The Day of the Jackal

Frederick Forsyth
(1971)

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

***


The Day of the Jackal has something in common with a couple of the other books I’ve read this year. Just like Casino Royale and The Bourne Identity, it belongs to a surprisingly large sub-genre of thrillers written by men who wanted a career change, decided to sit down and write a bestselling thriller, and then did exactly that. More recently, Lee Child’s Killing Floor is in the same group. I’m not sure there’s any other genre where there’s so many examples of first-time novelists consciously attempting to construct a commercial hit, and managing to pull it off. Perhaps it’s because thrillers and crime novels are perennial bestsellers, and therefore attract the more business-minded authors. Maybe there are similar examples in romance and chick-lit.

But all of that is just background to Frederick Forsyth’s debut thriller. The important thing, and the other thing is shares with the first outings of Bond and Bourne and Reacher, is that it’s awesome.

I’ve always been a sucker for ‘process’ scenes in thrillers. Not procedural, exactly, but process: i.e. the details and minutiae of how elite professionals go about their business. I love reading about all of the various obscure signs and tells James Bond looks out for to confirm how Goldfinger cheats at Canasta. I like to know exactly how Reacher manages to function with only an ATM card and a toothbrush, and what logistical issues he has to overcome to do so. I get really into the parts of Joseph Finder books where he talks about the various technological sleights of hand his hero uses to steal a password. I love all of that stuff just as much as I love the car chases and gunfights. Perhaps more than I love the car chases and gunfights. Maybe that’s just me, although judging by the success of books like these, I doubt it.

Anyway, The Day of the Jackal is a novel that’s pretty much entirely composed of stuff like this, so obviously I loved it.

The book is split into three parts: Anatomy of a Plot, Anatomy of a Manhunt and Anatomy of a Kill, and each part does exactly what it tells you it’s going to do. Opening with a nailbiting account of a true-life assassination attempt that fully exploits Forsyth’s background in journalism, part one takes you through every detail of a plot to kill French president Charles de Gaulle, from the dissidents coming up with a last-ditch plan, to the recruitment of a master assassin – The Jackal – and his meticulous preparations from then on.

Part two shifts focus to the attempts by the French authorities, and one dogged French cop in particular, to track the killer down and foil his plan. Again, it’s all about the process: chasing down leads, finding traces of the killer, second-guessing his plan. The final part, inevitably, is where the two halves of the book converge.

It’s the best-constructed thriller I can remember reading. It’s testament to how well-written and well-designed (odd to be describing a book as designed, but that's exactly what it is) the book is that you’re on the edge of the seat at all times, even though the reader starts the book with the knowledge that the Jackal will not succeed, because Charles de Gaulle was not assassinated in 1963. In some ways, it resembles James Ellroy’s American Tabloid: the outcome of the assassination attempt is never in doubt, but you keep reading for the characters and the twists and the intricate details of dangerous professions and lost worlds.

What I learned: how people do things can be every bit as engaging as what they do.

Cinnamon Skin

John D. MacDonald
(1984)

There are no hundred-percent heroes.

***


The last time I read a Travis McGee book was about a decade ago, so picking up Cinnamon Skin was like catching up on an old friend from college. The main reason for the gap between reading the last one (Freefall in Crimson, if memory serves) was nothing to do with the quality of the product and everything to do with availability. I can't remember the last time I saw a Travis McGee paperback in a bookshop, library or even a charity shop.

I don't know if these books are out of print worldwide, or just in the UK, but either way it's a mystery: firstly because it's a great example of a mainstream thriller series, secondly because MacDonald has influenced a lot of today's bestsellers, notably one Lee Child.

Reading this book in 2013 it becomes clear that Travis McGee is the missing link between Philip Marlowe and Jack Reacher: a tough, world-weary detective who operates outside the system and is given to bouts of philosophising between fist fights.

