Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: Interlude - THE FAILS (so far)

I've said it before, but one of the nice things about writing these particular posts is that it gives me a valid excuse to revisit some great old books from my past - some of which I haven't cracked open in twenty years or more. And therein lies the problem. Because it turns out that a few of those I once considered great reads are in fact just the opposite. Which is kind of understandable - after all, I'm not the same person I was twenty years ago. Nobody is. Added to which, I'm now in the fortunate position of being able to call myself a professional author, and as a result I know a little more about the craft of writing than I did back then. So occasionally I'm sitting down and rereading one of these books and find myself amazed by the bad writing decisions that jump out at me.

Of course, that doesn't mean I can't post about them - after all, we can't like everything we read - but on the other hand I did insert the word GREAT before 'FORGOTTEN' THRILLERS, which limits me somewhat. (And yes, I know many of the books I've reviewed fall short of greatness, but in my mind they've gotta be good, at least.) And to be perfectly honest, it's not a whole lot of fun writing a thousand words or so about a book I don't like. I know critics do it on a regular basis, but I've never claimed to be a critic. But by the same token, I don't want to totally ignore them either. So instead I thought it might be an idea to do an interim post to explain why certain books have failed to make the grade, and get all the badness out of the way in one go. (Don't worry, normal service will resume shortly - still plenty more books to go yet.)

So first, let's deal with the elephant in the room that is Ira Levin, who also happens to be one of my very favourite suspense authors. Now when I originally set out to do this series I knew Levin would be in there somewhere, and I was planning to focus on either THIS PERFECT DAY or SON OF ROSEMARY. In the end it wasn't much of a choice and I went for the former, mainly because it fulfills the criteria I put in place from the start. It's pretty damn great, it's an oft-neglected part of Levin's bibliography, and it's a thriller (kind of). So that's three for three right there.

And in direct contrast, we have SON OF ROSEMARY. Which isn't great - not by any stretch of the imagination. I can't really classify it as a thriller either, because there's not a whole lot of suspense in the book. And while it fits the 'Forgotten' criteria well enough, there's a fairly good reason for that. The story takes place 30 years after the original, and it turns out Rosemary has been in a coma for most of that time. She wakes to find her son, Andy, is a globally-revered prophet who's finally bringing peace to the world and who's planning to unite all of mankind in a special celebration on New Year's Eve, 2000. Or is he? Rosemary has her doubts...

It's quite remarkable how Levin gets everything wrong with this one, yet it's like watching a car crash - you can't take your eyes away. Where before, Levin always trod a fine line between satire and straight thrills with his novels, in this one he goes totally OTT and delivers what can only be described as a spoof of his earlier work. And you have to ask yourself why. What on earth possessed him? And then there's the ending, which I refuse to give away here, but let's just say Levin's conclusion breaks one of the absolute golden rules of writing. Admittedly, I never thought this book was all that fantastic to begin with, but I'd hoped it might not be as bad as I remembered. I was wrong. It's enjoyably bad, but still bad nonetheless.

Moving on, we have GOD IS AN EXECUTIONER, a revenge thriller by Tom Barling. Now I do love that title, I have to admit. It's great. And I also like the retro simplicity of the cover design. The black and red text. The simple image of dog tags and blood. I also recall enjoying this one a hell of a lot when I first picked it up half a lifetime ago, but upon rereading it recently I was at a loss as to why. It stars Matthew Pepper, a Vietnam veteran turned successful businessman, whose wife and son are kidnapped by a gang of terrorists. With the police thinking him guilty of their murder, Pepper resolves to get them back using any means necessary and soon discovers an old enemy from that war might be tying up loose ends...

Now this one started badly and just got progressively worse. For example, the first chapter begins with Pepper dreaming about an event from his Vietnam past. In great detail. With dialogue and everything. Because that's how people dream, isn't it? You never dream that the guy standing next to you has just turned into your sister and sprouted antlers, or that your foot's morphed into a bowl of trifle. No, dreams always make complete logical sense with a beginning, a middle and an end. Like this one. What's worse is this particular 'dream' lasts for most of the chapter - and it's a long chapter too.

In fact, every time Pepper closes his eyes for more than a few seconds we're treated to another unnecessary 'Nam flashback. All the way through the book. And Barling's writing style is very confusing too. There are a lot of action sequences in the story and I had to constantly reread most of them because I had no idea what was going on. And the various character motivations are also blurry. Characters walk in an out of the story without reason, and don't get me started on the hopeless dialogue. Also, the main villain of the piece - who's known as 'the man with two noses', yes really - is purposely left unnamed for the entirety of the book and I still can't figure out why. There are just too many things that don't make sense in this book and I was left scratching my head when I finished it. To be honest, I still am. This is a very very odd book, and not in a good way.

Man, what a waste of a good title.

What's next? THAI HORSE by William Diehl. Now I really like William Diehl. Back in the eighties and nineties he specialised in producing gritty intelligent thrillers, and I always made a habit of picking up his newest as soon as it came out and rarely came away disappointed. So when I came up with this blog series, I always knew I'd be focusing on one of his and for a long time I thought it was going to be THAI HORSE. Until I read it again. Oh, dear. I had a vague memory of this being a really gripping men-on-a-mission thriller with a conflicted hero in the leader role. Turns out I was only half right. Actually, less than half. Maybe a quarter.

The book centres on an ex-Vietnam vet (yes, another one) and ex-spy called Hatcher, who having been betrayed on a previous job, has spent a number of years in one of the most brutal prisons in South America. Upon his release, he's called back into action by his old CIA handler to find a man named Cody, a former friend of Hatcher's, who was supposedly killed in Vietnam. Word is he's still alive and his General father, who's dying of cancer, would like to see him one last time. And Hatcher is considered the only man capable of finding him. As he journeys to Hong Kong and Bangkok in search of his missing friend, Hatcher is forced to come to terms with parts of his violent past he'd thought were long buried...

Now this one's not too bad, but the reason it didn't make the grade was that it's simply nowhere near as good as I remember. The pacing's pretty skewed for a start, and there are too many unnecessary flashbacks for my liking. And far, far too many sub-plots. I can usually keep up with the most complex of plots, but this one got a little too convoluted for me. I came away thinking the book could have been so much better with a stronger editor. However, I was impressed with the first section of the novel, with Hatcher stuck in this hellhole of a prison where speech is verboten. It's a great character piece detailing Hatcher's slow descent into madness and I found it totally absorbing. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is kind of a letdown after such a strong start.

There's plenty of action and thrills, but it's kind of all over the place. And the final section, where the tension should really be ratcheted up to the next level, is brought to a grinding halt when the main characters go on a long hunt for a rogue tiger in a Bangkok suburb (don't ask), which has no connection to the plot at all. I was skipping page after page at this point, which is not good news when you're approaching the end of a novel. Nevertheless, I still rate William Diehl quite highly and will very shortly be posting about one of his books that didn't let me down.

Next up we've got THE FOX IS CRAZY TOO, a non-fiction account of little-known seventies skyjacker and bank robber, Garrett Trapnell, by Eliot Asinof. It's a really gripping read about a fascinating character who made a career out of robbing banks, conning people, getting caught and then getting away again. But the thing is, I'd already focused on a bio written in the thriller format with THE HUNTER by Christopher Keane, and both books had me asking myself the same questions. That is, how much of what I'm reading is true and how much is completely made up?

