Mysteries

Lesson 1: Introduction

Readers Beware! Thrillers!

According to Gillian Roberts in her book, You Can Write A Mystery, "thrillers can involve espionage, technical terrors, mutant viruses, prehistoric monsters - or lawyers." (pg. 8) I have seen espionage in the book I'm reading now titled "Call After Midnight" by Tess Gerritsen. She is a writer of Medical Thrillers.

Shannon OCork defines the thriller novel as a "spy-thriller." Spy-thrillers involve more "danger and action back and forth between continents. Often it is the free world the hero is trying to save, and usually the violence is sophisticated and sly." (pg. 16)

Thrillers also use "World Wars I and II as background, perhaps as often as it uses the possibility of WW III and global annihilation, and it uses Europe, Asia, and the Middle East more than it uses America." (pg. 16)

She also mentions Tom Clancy's books. She classifies them as "techno-thrillers." They "are virtual tracts on U.S. defense systems. There are thrillers of high finance and the corporate world, and thrillers involving invasions by other worlds." (pg. 16-17) Some books that Tom Clancy has written are The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger. I have seen the movies, but I haven't read the books yet. They are great shows, and I'm wanting to read the books when I have time.

Sue Grafton has two complete chapters on thrillers in her book Writing Mysteries. The chapters are on Medical Thrillers and Legal Thrillers. Tess Gerritsen has written the chapter on Medical Thrillers. Linda Fairstein has written the chapter on Legal Thrillers.

Medical Thrillers

Tess Gerritsen's novels focus on scenes of hosptitals "where we experience the best and the worst times of our lives: the birth of a child, the death of a loved one. Here is where we witness both joy and tragedy, and becasue of this, we regard hospitals with apprehension and even fear." (pg. 234) These feelings that result from our experiences in hospitals can result in plots for a medical thrillers. However, in order to make the settings and information authentic, you need to have medical knowledge, experience, or research this field.

Legal Thrillers

Linda Fairstein discusses legal thrillers. If you want to write a legal thriller, then it might be "because you have been a participant in a dramatic courtroom battle-as a defense attorney whose skill exonerated an inncocent client, as the beneficiary of family herilooms in a hard-fought will contest, or as a juror who second-guessed the tactics of the litigators throughout a protracted trial." (pg. 240)

John Grisham writes Legal Thrillers. If you are interested in this type of genre, then I would recommend his books.

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