The Abominable Thirty-Nine Steps

You can't read or write thrillers without coming across a book entitled The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. You probably first encounter it because of the Hitchcock film, or maybe another author or reviewer mentions it. I think I first came across it as an OTR adaptation, and later Buchan's work was mentioned as a precursor to Ian Fleming's novels. The Thirty-Nine Steps is touted as the "original thriller" that sets the table for every thriller that followed. By that, the critics are correct, first is first; however, it's not a good book.

The hero, Richard Hannay, in one of the strangest introductions ever written, is told of a sinister plot. The teller of the tale is murdered, and poor Dick is on the run. He has to stop the dastardly villains before they strike, or all is lost. Instead of taking direct action, Hannay spends 99% of the book running through the Scottish countryside hiding in bushes. He's being hunted by the villains, but not terribly efficiently. Every person he comes across is able to somehow assist him, and the string of coincidences Buchan expects us to swallow along the way are too much. Compared to The Thirty-Nine Steps, the television series 24 is the epitome of logic. In one sequence, for example, Hannay is captured and put in a farm shed. A mining engineer by trade, Hannay quickly deduces that there is material in the shed with which he can make a jolly good bomb! Right-O, let's blast our way out so we can go back to running through the bushes! The book is loaded with such "it just so happened" events that strain your sense of disbelief. It becomes a joke.

At 118 pages (in my Collins Classic edition), the story is thin. It's generic by today's standards, but there's a reason for that. Buchan may have been a pioneer in what we call a thriller today, but, in this book, he did nothing but lay a foundation upon which the rest of us have built the house. Pioneers may set the stage, but it's those who carry on that really take the creation and do something with it. Pick any of the old masters, and their modern counterparts do it better. The Mike Hammer novels may have been huge in their day, but they lack the scope and creativity of the Nate Heller books. Max Allan Collins took what Spillane built and greatly improved the concept. When you read Spillane afterwards, you wonder why he kept repeating the same ideas. Count how many "best buddies" Mike Hammer has to avenge to see what I mean. If you only have Kiss Me, Deadly and One Lonely Night, you have the best examples of Spillane available. Meanwhile, Collins always does something fresh. Not one Heller book is the same as another.

If I may borrow Raymond Chandler's opinion regarding the mystery story, no thriller has yet been written that can be considered so perfect that it cannot be surpassed by another. This is why we continue to assault the citadel. For that, we can thank John Buchan. We like to read thrillers, and a lot of us like to write them. They're fun and exciting. There's nothing better than a good thriller, and nothing worse than a bad one. While I appreciate Buchan's effort, I'm afraid The Thirty-Nine Steps is simply a decent beach book, but hardly a classic.

Frederick Forsyth, Modern Master

Nobody, and I mean nobody, weaves a plot like Frederick Forsyth. He's one of the reasons I think British thriller writers are better than American, and not because of his extreme, almost zealous, attention to details, but because he layers plot points like no other author I can think of, and, unlike his American counterparts, doesn't have to spice his narrative with shoot outs, car chases, or exposed girl parts, to keep a reader interested. He's plot and story, meat and potatoes, and if you want something on the side, you need to look elsewhere.

I'm late to the Forsyth party. I understand he's far past his heyday of the '70s and '80s, but he still turns out good work, and his classics are still very readable. In this example, I am talking about The Fourth Protocol, which was written in 1984. It was the first Forsyth book I read, around 1988, I think, when I was in 6th grade and had just discovered Ian Fleming. Since Forsyth seemed like the modern equivalent, I gave him a try, but my comprehension levels at that age were not what they are today, and I could barely keep up. I thought the movie was better, because it eschewed most of the intricate plotting in favor of car chases, shoot outs, and exposed girl parts. Today, it is the opposite. From Icon to Avenger to Protocol (those are the books I've read so far), Forsyth delivers the goods.