I mean, it's all fascinating stuff, to be sure. Trapnell was a guy with a high IQ and a bipolar disorder who got off on screwing The Man at every opportunity. Which basically meant robbing banks and financial institutions, often by just walking in the door with a slip of paper and walking out with a bag of money. After a spate of these, he'd settle down with a new woman (often marrying them whilst forgetting to divorce the previous ones), set up a new life for himself, then get bored and start robbing again. And each time he got caught he'd claim temporary insanity, get transferred to a mental institution where he'd usually be diagnosed as a schizophrenic, whereupon he'd either escape or get released and then proceed to go through the whole cycle again.

It's a great story which not only recounts an interesting, if tragic, life but also points a finger at a large loophole in the American legal system - the temporary insanity plea - while also questioning the validity of using psychiatric testimony in the courtroom. But the problem is that great sections of the book are written as though the author was actually there with Trapnell, which clearly wasn't the case. I'm sure the main events that he recounts actually took place, but the large chunks of dialogue contained in the book are also presented as fact, which I find very hard to believe - assuming the conversations took place at all. It's one of those odd 'in-between' books: works fine as a thriller, not so convincing as a biography. Added to which, it was all a little too similar to THE HUNTER for me to want to review it in detail. But that said, if you can find a cheap copy online I'd say it's definitely worth a look.

Okay, BALEFIRE by Kenneth Goddard is next. This one I remember reading in my late teens while I was on holiday somewhere along the English coast, possibly Bognor Regis. And I bought it for two reasons. 1) I loved that stark white cover with the two eyes looking out. And 2) the cover blurb compared it to THE DAY OF THE JACKAL - which was one of my favourites, even back then. And while it clearly didn't equal Frederick Forsyth's classic novel, it still produced the goods as far as I was concerned. At least, it did back then.

The novel concerns itself with a professional terrorist named Thanatos who's been hired by a group of bad guys to single-handedly wreak havoc on the small city of Huntingdon Beach on the California coast as a demonstration against the coming LA Olympics. This he does by taking on the police department in a well-orchestrated series of attacks that soon leaves the city reeling. Fortunately, a team of police investigators and crime-lab specialists eventually realize it's all the work of one man and work against a tight deadline in an attempt to bring him down before the opening ceremony begins...

Again, this isn't a bad novel at all. The author, who was actually a police forensic scientist himself, gets all the details right, which is a good start. But I found my eyes glazing over at various points in the narrative as the same thing kept happening over and over again. Thanatos would strike, kill a cop or two, make it look as though angry citizens were the culprits, then disappear, ready to do the same thing again. And you just know he's not going to get caught until the very end, mainly because he's the only villain and without him there's no book. He is a great villain, though. He kills, mutilates and rapes his way through the narrative to the point where the reader's desperate to see him get his comeuppance, hoping that he'll suffer in the same way his victims suffered. Yet when his end does come I was left thinking, 'Huh? That's it?' Believe me, 'anticlimactic' doesn't cover it adequately enough. Still, not a bad little novel - but once again, nowhere near as good as I remembered.

And finally we've got THE SUMMER SOLDIER by Nicholas Guild. And this is another bad one. So bad, in fact, that I gave up on it about three-quarters of the way through, which is very rare for me. But by that point I'd simply had enough and just didn't care anymore.

The plot, what there is of it, isn't too dissimilar to Barling's GOD IS AN EXECUTIONER either, which is fitting as it's just as awful in its own way. Ray Guinness, an academic at a local college, arrives home to find his wife dead from a house fire - although it soon becomes clear she was murdered beforehand. And it's not long before the police suspect Guinness of being the man behind it, despite his being happily married and having no motive whatsoever (but let's not worry about little details like that, eh?). It also turns out that Guinness is a 'man with a past,' and that he was once a ruthless hitman for Britain's MI6, now retired. And he already knows the murderer too: a guy named Vlasov, whose wife was killed accidentally by Guinness seven years before. And with Guinness's wife having met the same fate, the stage is now set for a duel to the death...

Oh dear, oh dear. This one just goes on forever. It's only 280 pages or so, but it feels double that because so little actually happens. In fact, there's just so much wrong with this one that I can't believe I ever thought it worth a second look. I'll give you an example. By the time the story opens Guinness's wife's body has already been taken away and we see Guinness inspecting the fire damage while a policeman waits to take him to a hotel. Fine. The second chapter has him sitting in a diner while he thinks about his wife. O-o-kay. Then in the third and fourth chapters he thinks back to how he got recruited by MI6 all those years ago and how he handled his first assignment for them. So at this point we're already on page 64 and nothing's happened. The plot's basically just stopped and we're stuck in deep flashback territory.

It's not until we reach the 100-page mark that another character comes along and gets the ball rolling again, by which time it's far too late. The damage has already been done. And the worst isn't even over yet, because there are more flashbacks to come. There's one instance when Guinness starts reminiscing about his first marriage to a lady called Kathleen, who upon finding out what her husband really did for a living quite wisely took their baby daughter and left him. But what could have easily been condensed into several pages lasts two or three chapters. And even that wouldn't be so bad if Kathleen were to make an appearance later in the story, but she doesn't. I checked. I flicked through the rest of the book looking for another mention of her name and there's nothing. So yet again we're given another flashback that has no effect on the plot whatsoever.

And that's not mentioning the endless introspection from Guinness all the way through the book. Dear God, it's like trudging though molasses. It really is. Page after page goes by with no dialogue at all, and what little dialogue there is doesn't flow because Guild inserts more internal monologue in between each snippet, in order to let you know what the character feels about what's just been said. Yeah, thanks for that, Nick. And then there's the problem of the Ray Guinness character himself. Now I like an anti-hero as much as the next reader, but Guinness essentially comes across as a psychopath in this book. In fact, it got to the point where I was starting to root for the villain as he had a pretty clear and sympathetic reason for wanting revenge on Guinness - and that's the point where I gave up on the novel. When you're rooting for the 'bad guy' to kill the lead character, then clearly the author's not doing his job properly and it's time to move on.

So that just about wraps it all up - six books from my past where my memory decided to play tricks on me. And I'm sure it'll continue to confound me, so don't be surprised if another post like this one appears in due course. Hopefully not for quite some time yet, though, as I much prefer blogging about the good books than I do the bad ones...

Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: THIS PERFECT DAY by Ira Levin

It's hard to believe but Ira Levin - arguably one of the finest suspense authors of the 20th Century - wrote only seven novels over the space of forty-five years. And they aren't long, hefty tomes either - in fact, one of them's so short it should really be classed as a novella. But even so that still averages out at about one book every six years or so, which isn't something too many authors can get away with. However, each book was a major best-seller, and the guy was a playwright and songwriter in his spare time, so I guess he had an excuse for not producing more. And seven out of forty-five is stlll a better ratio than Thomas Harris, who, assuming he hasn't retired, has managed to eke out a grand total of five novels over a similar time frame.

But let's put aside quantity for a moment and focus on the quality. Just take a glance at these titles: A KISS BEFORE DYING, ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE STEPFORD WIVES, and THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL. Not bad, eh? And each one's a perfect example of storytelling at its finest, with intricate plots that have been painstakingly worked out to the nth degree. In fact, that first one - a blistering account of a young psychopath who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants - I still count amongst the greatest thriller novels ever written.

