Strapped for cash? Knock out a thriller, then . . .
I read this hard-hitting first-person piece in The Guardian at the weekend. It moved me a lot, but it also made my eyebrows go up and down double time.
The bloke writing it is an author with mental health problems, so a proportion of the piece is taken up with how he's battled back from those. The rest talks about his successful debut novel and how that helped fund the charity work he's been doing in South Africa. It's a moving story and no doubt 99.9 per cent of readers won’t think twice about the following quote. The last sentence made me twitch, though:
"Four years earlier, in memory of Kay, I had set up a foundation to help disadvantaged South African children attend the nation's best, formerly "whites-only" schools - an event that unleashed in me a heady surge of joy. By January 2003, we were educating 30 incredible kids. But two months later America invaded Iraq; the world's stock markets plummeted; the gold price soared; and the South African rand strengthened by more than a third against sterling. Suddenly the charity's budget had a 35% hole in it and my only hope of filling it was to abandon five years of complex technical experimentation and transform my second novel into the lurid thriller my most commercial publishers hoped for."
Richard Mason isn't the first and no doubt won't be the last writer to believe that knocking out a thriller ensures you instant dosh without raising a sweat. Interesting, though, that he didn't manage it – I wonder whether that was down to his struggles with his health or the fact he simply couldn't turn out a book to order. I felt sorry for Mason and his struggle with bipolar disorder, but does his comment mean thrillers can't do experimental?
You may remember the spat from earlier this year between Joan Brady and The Times who, she claimed, misquoted her (if any of my students are reading, this reinforces why you need your shorthand or, at the very least, a tape of the interview!) Brady was taking legal action against a factory next door to her home which, she said, was poisoning her. It was claimed that she'd said her brain was now so addled that she was reduced to writing thrillers. Brady disputes this, saying she admires a number of genre writers.
I have a soft spot for thrillers, particularly those by the likes of Dan Fesperman, which have dragged the genre into the 21st century's troublespots. And I still harbour admiration for Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, Desmond Bagley's Running Blind and Alistair MacLean's back catalogue which all attracted me to the genre.
I'd be the first to admit that there are some absolute stinkers being published under the thriller banner (anything with the slightest echo of The Da bloody Vinci Code makes me want to cry. Or scream. Or both). But there are turkeys in all areas of literature, for heaven's sake!
I'm always intrigued, though, by the writers who do wander over and play in our sandpit. Susan Hill's police procedurals are good, but not what you'd call cutting edge. Sophie Hannah's and Robert Edric's venturing into genre writing didn't much work for me either – again, they seemed nothing special amidst the avalanche of genre writing I come across as a reviewer. And the jury is still out on Benjamin Black's (aka John Banville's) two 1950s Dublin thrillers – Christine Falls and The Silver Swan – simply because I am really struggling to plough through the former.
Whenever I read articles about writers being scathing about genre novels, I wonder how much of it is envy at the telephone number dosh the successful thrillers must make. If it's so easy, we'd all be doing it. Hey, maybe I can knock one out by the end of the month and keep the bank manager off my back! If anyone wants me, I'll be slaving over a hot laptop.








