favourite author or two is not included. But I trust that you will find several stimulating writers to add to your shopping list – and I hope I can steer you to some writers who you may not have read. I have also conducted a series of interviews with several talented practitioners of the form to illuminate both their own thriller writing – and the influence on their work of their great predecessors.

  The study is divided into two sections, concentrating on American and British thriller writers. There are, of course, important examples from other countries, but one of my self-imposed limitations was to keep this focus on these two principal sources. Within the British/American orbit, I regret not being able to include such writers as the aforementioned Eric Ambler or even two particular favourite British writers of mine from the past, the now-neglected Francis Clifford and Alan Williams. But I have been able to cover these immensely talented novelists before and by turning the spotlight on contemporary writing, I trust this guide to the landscape of to the modern adventure thriller will be a passport to some pulse-racing writing. My approach will involve focussing on individual books as emblematic of the various authors’ careers.

  THE AMERICAN THRILLER

  Where to begin? Possibly with the alphabetically appropriate Jeff Abbott? There are several ways in which a writer of crime thrillers can ensure that crucial thing: the reader turns to the next chapter. James Patterson has a simple strategy: extremely short chapters that invariably end with a cliffhanging situation. Val McDermid teases the readers with a series of perfectly timed revelations that keep us glued to the page. But Jeff Abbott, in such tersely-named outings as Panic and Fear, has a double-pronged tactic: establish a
tense and unusual situation in the first chapter then orchestrate the developments in hypnotic fast/slow segments. Panic used these tactics to deliver the taut tale of a man struggling to find out the truth behind the disappearance of his father and the death of his mother and the lean, polished storytelling surprised those who thought Abbott was a debut author. In fact, he had seven books under his belt; efficient enough, though they hardly hinted at the top-notch practitioner he'd become. If Fear isn’t quite in the same league as Panic, it’s still pretty galvanic stuff. The protagonist, Miles Kendrick, starts the book at the end of his tether – and things get worse from then on. In an echo of Fight Club, Miles is being taunted by his best friend Andy, who is threatening him with humiliation and violence. But Miles has killed Andy – or so he believes. Andy isn’t there, except as a taunting voice in his mind. Miles is in the witness protection programme, concealing his whereabouts from mob killers, even as he tries to deal with the guilt he feels at his friend’s death. He has one ace in the hole: psychiatrist Allison Vance, trying to pull him back to some kind of mental equilibrium while sorting out the traumatic events of the night of his friend’s death. But an explosion in her office kills Allison and destroys Miles’ chance of regaining his sanity. He finds himself in a desperate cat-and-mouse game with FBI operative Dennis Groote, a man whose own madness takes a much more lethal form than that of Miles. There is a key to his survival: cracking the truth of just how his friend Andy died. If the levels of tension engendered here don’t match those of Abbott’s Panic, that’s principally because the earlier book set the bar high for any follow-up. Forget direct comparisons and you’ll find that those tube or bus stops will fly by unnoticed.

  Fellow thriller writers such as William Diehl have been falling over themselves to praise the skills of Russell Andrews, as evinced in such books as Gideon and Icarus. Aphrodite, an accomplished entry in his classically-titled oeuvre, has all the weighty skill of its predecessors along with a new confidence: the effects here arise naturally out of the momentum of the narrative and never seem forced as they occasionally did in the earlier books. Susanna Morgan appears to have died because of an unfortunate accident – she has broken her neck after a fall in her apartment. But tenacious Detective Justin Westwood is unwilling to accept the obvious verdict: for him, too many things are anomalous in the case and he becomes convinced that Susanna was murdered. Finding a motive is difficult – Susannah was a hack on a modest local newspaper and her innocuous writings made few enemies. But, as Westwood discovers, a fanatical fan had taken objection to Susanna’s obituary for a dead film star. Is this the killer? Or is the truth much more complicated? From Raymond Chandler onwards, the thriller’s trajectory has been to move from the seemingly small case to the larger one and a situation with massive ramifications. That's the order of business here. Justin Westwood may not be an innovative creation, after all every kind of copper has surely been explored by now, but he is a sharply drawn protagonist and the sustained merit of the writing here guarantees a consistently entertaining thriller.

  As with the same writer’s Icarus. Thriller addicts (and who of us aren't these days?) quickly learn to identify the various styles used by top practitioners: floridly written, penetrating psychological studies and pared-down, kinetic action epics being the two principal prototypes. With Icarus, Andrews forged a new genre. His previous novel Gideon marked him out as a writer of sharply individual style and his quirky, idiosyncratic use of language is further developed in this book. Jack Keller is opening a new restaurant when a bungled burglary leaves his wife dead and Jack bleeding from bullet wounds. Andrews takes us through his slow and painful process of recovery and is particularly good on the transformation from self-lacerating victim to functioning human being. This transformation is effected by Kid, a young man whom Jack once regarded as a surrogate son and has now become a physiotherapist. But Kid is also found dead and Jack finds it impossible to believe that it was suicide or accident. Those who've read Raymond Chandler in which two seemingly unrelated plots invariably converge, will not be surprised to learn that the murder of Jack's wife was the engine for all that followed. If the considerable length of the novel is slightly more than Andrews’ plot can bear, few readers will fail to be gripped throughout.

