Thrillers Archive |
A Gifted Thriller Novelist Names 5 Great Thrillers - Guest Butler Alan Hruska wrote a thriller I actually finished. And liked. A rare event. I asked him why someone so talented would write a thriller. This is his reponse. ------ Good
Alan Furst: The Foreign Correspondent - The heroes of international thrillers are usually manly men, built on the John Wayne model. If they have inner lives, they're in flight from them. Women are simply
Compulsion - Let's say that someone wants to kill four people, all in the same house, so quickly that no one can confront him --- and then disappear into the night, never
David C. Taylor: Night Watch - I couldn’t write a thriller. I write books and plays that are essentially love stories. That is, two people in a room. Five major characters – that’s probably my limit. It
Defectors: A Novel - At a college where everyone seemed astronomically bright, Joe Kanon was the bright guy who was also astronomically nice. That is a winning combination in some professions. He wisely chose
Everything You Need to Know About Tana French - A writer has a book coming out in two months. When was the last time the Times did a feature about the writer that promotes her previous books –-- all
I’m Thinking of Ending Things - You may not want to read “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” but you will. With a pounding heart. And flying fingers --- I read all 210 pages in two
L.A. Burning - I don’t read thrillers, and that goes double for thrillers with a detective as the main character, but a friend introduced me to David Taylor, who had written “Night Life,”
Night Life - How often do I read thrillers? Rarely. How often do I stay up until 3 AM, manically turning pages so I can see how a thriller ends? Never. And yet reading
Night Watch - HEAD BUTLER'S BUSINESS MODEL: Butler is fueled by Patreon, a click-to-donate site that allows you to make an automatic monthly contribution to Butler. ---- SHOPPING ON AMAZON: You start here, buy
Night Work - READER REVIEW: "Just finished both Taylor books. Only writer to approach Robert Parker, in my view." I don’t read thrillers, and I especially don’t read thrillers with police as square-jawed heroes,
Peter Temple - Peter Temple died in 2018. His death was a loss to readers who like novels that seem to be about crime but are really about much more. And it was
Peter Temple: Identity Theory - Johannesburg, 2 PM on a weekday. Here is Niemand, no first name. He's working out. Inside. "Outdoors had become trouble, like being attacked by three men, one with a nail-studded
Peter Temple: The Broken Shore - Peter Temple is two of the best writers I know. He's the best novelist writing about crime in Australia and one of the best crime writers on the planet. And then he’s
See you in September? Yes, but I leave these for you - SHOPPING ON AMAZON: The business model of this site is Amazon. You start here, buy something there, Butler gets a commission. And not just on the item reviewed. Anything you
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” — The Authorized Graphic Adaptation - Shirley Jackson’s short story "The Lottery" was published in The New Yorker 75 years ago, in the issue of June 26, 1948. It caused an immediate sensation. Some readers wrote
Somerset Maugham: Ashenden - Raymond Chandler: "'Ashenden' is far ahead of any other spy story ever written… It reads as though there were always something vague and sinister just behind the curtain. In most
Sunrise Highway - Thirteen-year-old Johnny Pius was killed in 1979 in a way that is remembered on Long Island even now: 6 rocks stuffed down his throat. Homicide police interrogated four neighborhood teenagers;
The Day of the Jackal - “It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.” That’s
The Intrusions - I had a deadline. But I started to read “The Intrusions,” and then it was 3 AM, and I still have a deadline. Consider yourself warned. If you read this book,