With some honourable exceptions, I've always preferred my thriller protagonists to be PIs and amateurs rather than cops: there's something about the lone individual operating outside of the system that's somehow fundamental to the form. I've read and enjoyed straight-up procedurals too, but for me you lose something when the hero has too much official help and too many resources. The cops I do like tend to be the mavericks like Harry Bosch and John Rebus: men who are often at odds with their superiors and who tend to solve the case despite their respective law enforcement organisations rather than because of them.

McGee is positioned even more outside of the system than most: he's not even a licenced private detective, rather a 'salvage expert' who takes on hopeless causes, taking fifty percent of the value of the item recovered in lieu of expenses. He's light on roots and possessions, living on a boat moored in Fort Lauderdale - not quite the zen minimalism of Jack Reacher's existence, but absolutely along the same lines. It's a great setup for a protagonist as it doesn't tie him down to one job or one city or one type of case.

Cinnamon Skin is different from the earlier books in that the case is personal. When McGee's best friend Meyer's niece is killed in a boat explosion, the evidence suggests her new husband is responsible, and the pair embark on a quest to track this killer down. The plot is fairly linear and straightforward, leading to a satisfying showdown, but as always, plot is almost incidental. It takes a back seat to MacDonald's rich characterisation and scene-setting, with plenty of the aforementioned philosophising from Travis McGee as narrator. One passage in particular is prescient as McGee muses in the early 80s about a brave new world faciliated by computers, where people can read books and by products without leaving the comfort of their own bedroom.

What I learned: you have more freedom with a lone wolf protagonist; unique characters are more important than a unique plot

The Bourne Identity

Robert Ludlum
(1980)

The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp.

***

After reading a couple of James Bond books, I thought it was time to read the debut of another well-travelled superspy who shares the shame initials. Jason Bourne is familiar to most as the hero of the three excellent movies loosely based on Robert Ludlum's trilogy of books.

'Loosely' is the operative word: the Matt Damon movies lift the opening of Identity and then basically do their own damn thing from there on out, and are no poorer for it. To be fair, it would have been kind of difficult to do a straight adaptation in the 21st Century, since Carlos the Jackal, the book's éminence grise, has been languishing in a French jail since 1994. In any case, I've always believed the best movie adaptations are not often the most faithful adaptations (as in the case of LA Confidential, or The Shining). I'm perfectly happy if a book and movie are their own distinct things.

In sharp contrast to the movies directed by Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass (sorry to keep harking back to them, but they do cast a long shadow), Ludlum's Bourne Identity feels comfortably old-fashioned. It reads a like the prototypical airport blockbuster, featuring dastardly bad guys, a chase across a continent, and a mysterious but supremely capable man-of-action as its protagonist. The prose is often purple (the opening line quoted above is understated compared to some of the later passages), but enjoyably so, and Ludlum keeps the pace up so effectively that the book feels shorter than it actually is.

Ludlum is gloriously unconcerned with literary pretensions, and instead concentrates on what the reader of this type of book really wants: knowledgeably-described locations, international intrigue and detailed descriptions of assorted weaponry. Most of all, he gives us a very cool hero who can shoot or asskick his way out of any given situation, and with a past so mysterious it's a mystery even to him. Strip everything else away, and those are exactly the same elements the films retain, updated to reflect 21st Century geopolitics.

What I learned: see above - well-drawn locations and a well-drawn character go a long way.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Ian Fleming
(1963)

It was one of those Septembers when it seemed like the summer would never end.

***

OHMSS needs no introduction to fans of the 1969 film, the sole Bond outing for George Lazenby. Unusually for a Bond film, Peter Hunt's adaptation hews fairly close to the literary source, following Bond as he falls in love, faces off against Ernst Stavro Blofeld and gets married, all while enjoying a range of winter sports.

This is the second Bond I've read recently, after Casino Royale, and it's interesting to compare Fleming's style at the beginning and end of his career as a thriller author. Casino Royale was, of course, the first James Bond novel, while OHMSS was published a year before Fleming's death, by which time his creation was a household name.