  Cross-Genre Hopping

  South America. A wealthy man of ninety-six lies dead, with the black secrets of his life setting a series of grim events in train. Shaw, the enigmatic intelligence operative whom we encountered in David Baldacci’s The Whole Truth, is in France when he witnesses the death of another man and has to call on his own impressive resources to escape involvement with the murder. Shaw finds himself teaming up with vulnerable but single-minded journalist Katie James who has been plunged into a very dangerous world. After tracking down a lead she ends up unconscious and bundled aboard an aircraft, bound for an undisclosed destination. Before long both Shaw and Katie are on a helter-skelter journey across the globe, locking horns with a truly lethal opponent.

  This is the premise of Deliver Us From Evil, one of the most accomplished novels from a writer whose name has become a byword for quality thriller writing (not to mention genre-hopping), ex-lawyer David Baldacci. Inspired by the profitable example of John Grisham, many a lawyer has felled a forest or two by writing legal thrillers based on the template of The Firm or The Client. But of the breakout names from this aspirational group, one of the most talented is Baldacci, who with such highly professional work as Simple Genius, has put considerable distance between himself and his courtroom contemporaries. He has also moved out of the Grisham orbit by writing a very different kind of book these days, away from the drama of the courtroom and firmly in the realms of the picaresque, large-canvas adventure thriller. It’s a tricky field to master but Baldacci has pulled off the trick with panache.

  The Whole Truth, the book to which Deliver Us From Evil is a follow-up, had journalist Katie James trying to salvage her stalled career and encountering the mysterious Shaw, who works for a highly secret organisation. That book was a truly exhilarating read but this outing for the duo sports an even more ambitious global narrative and Baldacci – a writer who knows how to give the reader pulse-accelerating jolts at unexpected intervals – is an absolute master of the blockbuster thriller. If anything, he has this new field even more securely under his belt than the legal novel; if he keeps on delivering books as forceful as this offering, few will wish him back in the law courts – either professionally or on the printed page.

  Hour Game is Baldacci’s serial killer novel and a lot of the territory here has been traversed before but this isn't Thomas Harris-lite – readers may be battle-weary from the avalanche of entries in the genre but Hour Game bristles with a bushel of innovations that obliterate any sense of over-familiarity, even if the grisly opening chapters come perilously close to things we’ve read about often before. Baldacci, as mentioned above, was one who made the right career move from the legal profession. In such books as Absolute Power (filmed by Clint Eastwood, playing a burglar who witnesses a US president committing murder) and Saving Faith, the author has made his mark as a writer of great narrative drive. Split Second introduced Baldacci's new series characters: the tall, athletic Michelle Maxwell and the brilliant aesthete Sean King, both ex-Secret Service personnel who were obliged to leave their jobs under a cloud. The duo encountered some pretty nasty things in that first book, but Hour Game added new levels of gruesomeness. Maxwell and King, having inaugurated a partnership that will utilise their individual skills, look into the disappearance of some highly confidential papers owned by the well-placed Battle family. The decomposed body of a young woman is found, arranged in a bizarre position and two teenagers are bloodily slaughtered while having sex in a car. It seems a serial killer is at work – and King and Maxwell soon learn that the members of the Battle family are, needless to say, up to their necks.

  So what’s new here? Baldacci has come up with something we haven’t encountered before: a murderer w
ho utilises the various modus operandi of famous serial killers, such as the highly intelligent psychopath Ted Bundy and several other real-life monsters. It goes without saying that the horrific narrative is dispatched with maximum effectiveness by the author. The question now is: what else can he do to re-invigorate the serial killer genre?

  New Directions

  The fact that two bestsellers by Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo) have been made into successful films has certainly raised his profile as a writer of complex and energetic thrillers. Unlike many other practitioners of the genre, the reader has no idea what to expect with each successive title: his speciality is to strike off in new directions with each book, which is the case with the fast-moving and persuasive Finders Keepers. As with Bowden’s previous books, his background as a reporter at the Philadelphia Enquirer is pressed into service, so that all background detail has the plausibility of such writers as Frederick Forsyth. His protagonist in this piece is blue-collar: Joey Coyle is a dock worker eking out an existence in Philadelphia while looking after his sick mother and attempting to deal with his own crippling drug habit. Setting out for a drugs fix, he comes across two strange yellow containers in the street. To his amazement, he finds that the containers are stuffed with over a million dollars in unmarked notes. Coyle hides the containers before he is spotted and learns that they are part of the loot from an attack on an armoured van. Then Coyle does a strange thing: he begins to share the money with almost everyone he knows, from the woman he loves to strangers chosen at random and even local criminals. As the newspapers begin to zero in on the stolen money, Coyle lives in terrified suspense: will he end his days a rich man? Or will the police, or for that matter the mob, get him? As well as delivering the standard thriller mechanics, Bowden’s book is an intriguing meditation on the nature of greed and the reader is forced to examine just what he or she would do in a similar situation.