Styling the Thriller

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

In his “Introduction” to the 2006 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, James Patterson, playing the role of editor, reminds readers that the varieties of thrillers is deep and wide, including “the legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, and military thriller, but they have “common ground” in “the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness.” In short, a thriller must thrill (iii).

James Patterson

Thrillers are also fast-paced, Patterson says, and their protagonists achieve “an objective . . . at some heroic cost. The main character's “goal can be personal (trying to save a spouse or a long-lost relative) or global (trying to avert a world war) but often it's both.” There may be a ticking clock (iii). A thriller, he maintains, may “build rhythmically to rousing climaxes that peak with a cathartic, explosive ending,” or a thriller may “start at top speed and never let off” (iii). Thrillers tend to be well-researched and to use “accurate details.” At the end, readers “should feel emotionally satisfied and better informed” (iii).

The collection includes thirty short stories by thirty-three well-known writers, among them Lee Child, James Rollins, David Morrell, John Lescroart, Eric Van Lustbader, F. Paul Wilson, Brad Thor, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. In many of the tales, well-known protagonists make another appearance: Jack Reacher (“James Penney's New Identity”), Joe Kowalski (“Kowalski's in Love”), Repairman Jack (“Interlude at Duane's”), Nick Neumann (“Assassins”), NYPD's Detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta (“The Fisherman”).

Often, the situations on which a thriller is built is as at least as interesting as the story's protagonist and villain, and those in Thriller are, generally, intriguing, even if they are familiar, in large part because of the way their authors handle them. The stories are based on such situations as “an explosion at the U. S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay” (34), street gangs (53), an unexpected storm (68), an empath (89), the setting of a trap for a dangerous former FBI profiler (178), prison life (259), Balkans intrigue (292), a road trip (342), and the theft of an Inca sacrificial knife (542). Most are close to twenty pages in length.

“James Penney's New Identity”

In Lee Child's story, “James Penney's New Identity,” the divorced protagonist is fired from the factory job at which he's worked for seventeen years, because of downsizing. Unable to pay for his new Firebird, Penney burns down his house. The fire also destroys the homes of two of his neighbors. With six weeks' pay in his pocket, from his last check, Penney leaves town. After spending the night in a cheap hotel, he wakes to find that his Firebird has been stolen. He goes to the local police station to report the theft, but sees a wanted poster with his photograph on it; he's wanted for arson and criminal damage. He flees, and, wen a driver offers him a ride, he accepts.

The driver, Jack Reacher, is a military police officer who has false identification documents, which he seized from Edward Hendricks, an Army liaison officer he'd arrested. He lets Penney have a set of the documents, handcuffs him, and, Penney posing as his prisoner, are passed through a police roadblock after the authorities check their identification and record their names.

The men separate, and Reacher disposes of the corpse in the trunk of his car. Lee leaves it to his readers to make the connections between the story's rather over-the-top set of coincidences and figure out their collective significance.

“Gone Fishing”

We don't learn the first names of the on-the-lam duo of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's “Gone Fishing.” They've stolen an Inca sacrificial knife from New York City's Natural History Museum. They'd made a deal to sell the stolen artifact to Lipski, a psychopathic criminal fence, who'd planned, in return, to sell it to a wealthy collector. After stealing the knife, though, Woffler and Perotta decide to cut out Lipski, the “middleman,” and fence the item themselves; failing to find a buyer, they'll melt the knife down for its rubies and gold.

First, however, they plan to lie low and have rented a mountain cabin surrounded by woods near Passumkeag Lake, New Hampshire. On their way to their destination, Perotta annoys Woffler by needlessly drawing attention to them by speeding, sending his hamburger back twice at a restaurant, staring at a tough ex-con in the restaurant and spewing rocks and dust over him as he peels out of the parking lot, and honking at a psychedelic VW bus bearing “Honk if You Support Pro-Choice” bumper stickers.