And the other three aren't exactly chopped liver either, with each one having imprinted itself onto the public's consciousness in one form or another. The modern Manhattan setting of ROSEMARY'S BABY, for instance, enabled Levin to bring horror fiction screaming into the 20th Century and ended up being so successful that it paved the way for a certain Stephen King to make his own mark on the genre ten years later. Thanks to THE STEPFORD WIVES ('one of those rare novels whose very title may well become part of the vocabulary' - original jacket copy), 'Stepford' quickly entered the American lexicon as a catch-all term for conformism and submission. And the wonderfully titled THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, with its biological engineering-based plot device, doesn't seem quite so farfetched today as it did back in the seventies.

And all four were also turned into movies - some more than once (A KISS BEFORE DYING, THE STEPFORD WIVES), some superbly (ROSEMARY'S BABY, A KISS BEFORE DYING), some badly (both remakes), and one indifferently (THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL - which is actually a guilty pleasure of mine, and any movie where the combined ages of the three lead actors surpasses 200 gets my immediate respect). But with the exception of the two remakes all were financially successful, so perhaps it's easy to see why Levin didn't feel compelled to write a book a year like the rest of us poor scribblers.

So what about the other three? - I hear you ask. Well, there's SLIVER from 1991, written a full fifteen years after BOYS FROM BRAZIL. And it's not too bad - the pages certainly fly by without too much trouble - but it's not that great either (although the less said about the movie version the better). Then there's SON OF ROSEMARY from 1997, the critically slated and frankly unnecessary sequel to his most popular novel. I actually have a soft spot for it myself, and believe there's more to that infamous ending than you see at first glance, but even I have to admit Levin was well past his peak with this one. His heyday was really back in the sixties and seventies, back when he really could do no wrong.

And right smack-dab in the middle of this peak period - 1970, to be precise - came the book I'm here to tell you about: THIS PERFECT DAY. It's certainly the least well-known of Levin's novels, and that's possibly because it doesn't fit neatly into the 'suspense' or 'thriller' categories that made his name. Instead, THIS PERFECT DAY is Levin's attempt at a serious futuristic dystopian novel - to go alongside such works as Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD, George Orwell's 1984, and Anthony Burgess's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

The story's set in a future where uniformity is the norm, and the world is governed by a single supercomputer know as UniComp, which controls and regulates every single aspect of the citizens' lives - including what job they'll be doing, where they live, when they eat, what they eat, who they marry, whether they can reproduce or not, and so on. And everybody dies at age 62. There's only one language, and thanks to eugenics all the previous ethnic groups have now been merged into one race, known as 'the Family', so everybody pretty much looks the same too. There are only four names for men (Karl, Li, Bob & Jesus), and four for women (Anna, Mary, Peace & Yin). And once a month everyone is given an injection of drugs - or a 'treatment' - to ensure any negative feelings of rebellion or individualism are kept locked up in the subconscious where they belong. No need to think, people - leave it all to UniComp.

The lead character is a chap named Li RM35M4419, whom we meet first at the age of six. But his grandfather, who's old enough to still retain a certain amount of cynicism and individuality, gives him the illegal nickname of Chip (as in 'a chip off the old block') and tries to pass these same qualities onto the boy at every opportunity. 'Try wanting something, Chip,' he suggests at one point, 'Try a day or two before your next treatment. That's when it's easiest; to want things, to worry about things...' As Chip grows up he tries, but all too often the drugs win out and it's not long before he's back to square one again.

For much of the book we follow Chip's growth as he matures into adulthood. He works in genetic science in some capacity and as the years pass he goes through a variety of girlfriends, each one no different from the last. And while on the surface he's a 'good Family member' like the rest of the walking dead, he does occasionally commit minor subversive acts that suggest there's something in there that the drugs can't totally subdue. These odd character 'faults' soon bring him to the attention of a secret group of likeminded nonconformists who meet in an old museum to smoke and have sex, and show him a way to avoid his regular treatments without alerting UniComp, so that he can start feeling stronger emotions again.

Upon finally 'waking up' to his true potential, Chip becomes attracted to another one in the group, Lilac, and starts seriously questioning the way this 'perfect' society functions. Finding old maps in the museum, they discover that there might be a few small islands dotted around that are entirely free of UniComp's influence...

Other than one pretty major misstep two-thirds of the way in, Levin's THIS PERFECT DAY is an enthralling novel that succeeds on just about every level. It's accessible and exciting enough to work as popular genre fiction, but it also stands up remarkably well against its more 'literary' counterparts mentioned above. It also helps that Levin's really more concerned with ideas than anything else. And in contrast to the other major dystopian novels, he does a much better job at predicting a possible future based on our own world history. We already live in a society where the computer takes up a large part of our daily existence, whether it be in the form of a laptop or a smart phone, so how many more steps until they start making decisions for us too? And the insistence on 'socially acceptable behaviour' that lays at the heart of the novel is only a few steps beyond the 'politically-correct' world we live in now.

Levin also does a great job of pacing the book, and lays his plans out in clear language on the contents page. Part one is titled, 'Growing Up.' Part two is 'Coming Alive.' Part three is 'Getting Away,' and the final part is 'Fighting Back.' Like a good magician showing his open palms at the beginning of a trick, Levin shows us what he's got planned: this is what's going to happen, then this, then that. But none of it takes place in the manner the reader expects - Levin's too great a storyteller to do the obvious. Anytime the reader expects Chip to go one way, events conspire to force him in another direction.

The author also utilizes his patented technique of itemising the particulars of everyday life to denote the passing of time - very important in a novel covering a thirty year period - thus adding that extra element of realism to an otherwise fantastic story. He used the same method with ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE STEPFORD WIVES - just one of the many ways Levin sucks you into the narrative and makes you believe it. And, of course, there's the arch dialogue, which is often clever without being showy. Such as when Chip's grandfather, Papa Jan - perhaps the most likeable character in the story - takes a very young Chip for a walk in the park near the start of the book:

     He was always saying things vigorously and with enthusiasm and yet giving Chip the feeling that he didn't mean them at all, that he meant in fact their exact opposites. On that subject of names, for instance:
     'Marvelous! Wonderful!' he said. 'Four names for boys, four names for girls. What could be more friction-free, more everyone-the-same? Everybody would name boys after Christ, Marx, Wood, or Wei anyway, wouldn't they?'
     'Yes,' Chip said.
     'Of course!' Papa Jan said. 'And if Uni gives out four names for boys it has to give out four names for girls too, right? Listen, in my day - are you listening? - in my day there were over twenty different names for boys alone. And in my father's time there were even more, maybe forty or fifty! Isn't that ridiculous? All those different names when members themselves are exactly the same and interchangeable? Isn't that the silliest thing you ever heard of?'
     And Chip nodded, confused, feeling that Papa Jan meant the opposite, that somehow it wasn't silly and ridiculous to have forty or fifty different names for boys alone.

And at other times the dialogue is intentionally hilarious in its banality, as when a drug-free and clear-thinking Chip needs to gain access to a closed-off section of the airport and has to dumb down in order to pass himself off as a normal brain-dead worker:

     He (Chip) false-touched a scanner and went into a room where coveralls, ordinary ones, hung on hooks, and two members were taking off orange ones. 'Hello,' he said.
     'Hello,' they both said.
     He went to a closet door and slid it open; a floor polisher and bottles of green liquid were inside.
     'Where are the cuvs?' he asked.
     'In there,' one of the members said, nodding at another closet.
     He went to it and opened it. Orange coveralls were on shelves, orange toeguards, pairs of heavy orange gloves.
     'Where did you come from?' the member asked.
     'RUS50937.' he said, taking a pair of coveralls and a pair of toeguards. 'We kept the cuvs in there.'
     'They're supposed to be in there,' the member said, closing white overalls.
     'I've been in Rus,' the other member, a woman, said, 'I had two assignments there; first four years and then three years.'
     He took his time putting on the toeguards, finishing as the two members chuted their orange coveralls and went out.

