by Barbara Kyle
As the author of historical thrillers and contemporary thrillers, I've enjoyed pushing the boundaries of the genre.
It’s often said that a good thriller is like a roller-coaster ride. That's true enough. The genre is about high stakes, countdowns, and suspense, and every compelling thriller delivers this kind of excitement.
But the most satisfying thrillers deliver more: an exciting story that also explores complex issues and has something important to say about our world. This kind of story takes the reader away from the amusement park and sends them on a voyage: an exhilarating journey into a different way of thinking.
I call it the Inspiring Thriller.
An inspiring thriller takes readers beyond their expectations and gives them an insight they never saw coming. “Insight” literally means seeing the truth through and under the surface of things. It’s the inspiring thriller’s job to challenge readers’ acceptance of society’s status quo.
At its heart, an inspiring thriller is always about confronting power.
Power-Busters
Charles Dickens knew this when he used his immensely popular novels to hold a mirror up to the horrors that working-class people suffered under unfettered capitalism in nineteenth-century England.
In our time, bestselling author John Grisham has often done the same with his thrillers about the “little guy” up against some form of corporate bully.
John le Carré’s thrillers train his unflinching focus on the controlling corporate
and political powers that corrode our lives.
Denise Mina, a master of crime fiction, reveals the raw wounds that Glasgow’s poor and powerless suffer, while featuring female central characters who are resilient and resourceful.
Grisham, Le Carré, and Mina use the thriller genre to say what needs to be said.
What’s It All For?
Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer’s Journey, says the final step of any hero’s journey is bringing back an “elixir” to heal the rupture that incited the main character’s risky quest. The elixir might be literal: food for the starving tribe. Or it might be abstract: a hard-won wisdom that heals a shattered family. In a big techno-thriller, it might even heal the world.
Whatever it is, if the hero does not bring back something to share, they remain unenlightened, adolescent. They haven’t grown. And therefore, neither can the reader.
In other words, the roller-coaster ride is all you get.
An inspiring thriller may end in tragedy, or it may end with justice prevailing, or maybe a bittersweet blend of both. Whatever the outcome, readers welcome the experience. We need it.
Because it’s not the roller-coaster ride that satisfies the soul. It’s the voyage.
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