Espionage/Thriller
Travel Thrillers That Will Make You Reconsider Your Vacation Plans
.
If you’d told me thirty-one years ago that the Los Angeles backpacking hostel I was living in would one day become the centerpiece of a bestselling thriller—written be me—I doubt I’d have believed you. In fact back then, at the age of 21, I’d probably have been too drunk or stoned to have been listening…
The Seeds of a Pharmaceutical Thriller: A Conversation Between Co-Authors
.
Many thanks to Jyoti Guptara and Thomas Locke for kindly offering a conversation about their new thriller, Roulette. Jyoti Guptara: Thomas, remember when you visited me at the UN in Geneva? You arrived with this brilliant story seed: “What appears to be a simple case of overdose turns into an ER nightmare. Patients seem…
60 Years of ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’
.
–Adapted from a Center For Fiction conversation between Joseph Kanon and Paul Vidich, November 9, 2023 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was published in September 1963 in London under the name of a little-known writer, John le Carré, and several months later the novel came to America. This month marks the 60th…
Learning to Be Lost (and Found) in Fiction and in Life
.
It’s 1986, and I’m lost in the forest. I’m ten years old, huddled at the base of a Ponderosa pine at the far reaches of Silver Lake, California, one of innumerous small, high Alpine lakes strewn across the Sierra Nevada mountains like blue-green jewels in a tangled necklace. It’s getting dark, and I haven’t seen…
The Backlist: Alex Finlay and Polly Stewart Revisit ‘I Am Pilgrim,’ by Terry Hayes
.
Everyone who has ever tried to write crime fiction understands the importance of pacing. It’s not enough to have a plot that sounds exciting on the jacket copy—getting the plot to move in a way that keeps the reader breathlessly turning pages is another matter altogether. When I first read Alex Finlay’s work, I understood…
1987: The Thrilling-est Year in Hollywood History
.
Recently, I saw an article that claimed that 1999 was the best year in Hollywood history. Then another claimed it was…1971? I beg to disagree. It is my belief that the greatest single year in Hollywood was 1987. Here’s my thinking. To me, a classic film is basically one that you can see time and…
My First Thriller: Joseph Finder
.
Joe Finder must have thought he knew the secrets to selling a book. His first, a work of nonfiction, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America’s Most Powerful Businessmen, had a hardcover run of 10,000. It sold out. Sounds like an early and smooth ride into the literary sunset. But there’s a catch. (There’s…
What Spy Fiction Taught Me About Breaking the Rules
.
As a kid, I broke what I like to think was a normal amount of rules. There was the time in kindergarten when we were sitting on the rug for storytime, and the boy in front of me kept leaning back against my legs, even when I asked him to stop, and eventually I got…
Wilderness Thrillers Featuring Fearless Women
.
I’m what you might call a mini-adventurer. I’ve climbed rockfaces, rafted rivers, backpacked into the wilderness and once slithered through a cave tunnel so tight that the only way through was to lie flat, turn my head sideways and push with my toes. I’ve never done anything as daring as free-climbing the 3,000-foot granite wall…