Great stuff indeed. Because it's during these sections that you can picture a whole society of male and female Homer Simpsons talking meaningless crap to one another for all eternity, and that, folks, is a very scary concept.

Ah, but all is not perfect in THIS PERFECT DAY - after all, didn't I mention a major misstep a few paragraphs ago? I'll try to keep the details as vague as I can so as not to spoil the plot, but about two-thirds of the way in, there's a scene where Chip and a previous girlfriend have a major blowup and he ends up raping her. Naturally, the woman is pretty traumatised by the incident, not to mention very angry. And Chip immediately feels guilty and gets teary-eyed, as well he should. But the problem arises the next morning when this woman, who's previously been portrayed as an intelligent person with strong character and a healthy amount of common sense, decides the rape wasn't as bad as all that really, and that maybe Chip deserves a second chance.

What? Seriously, Ira? Is that what happens after a woman's raped? Because I kind of doubt it myself. I have to say it's a real puzzler of a scene - especially coming from Levin, who's always specialized in creating believable and strong female characters. Is this really the same guy who gave us the tough, resourceful Ellen from A KISS BEFORE DYING (in the early 'fifties, no less!), or Joanna from THE STEPFORD WIVES, or even Kay from SLIVER? Because on this evidence it seems hard to believe.

Thinking about it, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was part of the reason why this book was out of print for so many years after its initial publication. Maybe Levin reread the thing, got to that morning-after scene and thought, 'Shit, what the hell was I thinking?' and decided to simply let the book go quietly out of print instead. Who knows - it's certainly possible. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Anyway, assuming one can get past that serious blunder, anybody reading this book will find much to enjoy. They'll witness a master suspense writer spreading his wings a little and showing the 'big boys' what he can do. And there's a definite conclusion to the story too - a good one with plenty of suspense - which you don't often get in these kinds of novels. But Levin doesn't wrap everything up neatly with a ribbon either. The reader's still left with enough loose ends to be left thinking about the book for awhile afterwards, which is really all anybody can ask for in a novel.

Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: BLUE CITY by Ross MacDonald

Ask any serious crime fiction aficionado to make a list of the genre's most influential novels and I'll wager Dashiell Hammett's RED HARVEST will be somewhere near the top. If not at the very top. First published in 1929, this violent tale of a nameless private detective who decides to clean up a corrupt town by setting the various controlling factions against each other set the bar for generations of writers and moviemakers to come, and was even listed in TIME's list of 100 Most Important Books of the 20th Century. I know it's the most important book in my life, and has been ever since I picked up a tattered paperback copy at a used book sale half a lifetime ago. I generally make a point of rereading it every couple of years and always come away satisfied - it's one of those novels that simply works on every level.

For some reason (possibly due to rights issues) there's never been a straight movie adaptation of the book, but in 1960 the great Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, poached the basic plot (as well as the man-with-no-name protagonist) for his samurai western YOJIMBO, and a classic movie was born. The great Italian director, Sergio Leone, then did the same four years later with A FISTFUL FOR DOLLARS, which not only launched Clint Eastwood's career but spawned a whole sub-genre of Spaghetti Westerns to boot. Thirty years after that, Walter Hill then made his own loose version - LAST MAN STANDING, starring Bruce Willis - and this time went so far as to set it in the same time frame as the original novel. And if you look closely, you can also find similar homages in the Coen Brothers' MILLER'S CROSSING and the first half of George Miller's MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME.

But the book's influence hasn't just been restricted to the cinema. Over the years, a number of crime authors have also used the book's basic premise as a starting point for their own novels. For instance, the late, great Donald Westlake made no secret of his admiration for Hammett's masterpiece and used the 'cleaning-up-the-corrupt-town' formula on at least two occasions. The first, a fairly hard-boiled P.I. thriller called KILLING TIME, shows a youngish writer still learning his craft, but is still enjoyable for all that. But his second attempt, BUTCHER'S MOON, written under his Richard Stark persona and starring his series character Parker, is a total success and still stands as one of the high-points in that much-loved series.

In 1970, Britain's Ted Lewis also took a stab at it, making the protagonist of his version a mob enforcer and changing the setting to Doncaster, England. The resulting novel, JACK'S RETURN HOME, is not only an excellent piece of work in its own right, but spawned two prequels and one of the best gangster movies ever made: GET CARTER.

And then there's BLUE CITY by Ross MacDonald - the focus of this post, if you remember. MacDonald, of course, is better known these days for his long running series of novels starring private eye, Lew Archer (beginning with THE MOVING TARGET in 1949). But he also wrote several standalone thrillers before that, and this little gem from 1947 was one of them.

Originally published under the author's real name, Kenneth Millar, BLUE CITY is written in first-person from the viewpoint of John Weather, a twenty-two-year old veteran who returns to his home town after the war only to discover his estranged father was murdered two years previously, and that nobody seems particularly interested in tracking down the killer. So Weather immediately takes it upon himself to uncover the truth and soon finds himself mixing it up with a variety of drug dealers, enforcers, pimps, hookers, crime bosses, shady businessmen, local government officials and a crooked police force. Not to mention a stepmother he never even knew existed. And all of them have their own reasons for wanted the past to stay dead and buried...

At only 165 pages, BLUE CITY is the very definition of a lean and mean thriller. The whole book takes place over a 24-hour period too, which only adds to the frantic pace. It's also an extremely angry book, starring a young man with a big hate on for the post-war depravity and small-town corruption he sees all around him. A view the author clearly shared at the time of writing. As MacDonald wrote in a 1952 letter to his publisher, '(Blue City) was about a town where I had suffered, and several of the characters were based on people I hated.'

Considering it was only his third novel, it's a remarkably confident book. The pace and plot remain strong throughout and MacDonald's great descriptive powers are already in evidence, such as when Weather goes into a pool hall and spots the guy he's there to meet: - 'He had white hair and a goose-flesh face as white as typewriter paper. The outer corners of his pale-pink eyes drooped towards the corner of his mouth, as if his face had been parted in the middle and combed downwards.' - Now that's some nice imagery there. Granted, it's a little pulpy and those two metaphors are a little too Chandler-esque for their own good, but it's still concise and well-written and gives the reader just enough visual information to picture the guy.

MacDonald's gift for snappy dialogue is also present right from the start. Weather's barely gotten off the bus when he decides to grab a beer in the nearest bar, and then he's forced to wait while the bartender (named Henry) tries to impress a couple of female customers:

     I rapped on the bar with a quarter.
     'Somebody's getting impatient,' Henry said. 'When somebody gets impatient that makes me nervous. When I'm nervous I'm no damn good for anything at all.'
     'A bottle of beer,' I said.
     'Look at my hand,' Henry said. 'It's trembling like a leaf.' He held out a big gray hand and smiled down at it. 'Beer, you say?'
     'If this place is still in business.'
     He took a bottle out of the cooler, uncapped it, and shuffled along the bar towards me.
     He looked at me with potential dislike. 'What's the matter, you got no sense of humor?'
     'Sure, but I checked it in another town. Go right on being sidesplitting for your friends.'
     'You're a stranger in town, aren't you? Maybe you just don't know how we talk around here.'
     'I'm learning fast.'
     'You can't learn too fast.'
     'Do you serve glasses with your beer? I'll have one.'
     'Olive or maraschino?'
     'Just dip your thumb in it when you pour it.'
     'Pour it yourself.'

