November 4, 2005
Wow, you're thinking. (I love it when you say, "Wow." Say it again. C'mon.) Mark's decided he's going to stop writing about writing and his particular brand of neurosis and write about food. Well, no. Okay. Kinda.

In the world of mystery writing there's this broad fuzzy divide between mysteries and thrillers. You didn't used to hear too much about this, but it seems to be coming up a lot lately, probably because of the founding of International Thriller Writers, Inc. ITW was founded by a couple thriller writers--David Morrell and Gayle Lynds--about two years ago or maybe it was just a year ago, at Bouchercon, the biggest conference for mystery writers and fans. It's more or less supported by Mystery Writers of America and seems to be dominated by mystery writers. Apparently David and Gayle were discussing among themselves how the conference seemed to sort of sideline their sort of writing and perhaps they should form an organization for thriller writers, and so they did.

Now, for the record, I'm a member of MWA and also a member of ITW--an original member or founding member or whatever it is they're calling those of us who get in the first year. For that matter, I'm also a member of Sisters in Crime, but let's not go there today, I'm not in that kind of a mood.

Anyway, ITW hit the ground running and seems to be very focused on telling the world who they are and what they do and helping promote their books. MWA does this in a much less aggressive fashion and I've been kind of impressed with ITW so far, although the majority of promotion seems to be around people who already receive a lot of exposure, but that's a somewhat unsupported generalization, just an off-the-top-of-my-head notion. But an awful lot of writers have decided that yes, we're thriller writers, not mystery writers.

Hmmm. What's the difference? I have before offered this definition: A mystery is when something happens and the main character tries to solve who did it and why. A thriller is about a the main character trying to prevent something from happening.

At Magna last weekend I caught a panel about suspense and the moderator asked one of the panelists for her definition (I think it was Michael Dymmoch, but I'm not sure) and the one she supplied was pretty close to the ones I just gave. When the moderator asked Harlen Coben for his definition, he gave what I thought was the most profound and insightful thing to be said at the entire conference, which was, "I'm not much into definitions. I think we all just want to write good books and sell a lot of them."

Amen, Harlen.

A friend of mine slamms books and movies and TV shows as being "formula." He just doesn't like anything out there. (Which makes me wonder in a sort of abstract way if an awful lot of people, men and women, in their 30s and 40s go through some level of clinical depression that never gets recognized. But I digress.) I didn't actually agree with him then and I don't actually agree with him now, but I was thinking about this in the shower this morning and I thought, "It's kind of like cookies, isn't it?"

Yeah, cookies. Most cookies have milk and flour and sugar in them. They're all pretty much cookies. But a chocolate chip cookie is pretty different from a peanutbutter cookie. But they're still cookies. And if you take a chocolate chip cookie, there's an awful lot of variety there depending on whether they're round, big, small, spread in a pan, chocolate chips or chocolate chunks, nuts--walnut, peanut, macadamia--etc. The recipes are different, but they have some similar ingredients. And for that matter, a Tollhouse homemade chocolate chip cookie seems different from a store-bought Keebler and a soft chocolate, and a Mrs. Fields and a Famous Amos, etc. The damn things all have the same ingredients and they're all chocolate chip cookies, but they're so different you'd wonder how they could be the same thing.

Ah-ha. Like mysteries and thrillers. Yeah. Exactly. I think you need to look at Harlen Coben's latest books and Carl Hiassen's books and Nelson DeMille's books and John Sandford's books and Vince Flynn's books and say, they all right thrillers, but they sure as hell aren't the same types of books. I would not classify any of their latest books as mysteries, though there might be "mystery" ingredients. And that goes for authors who tend to be classified more as "mysteries," like Robert B. Parker and Sue Grafton. They also have thriller ingredients.

Sometimes it's a publisher's problem, a way of categorizing the book so bookstores know where to put them. Not unlike, say, breakfast cereal--the Lucky Charms and the Cap'n Crunch go together, and the Granola and the Mueslix go together.

But all we really want are good cookies ... er, books.

Best,
Mark Terry