From its origin in eighteenth-century England to its evolution in America and Great Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fiction experienced exploration, expansion, and solidification of literary genres. Dominated by the adventure story and the Gothic story in the early decades of its evolution, by the twentieth century, popular fiction had seen the creation of science fiction, horror fiction, adventure fiction, detective fiction, romance fiction, frontier fiction (i.e., the western), and modern fantasy fiction. Those critics who study the frame and form of literary genres tend to speak of popular fiction categories as being rigid, or inflexible, and thus are disparaged for their formulaic predictability. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Popular fiction is like a living thing, a symbiotic entity that possesses an intimate and dynamic relationship among author, narrative, publisher, and audience. It is constantly changing to meet (and to help guide) reader expectations for an entertaining story. It persistently articulates new mixtures of formula, while always maintaining that delicate balance between what should be anticipated in the story and what should be unexpected in the story. Economic factors of technology, market, distribution, and culture have driven this incredible narrative ballet over the past several hundred years, ever since the Industrial Revolution facilitated the invention of mass-produced and mass-consumed fiction.
Whereas the critics of popular fiction condemn it for its predictability and easy “access” for a large audience, I would suggest the very opposite: that popular fiction can be highly creative, exceedingly inventive, and quite difficult to pin down with exact definitions. An excellent example of this complexity of popular narrative formula can be found in the development of the thriller.
Indeed, popular narrative formulas, such as the thriller, are “organic” in nature. They grow, shrink, and intersect with other popular narrative formulas in an attempt to better achieve that balance between the predictable and the new, which is the typical recipe for the success of popular fiction storytelling. A good example of this organic elasticity may include urban fantasy and the detective story. Urban fantasy can be defined as contemporary fantasy that usually takes places in a city or modern-day setting. The detective story is usually described as a type of mystery story that features a detective hero who solves a crime. The literary formula crossover between urban fantasy and the detective story resulted in American Jim Butcher's best-selling, hybrid “Dresden Files” series, a collection of novels and shorter fiction featuring a Chicago-based, private-eye wizard named Harry Dresden, who employs his magical talents to solve crimes involving the supernatural. Butcher's series achieved bestseller status and gained a legion of fans.
The thriller is arguably the most obvious example of hybrid literary formula crossovers. The term “thriller” is one commonly used to describe certain popular novels, but it is a term that lacks specific focus or definition in the same way that the term “detective fiction” or “romance fiction” does. Some literary critics may describe certain crime fiction novels as being thrillers. Others may use the term thrillers to categorize horror fiction, romance fiction, science fiction, or espionage fiction. And yet others may list adventure novels as thrillers.
John McCarty identifies the term “thriller” as a narrative that possesses tension. He writes: “What separates the genuine thriller from a novel or film with the odd suspenseful moment or two is the thriller's single minded purpose, which is to put the reader or audience on edge and keep them there” (13). McCarty goes on to state that thrillers can be found in a number of genres other than crime fiction, including westerns, war stories, or romantic comedies. He argues that “This chameleon aspect of the thriller probably accounts for the reason why thrillers not only have enjoyed great popularity with audiences, but also appeal to very broad demographics within those audiences” (13).
I would take issue with McCarty's very broad definition of the thriller, in that a great deal of fiction exhibits “tension” (it's called dramatic conflict), but only a segment of that fiction can properly be categorized as thrillers. What I do not dispute is McCarty's legitimate claim that defends the universal appeal of the thriller across a diverse readership.
There has to be something else other than just narrative “tension” that defines the thriller. In his monograph, Thrillers: Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre (1979), critic Jerry Palmer suggests that thrillers “are about conspiracies” (63), which then place the typical thriller narrative as one in which the story's antagonist attempts to construct a criminal conspiracy, while the protagonist simultaneously attempts to detect (or solve) the villain's conspiracy. In the process, dramatic tension and a sense of unease are created within the reader.
Following Palmer's argument, I would thus place the thriller at the intersecting point of several “sensational” popular fiction genres, including detective fiction, espionage fiction, horror fiction, romance fiction, science fiction, and adventure fiction. Within this intersection point, a given thriller may expand in a particular formulaic direction. For example, some thrillers are closer to the detective story, while others are linked more strongly to the tale of espionage.
