There aren’t many thrillers that I’ve found that feature a writer as the main character (maybe because Stephen King has dominated that sub-genre for so long), but recently I found a very good one. It’s Robert Harris’s The Ghost, and it’s at once a thriller that uses the profession of writing as a trope and also a story about doubles (the word “ghost” is used in the text almost literally). I have found myself dreaming about this book, so you know it’s good. It’s about a ghostwriter who is hired to write the memoirs of the former British prime-minister after the man initially hired for the job dies in a mysterious accident. Things, needless to say, are not what they seem. What’s interesting about the novel is the way Harris uses menace, a kind of accumulating dread, to propel the narrative forward. We know something is going to go wrong, but the first-person narration is so smooth and funny that we fall into the world anyway. We root for the MC to succeed when we know he will not. It’s a fine high wire act, and Harris pulls it off extremely well. It’s also topical, but not in a ripped-from-the-headlines way. A very good book that works as both a page-turner and an exploration into celebrity and psychology, The Ghost is highly recommended.

As you probably know, I love locked room mysteries. Actually, I love the subversion of the genre rather than the thing itself. I’m up for an Agatha Christie tale anytime, but what really gets my blood boiling is when someone takes Christie’s designs and bends them into something…different. It’s probably the postmodernist in me. The mystery and thriller genre doesn’t have enough ancestral tinkering, as I’ve said on this blog many times; too often writers fall back on the safe, the tried, those old tropes and ideas that have been used a thousand times. But sometimes you do see a very nice twist to an old genre and a book that really tries to do something bold and new. I’m reading two pseudo locked room tales right now, Tana French’s The Likeness and Jincy Willett’s The Writing Class. I really like Willett’s book because it’s fresh, new, funny–and it takes those age-old concepts that are so prevalent in Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and twists them into something almost recognizable. The locked room is a perfect set-up for a whodunit for obvious reasons, and in this novel Willett uses that old framework in such audacious ways, it’s almost as if she’s imagining a completely new genre. 

Christopher Nolan is the new Roman Polanski. All I got this afternoon. 

As you probably know, I love fiction that incorporates the theme of identity. Who is who, what is what, where is where–essential tropes in mystery and thriller fiction as far as I’m concerned. The fine Irish writer Tana French’s new novel takes the double/lookalike theme to extraordinary new heights. It’s called The Likeness, and it’s just out from Viking. (Another EXTRAORDINARY looking book.) It’s the story of a female cop–Cassie Maddox, back from French’s Edgar-winning In the Woods–who is called to the scene of a homicide. She discovers that the corpse looks exactly like her, and the identification on the body is that of a make-believe undercover agent Maddox once portrayed. Very twisty, very original, and very scary, The Likeness is one of the better things I’ve read this year. 

I’ll be at the bookstore early tomorrow picking up my copy of Julie Kramer’s debut Stalking Susan. The novel is about a serial killer who preys on women named Susan (what a hook!) and the investigative television reporter who tracks him. The novel not only has a kick-butt concept driven by the author’s real-world knowledge of the TV world, Doubleday really did an awesome job with the cover. It’s a fantastic-looking novel (reminds me a little of a vintage Ian Fleming paperback, in a good way), and it’s already getting very good reviews.  

In the bookstore today, looking. (And writing, of course. Always writing.) I picked up an author I’ve read before, and have been glad I did: the author is Brian Freeman, and the book is his newest, Stalked. The novel is a dead husband story with a hard twist, but what I like about Freeman’s books are how flawed the characters are. He’s willing to write really…well, real people, and that’s unusual in this genre, where you often see larger-than-life deities swooping in to save the day. I really liked Freeman’s debut, the Edgar-nominated Immoral, and this one may just be better. (Kudos to St. Martin’s on the cover, by the way. And speaking of that, how many good thriller writers is St. Martin’s going to publish? Holy shnikes they’re doing some good work over there. Nice work, guys.)

Getting fired up to see Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. It’s been a good summer for movies, actually, what with Iron Man kicking some serious butt and Indiana Jones returning and Wall-E showing once again that the guys and gals at Pixar are brilliant geniuses every single damn one of ‘em. (I’m also hearing good things about the French version of the Harlan Coben adaptation Tell No One.) But if Batman Begins was any indication, then TDK will be the cream of the summer crop. I thought Begins was a tour de force. Pure Nolan: inventive, edgy, dark, quasi-surreal. It was the best comic book movie I had ever seen and there wasn’t a close second. TDK is already getting some hellaciously good reviews, and guess what? Critics are treating it seriously, and what else could you ask for with a summer blockbuster? Can’t wait. While we bide our time waiting for the film’s release, let’s revisit Chris Nolan’s first (and best) film, the integral mindtrip noir Following, shall we?  

It’s often said that ideas do not make a good novel (or a film), it’s good writing and believable characters that make a novel memorable. I guess I would have to agree with that, but I have to say that new and innovative ideas are often the things that make me actually go from “maybe” to “definitely” when I’m in the bookstore. I love the high-concept, and I would go further to say that literature doesn’t have enough big-idea novels. Because literature is so packed with “name” authors, and because readers tend to like (and buy) those familiar tropes, the novel landscape is not as full of fresh and exciting concepts as I would like it to be. There have been some doozies in the recent past, though, from Kevin Brockmeier’s Brief History of the Dead to Chris Adrian’s (absolutely awesome) Gob’s Grief to Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child to Gillian Flynn’s blistering thriller Sharp Objects to the mystery novels of Peter Abrahams. But I often go into a bookstore looking for a quirky, bold, inventive (and minimalistic; why are novels so fat nowadays?) tale and come away disappointed.