The first thing to notice is that, while all of the requisite Bond elements (summed up a little glibly by Paul Johnson in the New Statesman as "sex, sadism and snobbery") are in place, the writing style is noticeably different. Fleming cuts loose with a good few hundred exclamation marks, many of them within the narration rather than the dialogue. It's an interesting and confident approach... some might say over-confident. In places it feels like Bond is relating the story in the manner of an exciteable teenage girl.

Fleming just about gets away with it, and that's because the breathless style is hitched to one of his strongest stories, as Bond investigates a genocidal plot in the Swiss Alps. The skiing scenes are thrillingly told, once you become accustomed to the exclamation marks, and Fleming's genius for scene-setting is as potent as ever.

Spoilers below, if you've never seen the movie.

Of course, the thing everyone remembers about this book (and the cinematic version) is the end, when Bond's new bride Tracy is gunned down by Blofeld in a drive-by revenge attack. As in Casino Royale, the tragedy is heavily foreshadowed by Bond's sheer happiness in the pages leading up to the climax. The epitome of bachelorhood, Bond could never be allowed to settle down. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, killing any love interest that threatens to tie the hero down.

You can understand why it's such a temptation for authors, because it accomplishes two important tasks: resolving a tricky story problem while at the same time creating some high drama. You could accuse Fleming of taking the easy way out here, but the execution is so well done that it's hard to complain. I've always been partial to a downbeat ending, and OHMSS doesn't disappoint.

What I learned:

• if in doubt, kill the love interest
• a dramatic setting works wonders if you get the balance of description to action right, as Fleming assuredly does here

Casino Royale

 

Ian Fleming
(1953)

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.

***

Despite being a fan of the cinematic adventures of Mr Bond, I'd only got around to reading one of the original books before now. I'd enjoyed From Russia With Love when I read it about ten years ago, but I remember having to work at the prose. I'm a fan of fairly spare, stripped-down description in books (although it's not always a discipline I can adhere to as a writer), and I remember Fleming being at the opposite extreme: lots of thin, cruel lips and aquiline noses and clothes described in the kind of obsessive detail that Brett Easton Ellis employed for effect in American Psycho.

Bearing that in mind, it came as a pleasant surprise how easy Casino Royale is to read. It's not that it's different from what I expected in terms of writing style, it's exactly what I expected... and yet I found myself tearing through the book in the space of a day. Fleming spends pages describing locations, characters and clothing, and yet it doesn't detract from the readability of the book at all. He even spends an entire chapter explaining the rules of Baccarat... and I wasn't bored. I just wanted to play Baccarat.

This was Fleming's first novel, and as such, it's an odd example of the species. For a thriller, it's light on action (although that could just be my gauche twenty-first century sensibilities), and the plot is very unconventionally structured, with the main conflict resolved two-thirds of the way in by Deus ex Machina. There's the aforementioned obsession with detail and description, and at times it seems as though Fleming is more interested in converying to the reader a sense of an exclusive and unique world, rather than being overly concerned with plot or character.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this is one of Casino Royale's biggest strengths: it transports you to the glamorous world of high-stakes gambling on the continent in the early 1950s, and weaves in just enough sex, violence and mystery to remind you that it's a novel, rather than an engaging piece of journalism. At times, that's exactly how I was enjoying the book: the same way I enjoy long-form magazine articles that introduce me to a world I've never visited. Unfortunately for me, I was born fifty years too late to visit this particular world.

Spoiler warning, because I'm going to talk about the ending.

Fleming often comes in for a bruising about his attitudes towards women, and it's easy to hold up the fate of original Bond girl Vesper Lynd in this debut offering. Blackmailed by SMERSH into betraying Bond, she ultimately commits suicide as the only way to extract herself from an impossible situation. Bond internalises his feelings, informing his superiors of the situation by phone: "3030 was a double, working for Redland. Yes, dammit, I said 'was'. The bitch is dead now."

