Gregg Hurwitz

High-stakes­ a ticking clock­ violence on the page­
the audience's being aware of the villain's plotting‹odds are
you're already familiar with the elements that define a thriller if
you've found your way to this website. You've also likely stumbled over
the classic blurb and jacket-copy catch-phrases that these fundamentals,
when well executed, give rise to: "breakneck pacing," "white-knuckle
action," "roller-coaster ride," "better than CATS."
Okay, so maybe not the last one.

The bottom line is, thrillers are often badder, meaner, and bigger
than other forms of crime fiction. Think Thomas Harris over Agatha Christie,
or, in other mediums, 24 over MURDER, SHE WROTE, or IN THE LINE OF FIRE
over SLEUTH. In a thriller, you're more likely to find Dr. Lecter in
the kitchen with liver and fava beans than Colonel Mustard in the conservatory
with the candlestick. So it goes. Concerned parent groups lobby here.

Having the reader in the pretentiously titled "superior"
position - meaning they're riding shotgun with the good guys AND the
bad guys through various scenes - of course doesn't mean that there
aren't surprises (or, in blurbspeak "more twists and turns than
a.."). I tend to structure my books so that the reader follows
both sides of an impending collision, but the scenes with the antagonists
I write a bit more hazy on specifics, so it's never entirely clear what
they're up to or when the plot is going to reverse itself. Toward the
end of a book, I'll often have my antagonist fall out of the plot for
several chapters, so his or her reappearance is startling - surprising
due to machinations set in motion while the author (poor sod) took his
eye off the ball.

When this balance between what is shown and what is withheld is struck,
readers get to have their cake and eat it too. They get all the excitement
of the Red Dragon planning his next slaughter, yet also all the shock
of Francis Dolarhyde paying a violent visit to Will Graham's house in
the novel's closing pages. We're shown a lot, but we still don't know
what's going to happen next. Great thrillers hook us like that - we
gorge ourselves all the way along, yet our appetite only increases.
When I read RED DRAGON , I was living alone in a two-room apartment.
At one a.m., I set down the book and checked under every bed and in
every closet in the place. At three a.m., behind my locked bedroom door,
I finished it. Still awake at four, I started rereading THE SILENCE
OF THE LAMBS . So go the confessions of a thriller junkie.

As a rule, research seems to play a significant role in thrillers.
Of course, authors of other genres can be brilliant researchers (here
I envision Tom Wolfe bludgeoning me with an ivory-headed cane for my
crass generalization) but thriller writers in particular seem to enjoy
rolling up their sleeves and getting dirt under their fingernails. Maybe
this is because thrillers are rife with bomb-making and forensic trails-try
writing about THOSE convincingly without doing some field work.

I use my books almost as an excuse for continuing education. I've sneaked
onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs to blow up cars, conducted an
interview with a hospital tech as he carved up a cadaver to deliver
its parts to dissection lab, and most recently for THE PROGRAM , I went
undercover into mind-control cults in Los Angeles so I could create
my own cult (for the novel, that is - or I suppose in real life too
if I ever get bored). Interacting with cult members, witnessing the
effusive testimonials, participating in group exercises, and submitting
to "testing" gave me the background I needed to add the telling
detail to give THE PROGRAM its verisimilitude. I suppose that's what
I love the most about thrillers - it's as much goddamned fun to write
them as to read them.

© 2005 Gregg Hurwitz

Gregg
Hurwitz is the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of THE TOWER,
MINUTES TO BURN, DO NO HARM, THE KILL CLAUSE, and most recently, THE
PROGRAM. He holds a B.A. from Harvard, and a master's degree from Trinity
College, Oxford. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is currently writing
the next Tim Rackley novel and the screen adaptation of THE KILL CLAUSE
for Paramount Pictures.