The plot of Protocol features a renegade KGB operation to detonate a small nuke in the UK in order to influence a coming election. That alone sounds like a nice 60,000 word paperback potboiler or 90-minute B-movie, but try doubling that length to get the scope of the story. Forsyth provides great details on the workings of MI5 and MI6, who are tasked with tracking down the KGB agent assigned to the mission. You get the feeling that if something like this actually happened, this is how the British would solve the problem. We get tangents that don't seem to have anything to do with the main plot, but are actually critical to the outcome, and I wish I could describe how Forsyth weaves it all together. With some of those tangents, their relation to the rest of the book isn't revealed until the very last page. And then it hits you like a sledgehammer--you never see the twist coming. It's like looking at a master's painting. You can see what was done, but you have no idea how to duplicate it or even explain to a bystander why it's as amazing as it is. Those of us who know, though, and recognize a true craftsman, can appreciate the end result and be envious of how the master created the piece. And, maybe, someday, we'll be that good too. He is worth not only reading for entertainment, but for how to get better as a writer.

Not that he doesn't have flaws. Most of Forsyth's characters are ciphers. We know very little about them, they have very little, even minor, characterization, yet somehow, despite that, he hooks you. The characters really don't matter, they could be anybody, but he gives them names so we can tell them somewhat apart. It's the story that grabs you, and how Forsyth connects all the dots, and the details of how spies work, that makes these books rise above. If he were writing straight potboilers, the effect would not be the same.

I don't think Forsyth could sell today, at least to the Big 5. There are 100 reasons his books shouldn't work, but they do work, and work well indeed. We can be glad he started when he did, and thankful that his long-established fan base keeps him in print and in business.

Anyway I'm enjoying his books a lot, and he's still alive and kicking, so maybe we'll get a few more. Up next is The Day of The Jackal, his first, and I'm sure it will deliver the goods too.

Elmore Leonard: Aw, hell....

Today we learned that Elmore Leonard passed away. When I read a few weeks ago that he had suffered a stroke, I figured today's news would reach us sooner rather than later. Strokes are nasty. Nobody ever really recovers from them.

I won't repeat in this space how terrific Leonard was as a writer; we already know that. I did not read his entire body of work, but I read enough to know that he was a major player and anybody who said otherwise was illiterate at best or stupid at worst.

If Elmore Leonard inspired me in any way, it was to stick to my guns at a time when other writer friends, and even family members, were telling me that my crime stories weren't  "in vogue" and I needed to write something "more commercial that would sell" and then I could "write what I want."

I gave in. I hated myself for it, but I gave in. And then I read Leonard's introduction to a reprint of The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins.

I had never read Eddie Coyle or followed Higgins, but I knew he had died just prior to the release of the reprint (Leonard mentions his death in the intro), so I gave it a look. In the intro, Leonard wrote of how Higgins inspired him to stick to his own guns. He was writing about his criminals, you see, and publishers were telling him that he needed characters who were sympathetic and likable. He disagreed, and continued to face complications because of it. Higgins, he said, had the same problem, and was once dropped by an agent because of his stubbornness. Higgins, though, carried on, and became a success.

Leonard said: "Let this be an inspiration to beginning writers discouraged by one rejection after another. If you believe you know what you’re doing, you have to give publishers time to catch up and catch on."

When I read that, I bought the book. I absolutely had to have that book. Even if it wound up being a lousy book (it wasn't), I needed to have that introduction handy so I could go back to it time and time again. I knew what Leonard wrote would be important to have--sometimes you have to let them catch up and catch on. Best advice ever.

I don't write very much in the crime genre anymore, having found the series character--international adventurer Steve Dane--that I want to write about for the rest of my life, who is more in line with James Bond than Chili Palmer, but the advice still resonates, because some choices I make with my books aren't necessarily popular with everybody (adding humor, breaking the fourth wall, etc.).

I refuse to try and please anybody but myself. I learned that, more than anything else, from Elmore Leonard. And for that, I am grateful.

I don't always read books....

To coincide with the release of The Rogue Gentleman in paperback, the ebook is free until Friday! If you download it, all I ask in return is a review, whether or not you liked it.

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Fleming Find: The Man With The Golden Gun

I wish I had my digital camera to post a picture of this but it's in a box somewhere....