It's already one of my favourite last lines in literature. Out of context it comes across as cold, even misogynistic, but in the context of the book, it's anything but. Fleming spends most of the book delineating Bond as a man whose demonstrative success with women is undermined by the fact he clearly doesn't have a clue about what makes them tick. Throughout the book, Bond is bemused, irritated and infatuated by Vesper in turns. By allowing himself to fall for Vesper and leaving himself open to the resulting heartbreak, the ultimate capable man has managed to get in out of his depth. That's why, despite appearances, the anger in that last sentence is directed squarely at himself.

What I learned: a good opening line is important, but a killer final line is what resonates.

2013: my year of thrillers

Change of pace for the blog in the new year, partially in response to some changes in how I'm going to be writing and publishing from now on (more details to follow soon, I hope). I'll still post occasionally about my e-publishing experience, but I'm going to shift the focus more towards what really matters: reading books and writing books.

One of my new year's resolutions for 2013 was to make a concerted effort to read more books, and in particular, more classic thrillers. I've not exactly been a slouch in this matter up until now, but a gift of  the James Bond DVD boxset over Christmas reminded me that I'd only read one of the original books: JFK's own favourite, From Russia With Love.

I quickly resolved to remedy this by tackling the Bond novels, starting with Casino Royale. But when I got started thinking about it, I asked myself, why stop with Fleming?

There are a ton of classic thrillers and crime fiction classics I've had sitting on my 'to read' list for years: Ludlum's Bourne Identity, Forsyth's Day of the Jackal, Le Carre's Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Plenty of classic noir I've yet to read, too: I've only read one Dashiell Hammett, one Jim Thompson and one James M. Cain to date. Raymond Chandler's had a better strike rate with me, but incredibly I've still to get around to The Long Goodbye.

From dead Americans to live Brits - I'd like to read some more Simon Kernick, and maybe some Stephen Leather. The latest couple of Matt Hilton's books look intriguing, and I've been meaning to check out some of Ian Rankin's early non-Rebus spy thrillers.

No doubt there'll be the regular installments from Lee Child and Michael Connelly - just because I'm touring the canon doesn't mean I have to neglect the modern masters. And then there's John D Macdonald's Travis McGee series - I've been meaning to get around to reading the rest of them for years...

It's February, so I've got through a few of the names on my list already, and will be playing catch-up posting my thoughts over the next few days. My goal is two-fold - I'm reading books I've wanted to get around to for years, but I'm also immersing myself in my chosen profession. I'm doing okay as a new thriller author, but I want to be the best I can be. The quickest way to do that is to learn from the best.

That's why I'm changing the name of the blog to Thriller School. Over the next year, I'm going to read my way through as many great thrillers as I can find: new and old, American, British or further afield. I'm going to give my brief observations on each book once I finish it, and in each case, wrap it up with one thing I as a writer have learned from the book.

I hope you like my journey through the pantheon of crime and thriller authors, and I hope I can stimulate the occasional conversation. I'm very open to suggestions, even though my existing list means I won't run out of books any time this decade.

I do know two things: I'm going to have a lot of fun reading, and I'm going to be a better writer at the end of the year.

Why I'm leaving Amazon's KDP Select program... and how I'm going to save you 99 cents

Having signed up to Amazon’s KDP Select program for most of the year, I’ve decided that it’s time to experiment with making my books available on other platforms.

KDP Select requires you to make Amazon your exclusive sales platform for a period of 3 months at a time. In return, they give you the option to make your book free for up to 5 days in that period (normally the lowest you can price your book is $0.99), and your book is eligible for lending in the Kindle library (which means you get a royalty for each ‘borrow’ by an Amazon Prime member).

I’ve had mixed results with the free promotions tool. In theory, the benefit is that if lots of people download your book for free, it bumps it up the sales chart and means you appear in the ‘customers who bought this also bought this’ cross-promotion. I had some success with this a few months ago when a free promo over three days led to several hundred paid sales of Halfway to Hell.