It's a great scene, with the dialogue treading a fine line between realism and movie-talk. However, there are other instances where MacDonald breaks the barrier and goes entirely Hollywood, producing the kind of dialogue you'd expect from a Bogart and Bacall movie. Such as this exchange between Weather and a dance-hall girl named Carla:

     'A nice boy like you,' she recited, ' shouldn't be sitting all by his lonesome.'
     'A nice girl like you shouldn't be wasting her time on a guy like me.'
     'Why? What's the matter with you? I think you're kind of cute.'
     'You flatter me.'
     'Sure. Now that I've flattered you, you can buy me a drink.'
     I said: 'The approach abrupt. Do I look well heeled?'
     'Appearances are so deceptive.'
     'In your case, for example. You've got your face made up to suit this joint. Protective coloration, they call it in biology.'
     'Kid me some more,' she said flatly. 'You can if you buy me a drink. Biology is a very interesting subject.'
     'I like my biology experimental. Not cut and dried.'

Now that's a nice little exchange but its cleverness almost works against the novel. It's a little too knowing, with each character sounding like they're playing a role rather than just being themselves. Because I'm pretty sure nobody ever talked like that in real life, not even in the forties. 'The approach abrupt'? I mean, come on. And it also highlights another minor problem, which is that Weather is clearly portrayed as someone a lot older than his years. Halfway through the book, I had to go back to the first few pages and make sure I'd read it right that he was only twenty-two. I can't speak for anybody else, but I know for a fact that I was never that cool or eloquent at that age. Not even when I was drunk.

But those little quibbles aside, BLUE CITY still holds up as a fantastic little thriller from a master of the genre, and therefore gets my full recommendation.

Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE by Barry England

In an unnamed Asian country two western soldiers, MacConnachie and Ansell, escape from a column of marching POWs and make a run for it. Their goal is to make it across the hostile alien territory and reach the mountains, and safety, four hundred miles away. Yet all the while they're shadowed by an enemy helicopter, piloted by a nameless nemesis who's able to outguess their every move and mark their position for the ground troops chasing them down below...

And that's pretty much it as far as the plot's concerned. But that's really all that's needed because what we've got here is a great example of the existential chase thriller (the generic title kind of clues you in on the existential part). And while it may not be in the same league as Alfred Camus's classic, 'The Stranger,' I have to say this 1968 novel from Barry England gives that old warhorse a good run for its money (ahem) in the suspense stakes. For a start, it's a lot more gripping - and England doesn't waste any time diving into the action, either. In the very first paragraph, we see MacConnachie sidling up to Ansell with a curt, 'If I go left, will you come?' And then we're off the races for the whole rest of the book. Literally.

To be honest, everything is stripped down to such a level that I'm surprised the author even bothered to name his two protagonists - although maybe he thought that would be a little too minimalist, even for him. Still, we're not given their first names, and we're told almost nothing of their pasts or backgrounds either. England clearly doesn't want any unnecessary baggage getting in the way of his story. The past is irrelevant. Only the present matters. Survival is everything.

As it is, all we know about MacConacchie is that he's the older and more decisive of the two, that he's a professional soldier - possibly an NCO of some kind - who generally trusts his instincts and his years of experience to get him out of dangerous situations. Ansell's much younger, possibly still a teenager. But he's also smart, educated and insightful, with a natural-born knack for problem-solving. So clearly two opposites: the thinker and the doer. And it's through these two disparate characters that England's then able to go on and explore the whole spectrum of human experience. Despair, hope, self-belief, friendship, physical and mental adversity. All that good stuff we writers love. And readers too, of course.

As for the other details, we know there's a war going on between east and west, but we don't know the countries involved. The enemy, whether they be civilian or military, are simply referred to as 'Goons' all the way through. The US and Vietnam, maybe? Who knows? England certainly isn't saying. In fact, I'm only guessing that it's set in the east at all. The only clues are the references to the torrential rain seasons, which could equate to monsoons. And there's also a brief reference to the dark skin of a native boy. And it's mentioned more than once that our two heroes look different to the indigenous peoples. But to be honest, it could be anywhere. And it's immaterial anyway. It's really the relationship between the two main characters that matters the most. And the chase, of course.

For the rest of the book, we follow these two outsiders as they face one obstacle after another in their hopeless bid for freedom. And that's another thing. England makes it clear from the start that the situation is hopeless. That there won't be any happy endings. As the book progresses and their options narrow and their supplies dwindle down to nothing, it only becomes more and more obvious to them.

And the main reason for that is the presence of the third character, the enemy helicopter pilot chasing them. We never see his face or hear his thoughts, but he possesses an almost supernatural ability to locate MacConnachie and Ansell each time he returns from refueling. And then the game starts all over again. Duck and dive. Hide and seek. Hit and run. MacConnachie even gradually begins to respect him as one soldier to another, referring to his expertise with a certain reverence even as they try to outmaneuver him. Which they rarely do. At least, not for very long.

It's strange. On the one hand, by keeping things so stark England makes it hard to really know Mac and Ansell, yet it's surprising how well he brings the two men to life, given the restraints he sets for himself. Naturally, neither man likes the other too much at the beginning, but as the situation steadily worsens the relationship between the two men gradually strengthens to the point where they come to respect, and even love, each other. And not in a cliched way, either. Because everybody's a potential enemy, they know it's just the two of them against the world. In fact, it was only as I was reading the book for the second time that I realized that England also throws the four elements - fire, water, air, earth - at them at various points in the narrative. Man, when even nature's against you, you know you're really in some deep shit.

That's not to say the book's a total downer. Okay, it's no laugh riot, but during the earlier sections of the book England manages to insert the odd one-liner here and there - and usually when the reader least expects it. There's a fairly tense moment early on, for example, where Mac and Ansell watch two hundred soldiers closing in on them and Ansell turns to his partner and whispers, 'Nip along and see if they've got a couple of fags to spare, Mac. You're better at that sort of thing than I am.' That one sure took me by surprise - especially as there was no hint beforehand that these characters possessed a sense of humour. And I like how England divides the story into chapters but refuses to number them. Just a small thing, but that made me smile as well.

I also love how he keeps everything unexplained and indistinct throughout the book (I'm a big fan of 'The Prisoner' too). How the reader's left with more question than answers. For instance, we know the mountains represent freedom to these two, but we don't know why. Is it because the harsh terrain will allow them to finally lose the helicopter? Or is there a border of some kind over the next hill? Again, who knows? Your guess is as good as mine.

And then there's the climax, which is a real nail-biter. I mentioned there was no happy ending in this one, but that's not to say the climax isn't satisfying. Because it most assuredly is. The last line in particular stayed with me for hours afterwards, and that's really all I can ask of any book.


** They also made a movie version in 1970, which starred Robert Shaw as MacConnachie and Malcolm McDowell as Ansell. And I can't think of any other two actors more perfectly suited for the roles - they're both excellent. However, Shaw's adaptation of the book (he wrote the screenplay) is somewhat less successful. It's not bad as such, but he makes a few glaring changes (such as softening the ending and adding unnecessary backstory to the characters) which really don't help the film at all. Still, if you can find it on DVD for a decent price, I'd say it's definitely worth a look.

Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: THE HUNTER by Christopher Keane

Okay, I admit it - I'm kind of going outside the lines with this week's book, which purports to be a biographical account of Ralph 'Papa' Thorson's life as a modern-day bounty hunter. Except I've read 'The Hunter' a couple of times now and I'd be really surprised if even fifty percent of its contents are entirely factual. Now don't get me wrong - it's a thoroughly addictive read about a larger-than-life individual who actually was a well-known bounty-hunter, but it's really the format more than anything else that makes me doubt its veracity. At least, in places.

Because Keane writes the biography as though it were a novel, complete with definite character arcs for the main protagonists, extensive dialogue scenes, dastardly villains, the lot. Which isn't a crime, of course. Many biographers structure their works in the same way in order to accentuate the more dramatic elements of their subject's life, but in this case Keane really stretches the bounds of reality.

For one thing, he constantly hops between various characters' POV to let the reader experience those individuals' thoughts and hopes, which strikes me more as artistic license than straight reporting. And on a number of occasions there are scenes between peripheral characters that Keane couldn't possibly know about. I'm thinking in particular of a scene between two Hell's Angels, one of whom is an extremely violent paranoid schizophrenic, which I'm pretty sure Keane made up entirely from scratch. And then there are the numerous dialogue scenes between various characters. These conversations are very plausible and natural-sounding and help make the narrative fly by, but I find it very hard to believe they were transcribed word for word. Assuming they happened at all. Take for example this scene between the flamboyant Winston Blue and his associate, where Papa doesn't even appear until the end:

     While Winston waited for Papa's familiar yellow Plymouth to cruise into the neighbourhood, he chatted with his recently acquired partner, a young Chicano he discovered in the Thrifty Discount Drugstore on Sunset Boulevard. The Chicano's name was Real.
     'Real?' Winston asked the kid. 'As in deal?'
     No, as in Ray-Al but the kid was so impressed by Winston's cool demeanor that he didn't want to disagree with him. Real it would be. Yet Real wasn't strictly Winston's partner, not the way Winston saw it. More accurate would be valet, slave, peon, vassal.
     'Real, that's me,' the kid replied.

Now, call me a cynic, but I very much doubt the author was present in Bloom's apartment at that point, so I think it's safe to say a little artistic license was employed here. And possibly in a few other places as well. I also can't help thinking that Keane already had one eye on a possible movie deal and wanted to make the book as attractive as possible to producers, which would certainly explain the numerous dialogue and action scenes that fill the book.

And speaking of which, this is another case where the eventual movie that got made went on to overshadow the source material. Which is a shame as the movie version of 'The Hunter' itself isn't really all that memorable. It's quite likely you've seen it on TV at some point, with Steve McQueen playing the part of Thorson (and looking far older than his 49 years). The film's enjoyable enough without being anything too special, but it's notable mainly for being the actor's last movie before succumbing to cancer in 1980. It's also notable for featuring the real Thorson in a small cameo as a bartender who helps McQueen get drunk. This is the man himself serving his screen counterpart:

As you can see, the real-life Thorson was a huge bear of a guy, far removed from the trim movie star presence of McQueen. But he was also one hell of an interesting fellow too, with many different facets to his character - which was probably what got McQueen interested in his story in the first place. At the time of the book's publication in 1975, not content with being the only full-time bounty hunter in the USA (his peers all worked part-time while juggling other jobs), he was also a fully ordained Bishop of The Temple of Inspired Living, a master bridge champion, a classical music aficionado, a serious astrologer, and a criminology alumnus of the University of California. It seems he was also one of those people who thrive on chaos, as his residence in North Hollywood was essentially a permanent open house for all kinds of disparate characters, all drawn in like moths to Thorson's charismatic presence. In addition, men he'd picked up and sent to jail would often come back and Thorson would end up counselling them, lending them money, and even helping them find proper work.

That's when he wasn't out chasing violent fugitives all over the country. A 1987 Los Angeles Times article claimed he'd caught more than 12,000 fugitives over the course of his 40 year career, which, if true, is an astounding number. I'm inclined to halve that figure just out of principle, but even so that's still pretty damn impressive. Obviously the book only focuses on a small fraction of those cases, and Keane actually lays it out as though everything happens over a set period of six or seven months. However, it's more likely Thorson recounted (and possibly embellished) the more memorable cases from his recent past and told the author to present them however he wanted, making sure to change certain names where necessary.

In any case, the rogues' gallery contained in the book is really something to behold. We get to meet the insane Branch Brothers, for instance, who started out as seven but have a habit of blowing themselves up so are now down to two, and possess a combined IQ of a loaf of bread. Or there's Boom Boom Jakowski, the aforementioned Hell's Angel who's so volatile and unstable that even other Hell's Angels are afraid of him. There's Paco Carrera, a Mexican drug wholesaler whose abduction from his native country by Thorson and two associates comes under the heading: 'The Mission Impossible Snatch.' Then there's the improbably named Myron Fish, a harmless electronics whiz who's so nervous around Papa that he ends up destroying everything of Papa's that he tries to fix.

There are also two other notable felons who run through the narrative from beginning to end. One is Tony Bernado, whose capture Papa keeps putting off in order to wind up his tight-fisted employer, bail-bondsman Richie Blumenthal. The other one is Rocco Mason, a speed freak who's just been released from prison and has sworn to kill Papa. Again, Keane gives us numerous scenes of Mason watching Thorson's house which he couldn't possibly have witnessed himself (again, assuming they happened at all) and its when you're reading these passages that you begin to question what else in the book might have come from Keane's imagination.

But all that said, 'The Hunter' is still a well-written, rollocking read and worthy of anyone's time. It's clear why Hollywood snapped up the rights as Ralph 'Papa' Thorson is a truly fascinating and unique character and deserves to be better known (he apparently died in the early nineties - possibly from a car bomb from a vengeful fugitive, possibly from natural causes). As you'd expect, the book went out of print some time ago, but used copies can be picked up relatively cheaply online. But a word of advice: you'll enjoy the story a lot more if you take it all with a grain of salt.

Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: BROTHERS by William Goldman

'Marathon Man' by William Goldman. Now there's a thriller for you. A critical and commercial success when it was published in 1974, this conspiracy thriller to end all conspiracy thrillers has only grown in stature with the passing of years, managing to influence a whole generation of crime writers in the process, myself included. And rightly so - it really is that good. And Hollywood also made a pretty fantastic film version too, with a cast to die for and an infamous torture scene that still freaks people out even today. But then you probably know all this already. But what you may not know is that twelve years later Goldman finally delivered a sequel to his most famous book. Just why he felt he needed to this when the original wrapped up everything quite nicely is something only he could tell you, but I'm just glad he did because the result's a real barnstormer of a novel.

It's also - and I mean this in the nicest possible way - completely batshit crazy.

The first clue is given in the prologue (titled '...before the beginning...' in a nice nod to the original), where we learn a few years have passed since the events of 'Marathon Man.' Scylla - government super spook and sibling of that's book's protagonist, Tom 'Babe' Levy - has been given a new face and a new voice and is recuperating on a remote desert island somewhere in the Caribbean, getting in shape with a daily regimen of intense exercise and healthy eating as he waits to be called into action once again. This is the very same Scylla, it should be noted, who was previously disemboweled by the psychotic nazi, Szell, and then somehow crawled halfway across Manhattan before finally dying in his brother's arms. Yes, that one.