Thrillers also embody certain important story traits that underscore and reinforce their widespread popularity with a dedicated readership. First, thrillers feature escapist plots and emphasize narrative action, typically limiting characterization, rather than involving highly realistic plots and deep character development. The audience's interest in thrillers lies more with action and rapid plot development than with the static plotting and introspective nature of realistic, or “slice-of-life” fiction. Second, thrillers are intended to entertain, rather than to instruct. Though many thrillers are well researched by their authors, with interesting facts that are intended to support the verisimilitude of the storytelling, the thriller is not usually meant to be solely didactic in nature (though there are notable exceptions, including popular thriller writer Michael Crichton, who often centered many of his novels around a thesis or argument, such as the dangers of rapid technological growth). Third, thrillers employ protagonists or heroes who are exceptionally brave, exceptionally smart, or exceptionally courageous, as compared to realistic fiction that attempts to mirror “real life” as closely as possible in its character portrayals. A favorite plot technique of the thriller is to place an “average” individual into the middle of an exceptionally dangerous situation, but this type of story often sees the protagonist learn or accomplish unexpectedly heroic behavior during the course of the narrative.
And finally, thrillers are intended to reach as wide a readership as possible, while so-called “highbrow” or “elite” fiction is intended for a very narrow, sophisticated, or highly-educated audience. The predominant function of the thriller is to reach best-seller status by providing a story with heightened danger and excitement, propelled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, and focusing on rapid plotting and unexpected narrative developments, such as “cliffhangers.” The realistic story, though perhaps touching on some of these elements, is intended to depict life as accurately as possible, avoiding many of the things that the thriller works very hard to achieve.
The American thriller today will be found closely interconnected with the other major genre categories of popular fiction, and its origins go back as far as the origin of the adventure story, the first major category of popular fiction, whose foundation can be seen in the work of Daniel Defoe (1660–1731). Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), based on the real life escapades of castaway Alexander Selkirk, was not only one of the earliest novels published in the English language, it was also the first adventure novel ever published, and a historically remote, yet obvious, source of the American thriller. Crusoe's compelling tale of survival, following his shipwreck, acts as an archetype for the typical thriller hero, in that the thriller plot often follows the protagonist's quest for survival in a dangerous environment. In examining the qualities of the adventure stories over time in both Europe and American, those qualities that made the adventure story so popular with readers for so long also help to make the American thriller popular today. Indeed, the single defining motif of the adventure story—the hero's literal conquest of “Death”—is also the major defining motif of the thriller. In addition, as the typical adventure story possesses nationalistic or imperialistic dimensions (especially during the nineteenth century, as seen in the work of British writers, such as H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling), the American thriller also possesses these similar dimensions. As the typical adventure story is set in exotic lands or locations, the American thriller is also frequently set in comparable settings. Author Clive Cussler probably best represents the contemporary American thriller writers who employ robust doses of non-stop adventure in their fiction.
Along with adventure, a variety of American thrillers successfully employs elements of the horror story. The horror story can be defined simply as a narrative in which fright and the development of fear are the desired responses. The origin of the horror story can be found in British writer Horace Walpole's short novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), which many literary critics and historians have also defined as the first Gothic novel. The popularity and longevity of the horror story can be seen throughout the nineteenth century in Britain, as best illustrated by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). The popularity of the horror story can also be found in America, especially in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe in the nineteenth century, in the work of Ambrose Bierce in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, in the tales of H.P. Lovecraft in the early twentieth century, and in the work of Robert Bloch in the second half of the twentieth century. Today, a number of American thriller writers base a significant amount of their literary efforts in horror, including Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris. These writers, among many others, have efficaciously blended narrative elements of adventure and horror in such a fashion as to generate pleasurable shudders when reading their novels and short fiction.
Romance, specifically romantic suspense, falls under the umbrella of the American thriller. The traditional romance can be defined as an evolving love relationship, which typically (but not always) ends in marriage, and the origins of the romance story can be traced to the work of British authors Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen, as well as to the efforts of a number of female Gothic writers, including the nineteenth-century English writers, Ann Radcliffe and the Brontë sisters, and twentieth-century writer, Daphne du Maurier. Romantic suspense merges adventure with romance, and this type of thriller most often features strong women protagonists, who demonstrate heroic or persevering aspects in solving a crime or mystery that cannot only threaten their lives but also poses substantial obstacles to consummating a romantic relationship. Important American writers of romantic suspense in the category of the American thriller include Nora Roberts (along with her J.D. Robb pseudonym) and Karen Rose, among a number of others.
As Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was an important novel in the evolution of the Gothic horror tale, many literary historians also see it as the beginning of modern science fiction, as illustrated by Victor Frankenstein's ill-fated attempt to play God by employing technology to create an artificial human life form from the corpses of the dead. As difficult as it has become to accurately describe science fiction, it may be defined as a narrative category of speculative fiction, supported by scientific fact or theory, which employs past, present, or future societies as settings, and that anticipates future technologies which often explore alien places and people. Science fiction went on to experience substantial popularity in the early twentieth-century American pulp magazines with the publication of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories in 1926, commonly regarded as the first pulp science fiction magazine. The category of science fiction thus enjoyed a long and fruitful run in the American pulps through the 1930s and 1940s, and then with the development of the paperback book in America in the decades after World War II.
However, it was the development of the techno thriller in the mid-to-late twentieth century that merged science fiction with the thriller, especially as seen in the bestselling novels of American author and film director, Michael Crichton. In many ways, the techno thriller has come to dominate the American thriller in the last few decades, and many authors, including the writing team of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, have published best-selling and critically admired novels in this area.
The American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe has often been cited as the inventor of the modern detective story, with his tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and with the two subsequent stories that feature his brilliant detective C. Auguste Dupin. Certainly, Poe established the single, paramount principle of the detective story: the narrative must involve a recounting of the exploits of an exceptionally gifted protagonist detective, who investigates and solve otherwise baffling crimes. However, it was the British who borrowed, refined, and perfected this category of fiction in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and with the work of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers in the decades following World War I. Many genre historians argue that the hard-boiled detective fiction of American pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s (such as Black Mask)—best exemplified by the stories of Carroll John Daly, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler—feature fictionalized criminal behavior that is more gritty and realistic than what was appearing in stories by the major British writers. This model of hard-boiled detective character later became an important protagonist in the American thrillers of the past several decades, most notably as seen in the many adventures of James Patterson's Alex Cross and especially in British author Lee Child's high-octane series featuring the American ex-military vigilante, Jack Reacher.
The offshoot of the detective story, the spy story (or tale of espionage) also figures proximately in the American thriller. Some critics cite James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Spy; A Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821) as one of the earliest examples of the popular tale of espionage, but, as with the detective story, it was the British who perfected this category of fiction, as illustrated by Erskine Childers' 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands; A Record of Secret Service and W. Somerset Maugham's Ashenden; or The British Agent, a collection of loosely-related short stories first published in book form in 1928. The most famous British writers of the spy story in the mid-to-late twentieth century include John le Carré, whose stories feature George Smiley, as well as Ian Fleming and his iconic James Bond adventures. The spy story can be defined as a tale of political espionage, featuring a spy protagonist who seeks to uncover the secrets of the nefarious ambitions of political adversaries, while trying not to get caught or killed in the process. The contemporary American thriller features a variety of authors who combine heavy doses of thriller adventure with elements of espionage. A sampling of these writers includes Robert Ludlum and his Jason Bourne series and Tom Clancy and his Jack Ryan novels.
The single most important characteristic of the thriller formula is its ability to conform to changing tastes of new generations of consumers, while maintaining the basic archetypal appeal of its original narrative structures that include the adventure story, the horror story, the romantic suspense story, the technological thriller story, the detective story, or the spy story. The American thriller, in particular, is flexible enough to incorporate the dramatic and formulaic conventions of the various popular literary genres listed above, while also retaining the skeletal structure of conspiracy-based plotting that frequently and clearly separates this type of story from the literary offshoots of popular fiction that feed it. Many sub-categories of the American thriller exist, in addition to the major genre sources, including the legal thriller, the medical thriller, and the historical thriller, to name but a few examples. Some of the kaleidoscopic, formulaic representations of the American thriller, in fact, are discussed in this collection.
Beginning in the late 1960s, with the publication of Michael Crichton's landmark 1969 bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, the American thriller has become one of the most important and influential categories of contemporary popular fiction. Perhaps the rudimentary appeal of the American thriller ultimately has to do with the profound storytelling appeal of its writers. In addition, the basic dramatic conflict of the thriller is not too difficult to discover: at its heart, the American thriller outlines that ancient moral conflict between the forces of good and evil. Yet the thriller is not quite that simple to pin down. In its numerous varieties of expression, the American thriller deftly explores the subtle and complex nature of our oftentimes problematic relationship with morality and with the basic nature of good and evil itself.
The very uncertainty of the life-or-death outcome for the protagonist (and antagonist) of the American thriller is what has given the thriller its vicarious “thrill” for readers, and this, no doubt, will continue to do so for many years to come.