Lately, however, I've found that the free promotions have been having less and less of an effect on paid sales. I’ve heard that Amazon has changed its algorithm so that free ‘sales’ no longer have an impact on paid sales rankings… rendering what was the main perk of KDP Select pretty much useless.

So my decision is a no-brainer – I’ll still be in a relationship with Amazon, but it's no longer fulfilling all my needs. Therefore I’m going to screw around a bit behind Amazon’s back and see other sales platforms on the side at weekends.

I’ve uploaded all of my Kindle books to Smashwords. It’s not as pretty as Amazon at first glance, but I quickly discovered that the formatting and submissions process is much, much more straightforward compared to Amazon's borderline-sadistic formatting gauntlet.

Smashwords allows customers to buy directly from them, and also distributes books which meet their vetting guidelines to Amazon’s competitors, like Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, Sony, Diesel etc, meaning your ebook isn’t limited to Kindle owners. Smashwords provides an even better royalty rate than Amazon (80% as compared to a maximum 70%), and you have more control over how you choose to sell your book. You can specify any sample size up to 50%, and even better, you can make books free all of the time.

Obviously, I don’t want to make my all of my books free, but this provides a great marketing tool that is, at present, jealously-guarded by Amazon. I’ve blogged before about my idea of using short story bundles as ‘singles’ to promote my ‘album’ (i.e. the novel), but this lets me go one step further.

I’ve selected one of my short stories – ‘The Room’, from the collection The Misfortune Teller – to be permanently free through Smashwords and its associated vendors. ‘The Room’ is a 4,000-word psychological thriller, a sort of Facebook-age Rear Window. I picked it for a couple of reasons: firstly it’s one of my best stories, and secondly because the subject matter is appropriate to an electronic book marketed via social networking. Naturally, the package includes the first chapter of Halfway to Hell. By making the story absolutely free to anyone, I can get the maximum number of people to read it. If the people who read ‘The Room’ like it, they’ll read the sample chapter. If they like the sample chapter, they can buy the book.

Smashwords doesn’t have the same kind of traffic as Amazon, and most people don’t sell as many copies through this platform as they would on Amazon, but the flexibility you get makes it more than worthwhile.

The other thing I’m hoping will happen is that, now that I’ve also published ‘The Room’ to Kindle at the minimum price, Amazon will honour their price match promise and reduce the story to free for Kindle as well. I've already sold one copy at 99 cents, which actually irritates me. I don't want to sell one copy at 99 cents, I want to give away thousands of copies at 0 cents. I want to give as many people as possible the opportunity to read my work gratis.

If you’d like to be one of them, you can download your free copy of 'The Room' for any platform direct from the link below.

As I said, it’s also available at Amazon, but don’t buy it from there as it will cost you 99 cents that you don't need to spend. Feel free to use Amazon’s ‘report a lower price’ button to nag them about this – it would help me target a whole lot of Kindle customers with some free publicity… and that’s the only kind of publicity I can afford.

The Room - a tale of murder in the social networking age

 

Available free for all formats from Smashwords

Also available (but not yet free) from Amazon US and Amazon UK

 

 

He had two problems: a broken leg and terminal boredom.

 

The long days and nights alone in his flat after an accident lead an incapactitated young student to renounce his aversion to the internet and take his first tentative steps into the world wide web.

 

Before long, he finds himself entering a new kind of social network: an online self-help community called simply 'The Room'. The experience of eavesdropping on the lives of others quickly becomes addictive, and the members of The Room seem welcoming enough.

 

But then something changes: a man called Bryan confesses to a murder. It could be a fantasy, or a sick joke, but it's not. And the terror doesn't stay online for long...

 

~

THE ROOM is a tale of murder in the age of social networking. A dark psychological thriller of curiosity and killing that has been called a Rear Window for the Facebook generation.

Also includes as a bonus feature the first chapter of Gavin Bell's full-length thriller: Halfway to Hell.

Short story length: 4000 words approx.

 

THE ROOM is also available as part of the story collection THE MISFORTUNE TELLER: 3 STORIES OF CRIME