Cyril's Gleans

Thinking About "Thrillers"

First

- a recent book: Amazon.com: The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and ...

- a second recent book: Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James (Hardcover - Dec 1, 2009) - Deckle Edge

- a not quite recent book: Cloak and Dagger Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Spy Thrillers (Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature) (Hardcover) ~ Myron J. Smith (Author), Terry White (Author)

- an older book: Clubland Heroes by Richard Usborne (Paperback - Sep 26, 1983)

- the wikipedia article: Thriller (genre) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

- list of Thriller Writers: List of thriller writers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

- the Thriller Writer homepage: Official Website of International Thriller Writers, Inc.

Second

I used to read a lot of thrillers. I read few now, so I am a little out of date - and have a fairly narrow focus. I think the genre more or less defined by Kipling's "Kim", published in 1900, Childers' "The Riddle of the Sands (1903), Buchan's "The Thirty-Nine Steps" (1915), and Maugham's "Ashenden" (1928). (For a good non-fiction book along the "Kim" line see The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (Kodansha Globe) by Peter Hopkirk (Paperback - May 15, 1992) (97) ).

Some list various by Poe, Cooper, Collins, Doyle, Conrad, and numerous others (Conrad often being cited as a major defining influence). A number of these are close to my focus, but I think that the thriller did not find its feet until after WWI with such as "Sapper", Oppenheim, Wallace, Wren, Yates, Charteris, and Ambler leading the dance.

The above were British (or British manque). In the U.S. for a time the hardboiled detective genre predominated: Burnett, Hammet, Cain, Chandler, McCoy, et al. But it pretty much peaked and went out of business with Spillane.

With the advent of James Bond (another Britisher and an obvious derivative of Simon Templer - Charteris and Fleming were big buddies), the thriller arrived in the U.S.: sometimes undiluted, sometimes diluted with the hardboiled genre.

Thriller writers I used to enjoy include: Lee Child (a Brit immigrant to the U.S.), Clancy, Coles, Deighton, Follet, Forsyth, Innes, Koontz, Ludlum, McCarry, Quinnel, Sanders.

The immediately preceding list is taken from the Web list of thriller writers. For some reason, they did not have two of my favorites: J. C. Pollock (he wrote numerous thrillers but only one good one "Crossfire") and James Grady (again wrote numerous thrillers but only one good one "Six Days of the Condor" - the movie version, "Three Days of the Condor", I think the best movie thriller I have seen - next best are "Journey Into Fear", "The Great Impersonation", and "The Bourne Identity").

NB - Bobo'theBurbs said that "The Manchurian Candidate", both the book and the movie, was pretty much at the top of his list

Gleans at 4:30 PM MT, Sunday, January 10, 2010

Uber Gubers,

Beginning to look more and more like the 2012 crazies might be on to something: TEOCAWKI approaches apace. Will keep you posted.

In the meantime, I append a reading list to keep you occupied.

Best, yer Friend, de Uber Guber's Uber Guber

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Cyril’s Desert Island Books (29 I think)

- A Choice of Kipling's Verse Made By T. S. Eliot, with and Essay on Rudyard Kipling by T. S. Eliot (Mass Market Paperback - 1962)
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Hardcover - May 6, 2003)
- Anabasis: The March Up Country by Xenophon and H. G. Dakyns (Paperback - Jan 2, 2007)
- Burns; Selected Poems by Robert Burns (Paperback - Oct 9, 2007)
- Chapman's Homer: The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Lesser Homerica (2 volumes in slipcase) by Homer; Chapman (tr); Allardyce Nicoll (ed and intro) (Hardcover - Jan 1, 1967)
- Collected Poems by Philip Larkin and Anthony Thwaite (Paperback - April 1, 2004)
- Complete Memoirs of George Sherston by Siegfried Sassoon (Hardcover - Sep 1980)
- De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things): A Poetic Translation (Joan Palevsky Book in Classical Literature) by Lucretius and David R. Slavitt (Paperback - Aug 6, 2008)
- Essays (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) - Hardcover (Oct 15, 2002) by George Orwell
- Faulkner: Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner (Modern Library) by William Faulkner (Hardcover - May 18, 1993)
- Faulkner: Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses Old Man The Bear by William Faulkner (Mass Market Paperback - Feb 12, 1958)
- Faulkner: The Reivers by William Faulkner (Paperback - Sep 1, 1992)
- Herman Melville : Typee, Omoo, Mardi (Library of America) by Herman Melville (Hardcover - May 6, 1982)
- History of My Life by Giacomo Casanova and Willard R. Trask (Hardcover - Feb 6, 2007)
- Orlando Furioso: A New Verse Translation - Hardcover (Nov 15, 2009) by Ludovico Ariosto, David R. Slavitt, and Charles S. Ross
- The Pilgrim's Progress (Everyman's Classics) by John Bunyan (Paperback - Jun 1985)
- Richard Henry Dana Jr.: Two Years Before the Mast and Other Voyages (Library of America) by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and Thomas Philbrick (Hardcover - Oct 6, 2005)
- Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) by Alfred Tennyson (Paperback - Mar 25, 2008)
- Selected Poems by William Wordsworth and Stephen Gill (Paperback - Mar 29, 2005)
- Shakespeare's Sonnets (Yale Nota Bene) by William Shakespeare and Professor Stephen Booth (Paperback - Jul 11, 2000)
- The Adventures and Misadventures of Don Quixote: an up-to-date translation for today's readers.
- The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics) by John Milton and John Leonard (Paperback - May 1, 1999)
- The Complete Poems and Translations (Penguin Classics) by Christopher Marlowe and Stephen Orgel (Paperback - May 29, 2007)
- The Education of Henry Adams: A Centennial Version (Massachusetts Historical Society) by Henry Adams (Hardcover - Jan 15, 2007)
- The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1918 by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (Hardcover - Mar 26, 1963)
- The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 (Norton Critical Editions) by William Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, Stephen Gill, and Jonathan Wordsworth
- The Top 500 Poems by William Harmon (Hardcover - Jan 15, 1992)
- The World of Mr. Mulliner: The Mulliner Omnibus - Paperback (Jul 29, 1999) by P.G. Wodehouse

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