Soon after their arrival at the cabin, they hear a knock at their front door, but no one is there. They imagine they've heard the sound—then, there's a second knock. Investigating, Woffler sees footprints at the edge of the woods, leading into the forest. At Perotta's insistence, Woffler follows the footprints into the woods. Both men wonder whether his partner plans to double-cross him and abscond with the stolen relic. Perotta also wonders whether their mysterious stalker is the ex-con. Although Perotta also suspects Lipski, he thinks the fence an unlikely suspect. He also dismisses Lipski's potential buyer, who wouldn't know of the theft yet.

Thirty minutes pass. Woffler has not returned to the cabin. Perotta hears what might have been a scream and, arming himself with a flashlight, sets out on his partner's trail. Along the way, he sees what he thinks is a mushroom, then a shell; the object, he realizes to his horror, is, in fact, a severed human ear.

Fleeing, he becomes lost. He suspects the stalker is Lipski, after all; suspicious of Woffler and Perotta, Lipski has followed them. A bloody hand seizes Perotta, but he shakes it off and hastens from the area, still lost. His flashlight illuminates a severed foot, then a decapitated head. A voice threatens to do to Perotta hat was done to other victims.

Natural History Museum, New York City

The story skips forward. Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, NYPD, is on the scene as local investigators bag the body parts. Police have determined that the victims are Woffler and Perotta, employees of New York's natural History Museum. Local police have found the men's wallets and Ids and the stolen knife and called the NYPD, having heard of the heist. D'Agosta warns a local police officer that there will be more victims and that the murders of Woffler and Perotta ave nothing to do with the sacrificial knife they stole, but the officer does not believe D'Agosta.

The story skips ahead again, as the serial killer, The Fisherman, sits inside his psychedelic VW bus, parked by the side of the road leading out of town. A passing car, noting the bumper stickers on his bus, honks. Thankful to God that He has given him another opportunity to “serve” Him by killing and dismembering “another killer of the unborn,” the murderer drives onto the road and follows the carload of his next victims.

Techniques

Child and the writing team of Douglas and Preston use their own techniques to craft their stories, techniques that help them to build their thrillers.

Detective Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragmet

Child uses a straightforward approach, in which he straightforwardly moves from one incident to the next, using a journalistic style in which, despite his stories' intense emotions, seems to present “just the facts,” as Dragnet's Sergeant Friday was fond of saying to witnesses recounting their stories. This happened, and then this, followed by this next thing. His technique lulls the reader into accepting the events, even when they would become hard to believe otherwise. Just what are the chances that a wanted arsonist would encounter a murderer disguised as a police officer—and a military police officer, at that? Whatever they are, the odds become even less likely when the killer just happens to have a few sets of fake Ids in the trunk of his car, the one inside which he's hauling his victim's dead body. However, thanks to Child's disarmingly straightforward, matter-of-fact style, readers are likely to pass over so,me of these “details” or at least pretend to turn a blind eye to them. Child's style, in short, helps readers to maintain a Coleridge an “willing suspension of disbelief.”

Preston and Child pile up details—a lot of them—while tossing half a dozen suspects at readers. The story's incidents snowball, but, at the same time, have a relationship with the other incidents of the story, incidents bound to other incidents and to characters, and characters tied to other characters and to incidents. What is a simple story, when everything is unraveled at the end, seems complex and mysterious in the telling. Who's out there, in the woods (and the swamp), stalking the pair of robbers? The ex-con? Lipski, the fence? Lipski's prospective customer? One or the other of the two robbers himself, intending to double cross his partner in crime? The vengeful spirit associated with the stolen Inca knife of sacrifice? These suspects are linked through the crime Woffler and Perotta have committed; through their road trip; through Perotta's making “scenes” along the way, by speeding, harassing a waitress, eyeballing and dissing an ex-con, and honking at a VW bus parked alongside the highway, during the robbers' drive from New York to New Hampshire; and by the remote cabin they rent in the deep woods. Everything is related, but only one set of relationships, in the end, counts. Preston and Child keep their readers guessing by a style that draws relationships everywhere, at all times.

The juxtaposition of a museum in a world-class city with the barbarism of The Fisherman is also a technique that increases the emotional thrill of the horror in the woods.