Always Look Over Your Shoulder - Conspiracy Thrillers

When I think conspiracy thriller I think of two things almost immediately: 1) the television show X-Files, wherein FBI agents Mulder and Scully did their best to investigate and prove the existance of one of the largest conspiracies imaginable (i.e., aliens had landed and were even now engaged in a gigantic effort to take over earth) and 2) Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – wherein conspiracies perpetrated through the ages by certain societies within the Catholic Church kept secret the true nature (and number?) of Jesus’ apostles.

Our friendly neighborhood Wiki article defines the conspiracy thriller as a book “in which the hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only he/she recognizes.” They give as prime examples the works of Robert Ludlum, and I would especially recommend the titles about Jason Bourne, recently made into movies – The Bourne Identity; The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. These are excellent books and full of double crosses, covert agencies and everything you could want from a conspiracy thriller.

David Baldacci has written a series of books that could be considered conspiracy thrillers. This series begins with The Camel Club, and follows (in reading order) with The Collectors, Stone Cold and Divine Justice.

And finally, a book I would like to recommend that I just recently read is The Eight by Katherine Neville. The Eight features a exceptionally complex plot focusing on action in two distinct time periods. To quote from a review, “A young novice, during the French Revolution, risks her life to preserve a jeweled chess set that the Moors gave Charlemagne, and in the 20th century, a computer expert and a chess master try to solve its mystery.” There is a sequel – entitled The Fire – that follows one of our protaganists, Alexandra Solarin, as she tries to solve, once again, the mystery of the Charlemagne chess service.

If you have any favorite conspiracy thrillers that you would like to share with us, please do so. Meg

[By the way – one of the best conspiracy thriller movies I have ever watched is Sneakers, starring Robert Redford, Dan Ackroyd and River Phoenix. It has been called the “last great hacking movie” and it is quite the ride – even if it was produced in 1992.]

Thrillers for the Times - the Techno-thriller

That same Wiki article (entitled Thrillers) that I mentioned in the first post about Medical Thrillers defines the Techno-Thriller as a work “that usually focuses upon military action, in which technology (usually military technology) is described in detail and made essential to the reader’s understanding of the plot.” This article calls Tom Clancy the "father of the Technothriller" and the Hunt for Red October as the work which defined the genre.

I confess I am not “thrilled” with this definition. It seems to me too narrow and leaves out a whole host of other works I would have considered a techno-thriller. So – going back to our online search, I picked up a few other definitions that are briefer but more accurate.

Our friends at Merriam-Webster simply state that a techno-thriller is a thriller that relies on technology. Seems rather straightforward. But then I discovered another (separate) Wiki article entitled Techno-Thriller that did a much better job than the first article I quoted. Techno-thrillers, according to this Wiki article, are a “hybrid genre, drawing subject matter generally from spy thrillers, war novels and science fiction.” I suggest reading the entire entry, as it is very interesting. But I want to get on to recommending authors.

Read the Hunt for Red October if you haven’t read it already. The movie, starring Sean Connery, was excellent, but the book is brilliant. And as long as we are talking about the military side of Techno-thrillers, I also recommend Nimitz Class by Patrick Robinson. He writes about the near-future Navy and the technology that keeps the shores of the US safe. But his characters (do check out Admiral Morgan) are a treat and his plots are always multifaceted and intriguing.

Dan Brown is more famous for his religious thriller, The Da Vinci Code, but his earlier works, especially Digital Fortress and Deception Point are also edge-of-the-seat techno-thriller reading.

And just for fun – and to honor Michael Crichton, who just recently passed away - pick up The Andromeda Strain. Written in 1969 this is a story about an deadly alien germ that causes havoc and death in a small town in Arizona. Crichton was way ahead of his time with the kinds of dilemmas he envisioned, and even though a bit dated, Andromeda Strain is still frightening today. Meg

Is There a Doctor in the House? Medical Thrillers

If you went looking online for a definition of the fiction genre, thriller, you would find many, many entries. Princeton’s WordNet puts it simply – “a suspenseful adventure story.” If you scroll a little further down, you come upon Merriam Webster’s online definition which starts to become a bit more complex. A thriller, says MW, is a “work of fiction designed to hold the interest by the use of a high degree of intrigue, adventure or suspense.”

This definition seems a bit more wordy than it needs to be, but it does begin to point to the fact that in today’s genre-filled publishing world there are many different kinds of thriller. This is the first in a series of posts that will discuss three very popular kinds of thriller: medical (in today’s post), technological and conspiracy (in future posts).

Back to our definition search. Putting “medical thriller” in as a search term produces a number of interesting sites to check out. The first that comes up is the Wiki entry for thriller in general, but that entry goes on to discuss 13 (count ‘em – 13!) different sub-categories of thriller, one of which is the medical thriller. The Wiki article says that the medical thriller is one in which the hero/heroine are medical doctors or personnel working to solve an expanding medical problem. The article then goes to on mention several recommended authors of medical thrillers.

The next most interesting result of our search is a link to Library Thing (have you checked this site out?), and a (very long) list of all the titles in Library Thing that have been tagged “medical thriller.” There is no attempt at evaluation here – simply a listing, with those works that have the most tags appearing first.

Most sites and readers of medical thrillers seem to agree that there are three authors who are simply superior at their craft - Robin Cook, Tess Gerritsen and Michael Palmer. Just about any book that you read by these three authors is guaranteed to bring a shiver to your spine and some nervous moments to your brain. Robin Cook’s latest, Intervention, is due out in August. (You may place a hold on it NOW at the library or through the library’s website and online catalog.) Gerristen’s latest is called Keepsake, and Palmers’ newest, The Second Opinion, was just released this past February.

Three other titles that are not part of a series, but that are highly recommended are:

Invasive Procedures by Orson Scott Card

The Eleventh Plague by John S. Marr and John Baldwin

Isolation Ward by Joshua Spanogle.

Give them a try – and let us know what your favorite medical thriller is. Meg