So only a few pages in and it's clear we're in 'modern fairy-tale' territory - which is perhaps not too surprising when you remember Goldman also wrote the wonderful 'The Princess Bride'. It seems he just liked the character of Scylla so much that he thought, 'Screw it. I'm the writer, I can do what I want. So what if he's dead? I'll simply resurrect him,' and then proceeded to exactly that. And it gets better too. Or should I say, weirder. I hesitate to talk too much about the plot as Goldman, master storyteller that he is, packs the pages with some really great reversals and I really don't want to ruin it for those who haven't read the book. So I'll try to keep things as brief and opaque as possible - which won't actually be too difficult in this particular case.

Anyway, here goes. In a small town on the outskirts of London, two small brothers walking back from the sweet shop are vaporised when a house explodes. In New York, a violent cabdriver and his streetwise girlfriend find themselves agreeing to the bizarre sexual requests of a total stranger. In New Jersey, a young couple with everything to live for suddenly decide to commit double suicide. At the same time, Scylla is called back from this remote island and given a series of tests designed to see whether he's fit for work or not. After passing with flying colours, Scylla's Division superior informs him that the world is on the brink of a global crisis ('...there's going to be a world war, America's going to start it, and counting you, three of us know'), and that it's all up to Scylla to avert it. Scylla accepts the challenge and soon learns that the three events that began the book are - surprise, surprise - all linked in some way and that they might hold the answers he seeks...

Now let me assure you that as odd as that pathetic excuse of a synopsis might sound, it's nowhere near as bizarre as the book itself. Nowhere near. In fact, at various points in the story the author comes dangerously close to science-fiction territory. Not that it matters, of course, because this is William Goldman we're talking about, and whatever else his faults, the man knows how to suck the reader in and keep him or her turning the pages. No matter how unbelievable everything becomes, you simply have to see what happens next. And he's also not ashamed to employ every narrative trick in his arsenal to help the process along either. You can be reading a scene thinking it's going one way only for the author to suddenly pull the rug out from under you in the last paragraph, sometimes in the very last line. And he keeps on doing it to you, relentlessly, scene after scene. It's great.

And the prose is pure Goldman too: both cynical and caustic, often with a healthy dose of humour thrown into the mix too. Scylla's the best example of this. While he merrily goes about his business of killing off various enemies of the state and averting World War Three, he's often making wry observations about the world around him that obviously match Goldman's own thoughts. Such as his initial impressions of the bustling San Juan International Airport:

All he knew was that more than their North American mainland neighbours, the Spanish visited airports. Was a third cousin going from Mexico City to Los Angeles? Fine. Twenty-two relatives would fit into a couple of vehicles and chug along. Was Aunt Consuela visiting Neuva York? Better to die than not be one of the fifteen who saw her off.

Or even better, his less than flattering opinion of Heathrow Airport (which still holds true today):

And how did some legendary architect manage it so perfectly, manage the seemingly impossible task of making every arrivals gate, no matter where in the world you came from, a good minimarathon away from the customs area. Somehow, you would imagine, there would have been a single slip, one gate where you could just smile good-bye to the stew, then a quick hip-hop and there you were, giving your passport. But no, Heathrow was sublime in its total disregard for human comfort.

Not only that, but Goldman (and by proxy, Scylla) fully understands how ridiculous and cliched the tropes of spycraft really are and takes great pleasure at mocking them at every opportunity. Often with farcical results. For instance, in one unforgettable scene, Scylla is to meet a Division recruiter at a museum and given a single password - 'blistering' - that will identify him to the man's receptionist. So naturally when the times comes, Scylla, who hates passwords with a passion, simply can't find it in himself to say it:

       Now the officious woman was back. 'Ah don't know whah ah fand this heat so ay-maz-in', ah just dew. It is sew hot.'
       Scylla stood there.
       'Yew dew agree?'
       Scylla made a questioning look.
       'The heat, the heat, ahm talkin' 'bout the heat.'
       She was beginning to get just a wee bit flustered. Scylla said, 'Definitely.'
       'How would yew descrahb it? How hot it is, ahm talkin' 'bout.'
       'Too?'
       'There's a word - on the tip of mah tongue - ah just can't come up with it.'
       'If you could think what letter it began with, that would be a help.'
       'Ah believe it begins with a 'b.''
       'Oh, sure,' Scylla said, smiling. 'Brutally. I'm sure that solves your problem.'
       'It does not. That is a different word entirely.'
       'Bitch? As in 'hot as a bitch'?'
       'You are drifting further an' further away.'
       'I know the word,' Scylla said then. 'Berry.'
       She just looked at him. 'Berry?'
       'Sure. Didn't there used to be a comedian on 'Saturday Night Live' who said, 'Baseball been berry berry good to me'? Well, I say, 'It's berry berry hot out.' Are your problems solved?'
       He watched as she stormed up the stairs.

It's never been Goldman's style to stick to one POV, though, so along the way we also get to spend time with an eclectic cross-section of characters, such as Scylla's friend and immediate superior, Perkins - who, in both appearance and intelligence, bears a very close resemblance to Mycroft Holmes. And we also play catch-up with Scylla's brother, Babe, who's now a happily married professor of history at Columbia University. We meet two Division assassins who are forced to work together and spend most of their time threatening each other with painful death. There's The Blond, another assassin who gets his kicks by scraping the faces off his dead victims with a potato peeler and raiding their fridges for a post-slaughter snack. Or there's Grumpy, a mute dwarf information broker who gives out his information in the form of sidewalk art. And they're just a small sample of what's in store. But as you'd expect from Goldman, all are fully fleshed-out three-dimensional characters, and all are allowed their individual moments in the sun. Even the minor ones.

But how does it fare in comparison to its bigger brother, 'Marathon Man,' you ask? (see what I did there?) Well, let's be honest - very few sequels match up to their predecessors and 'Brothers' is certainly no different in that respect. Goldman even pokes fun at the problem when he has Scylla visit a movie theatre as part of his reconnaissance and forces him to sit through 'Return To Oz':

They really should pass a law, he thought, as he sat there: No Movie Sequels. Ever. Under threat of death or worse, banishment from Chasen's. Other arts didn't do it to this degree - Leonardo never made a Mona Lisa II. Michelangelo had a smash with his Sistine Chapel, but once was enough for him. Why would anyone feel the need to sully Judy Garland?

And then there's the ending. Don't worry - I'm not going to give anything away here, other than to say Goldman does his usual thing of finishing everything on a downer. It was the same with 'Marathon Man,' 'Magic,' 'Colour of Light,' and all the rest. It's like he just can't help himself. I can kind of understand it as I've seen Goldman interviewed a number of times and he always comes across a pretty pessimistic guy, so it's no surprise that that negativity flows through into his work. But I just wish he'd restrained himself a little more in this case, especially as this would prove to be his very last book before he focused entirely on writing screenplays. But other than that small gripe, 'Brothers' works just fine as a novel. All the way through, Goldman rations out the clues while holding back just enough for you to keep turning the pages, and that's a major prerequisite for a successful thriller. Just don't expect realism, that's all. 

And to be perfectly honest I think I've actually read this more times than I've read 'Marathon Man,' which must say something about the book's quality. Or maybe it says something about me. I don't know. In any case, if you're the kind of reader who enjoys something a little out of the ordinary then I suggest you check 'Brothers' out for yourself. You could do a lot worse.

