Fantasy and Thrillers: Parallel Worlds By Jeff Abbott

    This may be a suicide note to confess on BSCreview.com, given its deep focus—but only recently have I been dipping my readerly toes into fantasy.

    Yes, as a kid I read Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Narnia books, and I’ve read all the Harry Potter books. And for many readers, those Big Three comprise the full range of fantasy literature. I didn’t read much beyond that although what I read I loved: Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles and Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Stopping there didn’t mean that I disliked fantasy—it’s just that at some point in my teen reading authors such as Agatha Christie, Robert Ludlum, and Eric Ambler got my attention and never let go. And as a writer of mystery and thrillers, I’ve long had Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa stacks of books in my own genre to occupy my hours. We’ve been in a bit of another Golden Age of crime fiction, with smart and entertaining writers entering the field (see suggestions below) and dominating bestseller lists.

    But even I can overdose on thrillers—as much as I love them—and I said as much to friends (I love to complain in emails). To my surprise, some of my friends said: go read fantasy or science-fiction. Off I went with my list of books to try, venturing down aisles in the bookstore where I never tread before.

    As I dove into this new reading, I realized that much of what appeals in fantasy and thriller runs on parallel tracks. The books may have markedly different covers; different writing styles; and vastly different scopes. But there is much in the structure and themes of fantasy that thriller readers will recognize, and many elements in thrillers to entice fantasy readers (even if thrillers take place in a less exotic world.) So here are some common elements with authors and books that showcase them best. Thriller fans, put down that silenced Glock and consider the sword. Fantasy readers, stolen information grabbed from a dying spy’s hands can be as interesting as an incantation. After all, isn’t a good read what we all crave?

    Ordinary people put into extraordinary danger. What is so appealing at first about Frodo and Bilbo in Tolkien’s novels? It’s their ordinariness—the sense that their lives are simple, and that they are unprepared for the dangers they’ll face. We want to see how they will adapt in the face of evil in their journeys, and how they will be tempted by ultimate power. This is also an ongoing theme in thrillers, the everyday person who is suddenly thrust into a world he or she cannot understand and more importantly, has no obvious skills to survive. I write this kind of hero myself: the young filmmaker in Panic who discovers everything in his life is a lie, the mental patient in Fear who is targeted by a corporate conspiracy, the young psychologist in Trust Me who stumbles into an e-version of Mordor (okay, not quite, but an online network of truly vicious bastards who decide to hunt him down). Harlan Coben, with his thrillers set in American suburbia (such as Tell No One and Long Lost), and Laura Lippman, with her incisive psychological suspense novels, also excel at putting ordinary people in danger’s way. (Try Life Sentences or What The Dead Know.) We care about these characters, regardless of the genre, because we see ourselves in them.

    The knight errant. We love the hero who comes in to save the day, and then literally rides off in the sunset. Americans tend to think this is a Western trope, but knights errant date back to Arthurian legend. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher (try Persuader) is a superb example of this character in thrillers—the ex-military policeman/drifter who enters town, deals out his unique justice, and moves on to his next challenge. An iconic version of the knight errant in fantasy is David Gemmell’s Druss in Legend, the old lion of a solider who returns to the battlefield for one last time—and to show two armies what heroism is. (How did I find Gemmell? Legend was recommended to me by one of the top parkour runners in Britain, who I was interviewing for research into next year’s book.)

    Intrigue and backstabbing. Underhandedness and conniving make for great elements in villains for either thrillers or fantasy. When I read George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, I was stunned: I hadn’t expected so much wonderful political and familial intrigue, all manifested from the characters’ deep-seated desires. Roger Zelazny’s Amber novels are as much about the politics of the universe’s most powerful (and dysfunctional) family as it is the magic of their world. In thrillers such political gameplaying is oxygen to the blood: try David Baldacci (Last Man Standing) or Brad Meltzer (The Millionaires) for a modern taste, or Patricia Highsmith’s superb novels about con artist and murderer Tom Ripley for a master class in deception and mindgames.

    Unusual pairings of characters. In thrillers the somewhat moral detective is often paired with a sidekick who may be slightly less constrained by virtue. Think of Spenser and Hawk in Robert B. Parker’s novels (start with The Godwulf Manuscript), or the journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the troubled hacker Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s mega-seller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I’ll admit, my limited reading made me think this was more of a thriller element. Jonathan Stroud changed my mind with his terrific Bartimaeus Trilogy, where ambitious wizard Nathaniel and his sharp-tongued djinn servant, Bartimaeus, constantly parry and outwit each other while working together—and each makes choices the other considers morally suspect. In both genres, this abrasive conflict, married to a need to work together toward a common goal, gives us memorable characters.

    A real sense of good and evil. Perhaps more so than many other genres, thrillers and fantasy are concerned with evil: how to know it, how to fight it, and how to overcome both its power and its promises. Often in fantasy or science-fiction the very existence of the world as it is known is at stake. Evil doesn’t have to be mere malice: it can be the chaos of disorder on a grand scale. Here it can take the form of a ruthless hunger for power (The Lord of the Rings), the foolishness of humanity to repeat dire mistakes (Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz), or simply be the absence of civilization (Asimov’s Foundation). In thrillers evil takes a different face: one Nazi’s vicious greed (William Goldman’s Marathon Man), a careful assassin who seek to destroy an icon (Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal), or the fate of the Allies’ success in World War II (Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle). While civilization can hang in the balance, what compels readers in both fields are the personal stakes of the protagonists: we want them to survive, to thrive, to triumph, and we wonder how their trials with evil and chaos will change them.

    I know some of my parallels may seem obvious; others may feel strained. But I do think thriller readers and fantasy readers ought to be bumping into each other much more in the bookstore than they do now. Don’t be afraid to try a new aisle.

    
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_{Jeff Abbott’s eleven suspense novels include the national bestsellers Panic, Fear, and Collision. He is a three-time nominee for the Edgar Award and a two-time nominee for the Anthony Award. Two of his novels are in development at major film studios. Abbott lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.}

_{His latest novel, Trust Me, was published by Dutton this month}

Synopsis for Trust Me:

Luke Dantry tells people he has a job on the cutting edge of the war on terror—only he knows it’s nowhere near as adrenaline-filled as he makes it sound. Luke’s nightly task working for his stepfather’s Washington think tank: Go undercover from the anonymous safety of his computer and infiltrate Web-based, home-grown terrorist networks, cataloging the screen names and details of a motley collection of rage-filled, mentally suspect, and mostly impotent loners he comes to call the Black Road. Now and then he encounters someone who may have the capability to make good on his threats, but Luke figures that the vast majority of his targets are simply frustrated malcontents using the Internet as an empty soapbox.

When Luke is kidnapped at gunpoint, without warning, and left for dead in an isolated cabin deep in the woods, he realizes it must be related to his work, and that the Black Road is far more organized than he thought—and much closer to home than he could have ever imagined. After a daring escape, with both the terrorist group and their enemies on his heels, he must quickly assemble a complex puzzle of convoluted histories and motives, where the final pieces extend deep into his own past—and where Luke himself may hold the key to stopping the Black Road before their spectacular plans come to horrible fruition.

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