Anyway I was browsing through a used bookshop I had never visited before, and low and behold I found a stack of Ian Fleming hardcovers! Wow! Never before have I found such a treasure. I have a partial set of Fleming hardcovers already, but they are reprints, and the publisher did not do the entire series. Only Golden Gun and Octopussy were left out of the line-up, and I pretty much never thought I'd have even a shot at completing the set, but now I'm jazzed to find Octopussy.

I'm sure this book is a reprint. It does not have a dust-jacket, but the price (under $10) was right, so I grabbed it.

The Man with the Golden Gun was Fleming's last book, as you probably know. He died before putting the finishing polish on the story, and it shows in spots. I think the first two chapters are some of the best in spy fiction, as Bond returns from a stint in Russia where he was brainwashed to kill M. It's a terrific sequence, full of tension and suspense; after that, Bond is off on what is described as a suicide mission, but the stakes never really rise to that level. It's a pedestrian mission, really. There's a good bit of shooting at the end, and the last chapter really does put a lid on Bond.

If this is all we ever had to finish the series, it's not a bad dose. It's not the best, but it's not the worst, and Heaven knows that Fleming phoned it in a few times while perfectly healthy (a giant squid in Dr. No? Really, Ian?) so we can cut him some slack here.

Of course, much later after Fleming died, came the continuations. I don't talk much about them, though I did like John Gardner's work, especially Licence Renewed, which I've always considered a home run. I think his first three Bond books were very good. We can nitpick those at a later date, perhaps. In fact, I'd like to. Better go get the Gardner reprints and see if I can find the first continuation, Colonel Sun.....the less I say about Raymond Benson's work, the better. Benson is a fine writer, but I didn't like his version of James Bond one bit.

So where's Octopussy hiding?

Published...Sort Of

A few months ago fellow thriller scribe Matt Hilton sent out a call for submissions for an ebook anthology he wanted to produce called Action: Pulse Pounding Tales Volume 2, which you can now buy on Amazon for your Kindle. I sent Matt a story called THE FIXER which I submitted under my new pen name of Dean Breckenridge. I thought this would be a great way to introduce the Breckenridge name as novels based on the characters in THE FIXER are on the way. An author never assumes he'll be accepted first shot out of the box so imagine my surprise when Matt wrote to tell me he not only wanted my story but, despite

my asking, did not require any revision.

THE FIXER is hard-boiled crime piece and features a character named Wolf who is a middleman between cops and crooks. Sometimes justice needs a little help, and that's when Wolf comes in. If you have nobody else to turn to or if you're getting a raw deal, he'll be there. He answers to nobody but himself so he has no problem ruffling feathers on either side. And ruffle them he does.

Personally, I don't think THE FIXER is all that great. It's a character piece that I wrote to "practice" with the new concept. I'm not even sure how it blends with the continuity established in the novel featuring these characters; I may expand it into a full novel at some point, or I may ignore it entirely. This is the third time in 13 years of selling stories that something I've written has been accepted as-is. Let that be a lesson to those of you trying to figure out what's wrong with your story when it comes back with a rejection. Chances are, there's nothing wrong with it at all. You need to keep sending it out until you find an editor who likes it. When it comes back, send it out again. Don't even mess with the manuscript for one second. Not one. Not one single second. Don't even look at it.

I started using the Breckenridge name for hard-boiled pieces while I will continue to churn out thrillers under my real name. I think there should be separate brands, if you will, for each type of story, since they are different from each other, and those who read thrillers may not like crime stories and the other way around. The hard-boiled stories that have previously appeared as by Brian Drake will reappear under that name once I get some new covers--soon, I promise--as there is no reason to put them out under the new name when readers are used to seeing them under mine. But from now on, that won't be the case.

Anyway, should you be interested, ACTION 2 includes a terrific cast of writers who you should keep your eyes on, such as my pal Paul D. Brazill who has been kind enough to mention my work on his blog. Matt Hilton is tops, too, by the way. Why he hasn't had wider recognition I do not understand, but his Joe Hunter character is somebody you want on your side. I've often said that British writers are better than American writers, and he proves the point once again. So thank you, Matt, for the opportunity; I hope ACTION 2 brings you the audience you deserve.