Great 'Forgotten' Thrillers: TIME OF RECKONING by Walter Wager

I'm not sure when I first picked this one up, but it was probably somewhere around the early-to-mid-eighties. And it was probably at a jumble sale (or 'yard sale' for US readers), as that was generally where I got most of my books back then. But I do remember this was the first time I'd come across a thriller by Walter Wager, and I came away pretty impressed. So much so that over the next few years I searched out more titles of his, including SLEDGEHAMMER, SWAP, OTTO'S BOY, VIPER THREE (filmed as the excellent TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING), 58 MINUTES (filmed as the not-so-good DIE HARD 2) and a few others I can't remember right now. But while I enjoyed them all well enough, none of them in my opinion came up to the high standards of TIME OF RECKONING.

The narrative is mainly concerned with two seemingly unconnected characters - a concentration camp survivor and an irrepressible CIA agent. We begin in the final days of WWII, where the US Army liberate the concentration camp in Dachau only to be presented with hundreds of gaunt-faced Jewish survivors. One of these is three-year-old Ernst Beller, whose entire family has been wiped out by the nazis. Fortunately, though, he's still got an uncle and aunt living in the States, and he's soon repatriated and sent to live with them. As he grows to manhood, 'Ernie' Beller sets out on a brilliant medical career, but he's also got a long-term agenda in mind, which is to avenge the deaths of his countrymen. Realizing that he's not going to have much success locating Martin Boorman and the rest if the Israelis have already failed, he decides instead to focus on those nazi war criminals who've already been sentenced and imprisoned for their crimes. And execute them.

Running parallel to all this we also get glimpses into the career of a maverick and unruly CIA agent known only as 'Merlin' as he rapidly makes a reputation for himself as the 'man who gets things done.' Moving into the present day, Merlin arrives in Berlin where he's tasked with tracking down a group of Marxist terrorists who are intent on blowing up as much of Western Europe as they can. At the same time Beller also arrives in Berlin to visit the first of his targets, unaware that he and Merlin are destined to cross paths somewhere down the line...

So on the face of it, nothing too out of the ordinary, at least plotwise. Nazis, revenge, terrorists, spies, CIA agents, shootouts. All present and correct. But it's really the style that matters here - because it's only after a few pages that you begin to realize Wager is clearly parodying the whole thriller genre, while at the same time sticking very close to the tropes and conventions of that genre. It's really a nice piece of work from a writer who made his regular living from these kinds of stories, although I'm not sure anybody else got the joke. On the back of my paperback, for example, there's a blurb from the Weekender that reads, 'A swift, suspenseful action novel written in a no-nonsense style.' Sure, it's suspenseful, and it's pretty swift too, I guess. But 'no-nonsense style'? I'm not sure what book that particular reviewer was referring to, because it sure wasn't the same one I read. And it seems he's not the only one, as there are a number of reviews online that seem to miss the point, as well.

But I don't know how they can, because it's so obvious.

Almost every chapter (and there are 48 of them in total) starts off in a wildy irreverent manner, as though the omniscient narrator can't believe anybody's going to take any of this seriously. For instance, Chapter 4 begins like this:

     Uncle Martin had once met Freud.
     Sigmund Freud, the one with the cigar and the mother number.
     Really.
     It wasn't that surprising if you knew that Uncle Martin graduated third in the class of 1925 at the U. of Vienna med school and went on to become a full-fledged psychoanalyst. Even his few enemies had to admit there wasn't a therapist in his age group who was more fledged than Martin Beller.

Or there's this passage that opens Chapter 13:

     'He'll see you now,' Miss Rasmussen said crisply.
     Donna Rasmussen was a person to be treated with respect. She was not only the executive secretary to the deputy director for operations of one of the largest and sneakiest organizations in the world, but she was also the best female bowler on the entire CIA headquarters staff. Penny Levine had beaten her in 1974, but had been out of the competition since being transferred to Buenos Aires.

And here's the beginning of Chapter 16:

     Everybody gets born, but there are a million ways you can do it. Some are born rich, others are born premature, quite a few as Chinese, and a few theatrical types check in as Siamese Twins - on the cusp between Libra and Scorpio. It is better to be born in summer as you'll have a better chance of survival.
     Merlin was born American, lucky and optimistic - a trifle too optimistic. Freda Cassel was not in bed when he reached her small but pleasantly furnished apartment...

I ask you, how can you not warm to a book where you begin every chapter by giggling out loud? It's impossible. And as if that isn't enough you've got this Merlin character, who's the uber-cool superspy archetype taken to its most ridiculous extremes. That's not to say he isn't a compelling character, because he is, but he's also about as far removed from reality as you can get. Nothing's beyond him. Not only is he a perfect shot, but he's been everywhere, he's done everything, and he knows just about everyone. And he's got a witty rejoinder for every situation, too, such as when the Berlin police question him in the aftermath of a shootout at the local CIA station:

     The cop nodded. It was one of those messes. 'You have any kind of official identification, Herr 'Wasserman'?' 
     'No, just my passport. I'm a furniture salesmen.'
     'I'll bet.'
     'Tell your men that some friends of mine will be here soon, five or six men in cars and a U.S. Army ambulance,' Merlin said.
     'All furniture salesmen?'
     Merlin nodded.
     'All armed like you?'
     'Some may be carrying submachine guns. It's a highly competitive business, sergeant.'

Okay, so obviously the book's not to be taken too seriously, but does it actually work as a thriller? Well, yes it does, actually. Wager's too much the professional to allow the humour to completely overshadow the suspense elements, and so he makes doubly sure to keep the tension high throughout.

On the one hand you've got Beller's mission of vengeance, which is probably the most absorbing part of the plot, as he expertly plans and then disposes of one imprisoned nazi after another, improvising whenever obstacles fall into his path (as they inevitably do). It's like a warped version of Mission: Impossible, but with only one team member, who just happens to be a whole lot smarter than everybody else. And insane, to boot. Well, maybe not insane, but Wager makes clear from the start that Beller isn't exactly playing with a full deck (which is kind of understandable after what he went through as a toddler). And then you've got Merlin working against the clock as attempts to track down the evil terrorists, who decide to up the stakes by kidnapping the local CIA station director as a little extra insurance. Who's also Merlin's ex-wife. Whom he's still in love with. So there's that, too.

So as you can see, there's definitely no shortage of suspense. And it helps that you care for the characters too, especially Beller, whom the reader is fully behind all the way through (be honest, who doesn't like seeing nazis being murdered?). So when Merlin 'completes' his assignment and is left with an unexplained death that sets him on Ernie Beller's trail, you're kind of in two minds about the whole thing. On the one side, you're really hoping Merlin fails in his quest and that Beller gets away with it all, but you also can't help looking forward to seeing how these two bizarre characters will interact with each other once they finally meet. Fortunately, Wager doesn't let the reader down. He fashions a really satisfying climax (and one that's not nearly as action-packed as you'd expect), not least because the reader finally comes to realize that these two protagonists are both as crazy as each other. And just as homicidal. The only difference being that one of them is officially sanctioned by the US Government.

It's just a shame the author didn't continue with this semi-spoof style for his subsequent thrillers as he could have found a nice little niche for himself in the marketplace. Or maybe he simply felt he'd gotten it out of his system with this one. No way of knowing now, though, since Wager's no longer around to tell us his side of the story. As it is, his TIME OF RECKONING still stands up as a great little thriller that's unafraid to acknowledge its own preposterousness. And for that, it should be applauded.