of the Cold War, new variations on the spy novel made their way onto the shelves, using the old format but offering insights into other kinds of large organizations at war with one another and endangering masses of people.
Suspense vs. Thriller
What makes a suspense novel a thriller?
My facetious answer used to be, "A six-figure advance," but I've come to see that it's more than that. Yes, thrillers are big sellers, but they also take the reader to a higher level than an "ordinary" suspense novel. Thriller writers aren't afraid to take their plots, characters, situations, and locales to the max, pushing the envelope of credibility at every possible turn. They pile it on, pitting their protagonists against super-powerful enemies and putting obstacle upon obstacle in the way of success. They squeeze everything they can out of their settings, to the point where the reader ends up knowing more than he ever wanted to know about the internal workings of submarines or dinosaur DNA.
And yet that's part of the thrill inherent in the thriller: the sense of getting more than you bargained for, of being taken inside the inner circle and told things no one is supposed to know. Just when you think the plot can't possibly take one more twist, it throws one more monkey wrench into the hero's plans and spins your head around. It takes you to the highest highs and the lowest lows, and if it does these things at the expense of credibility and ordinary human emotion—well, that's what you want when you're sitting in a plane traveling cross-country, isn't it? (Unless, of course, you're reading Michael Crichton's Airframe.) You want something to rivet your eyes to the page, to let you escape into an exciting, danger-filled place.
The thriller is just one facet of the jewel that is suspense, but it's a powerful one in the eyes of publishers in love with the bottom line. Thriller subgenres dominate the best-seller's list, and each presents the reader with its own special pleasures.
The Techno-Thriller
This is Tom Clancy territory; he began his career with The Hunt for Red October , making the high-tech submarine a vital part of the plot and giving so much technical detail that you could practically build your own once you put down the book. For every reader who skipped over the specs section of the book, there seemed to be two others who wanted more.
Many techno-thrillers are based on what-if horror stories about technology gone awry. In fact, one aspect of the thriller market in general is its fascination with "systems gone mad"—we'll see that medical thrillers focus on medical technology gone mad, legal thrillers zero in on the law gone mad, and so forth. In one sense, they're all rewriting Frankenstein, and the only reason they aren't found in the science fiction section of the bookstore is that they purport to be about the present or the very immediate future.
The theme, as exemplified perfectly by Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and its sequels, is that man is too flawed to be trusted with overly ambitious scientific projects. In other words, man shouldn't play God by restoring extinct species to life. Even with the best motives in the world, evil will prevail in the end because hubris, that old human failing, always corrupts.
The danger in writing a techno-thriller is falling in love with technology and forgetting to thrill. A second pitfall is making the technology more interesting than the characters. Remember, readers still have to identify with a living, breathing human being with a goal. Even if the story demands a large cast, the writer needs to narrow the focus to a small number of major characters whose destinies become important to the reader. It's vital that the big-picture writers create a hierarchy of characters and tell the reader up front which are the main characters.
Medical Thrillers
Robin Cook's Coma is the prototype here. Unscrupulous doctors are harvesting organs from healthy people in order to keep rich
Suspense vs. Thriller
What makes a suspense novel a thriller?
My facetious answer used to be, "A six-figure advance," but I've come to see that it's more than that. Yes, thrillers are big sellers, but they also take the reader to a higher level than an "ordinary" suspense novel. Thriller writers aren't afraid to take their plots, characters, situations, and locales to the max, pushing the envelope of credibility at every possible turn. They pile it on, pitting their protagonists against super-powerful enemies and putting obstacle upon obstacle in the way of success. They squeeze everything they can out of their settings, to the point where the reader ends up knowing more than he ever wanted to know about the internal workings of submarines or dinosaur DNA.
And yet that's part of the thrill inherent in the thriller: the sense of getting more than you bargained for, of being taken inside the inner circle and told things no one is supposed to know. Just when you think the plot can't possibly take one more twist, it throws one more monkey wrench into the hero's plans and spins your head around. It takes you to the highest highs and the lowest lows, and if it does these things at the expense of credibility and ordinary human emotion—well, that's what you want when you're sitting in a plane traveling cross-country, isn't it? (Unless, of course, you're reading Michael Crichton's Airframe.) You want something to rivet your eyes to the page, to let you escape into an exciting, danger-filled place.
The thriller is just one facet of the jewel that is suspense, but it's a powerful one in the eyes of publishers in love with the bottom line. Thriller subgenres dominate the best-seller's list, and each presents the reader with its own special pleasures.
The Techno-Thriller
This is Tom Clancy territory; he began his career with The Hunt for Red October , making the high-tech submarine a vital part of the plot and giving so much technical detail that you could practically build your own once you put down the book. For every reader who skipped over the specs section of the book, there seemed to be two others who wanted more.
Many techno-thrillers are based on what-if horror stories about technology gone awry. In fact, one aspect of the thriller market in general is its fascination with "systems gone mad"—we'll see that medical thrillers focus on medical technology gone mad, legal thrillers zero in on the law gone mad, and so forth. In one sense, they're all rewriting Frankenstein, and the only reason they aren't found in the science fiction section of the bookstore is that they purport to be about the present or the very immediate future.
The theme, as exemplified perfectly by Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and its sequels, is that man is too flawed to be trusted with overly ambitious scientific projects. In other words, man shouldn't play God by restoring extinct species to life. Even with the best motives in the world, evil will prevail in the end because hubris, that old human failing, always corrupts.
The danger in writing a techno-thriller is falling in love with technology and forgetting to thrill. A second pitfall is making the technology more interesting than the characters. Remember, readers still have to identify with a living, breathing human being with a goal. Even if the story demands a large cast, the writer needs to narrow the focus to a small number of major characters whose destinies become important to the reader. It's vital that the big-picture writers create a hierarchy of characters and tell the reader up front which are the main characters.
Medical Thrillers
Robin Cook's Coma is the prototype here. Unscrupulous doctors are harvesting organs from healthy people in order to keep rich
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