CHENNAI: The apparent answer is rather simple. The edge-of-your-seat thrill-a-minute ride is a departure from the ennui of everyday living. Most of us live still lives. Most of us do not actively seek out the extreme thrills in real life; the mundane is boring but comforting. Thrillers allow us to nonetheless enjoy the excitement vicariously through the exploits of our protagonists. Sure, it’s transient, but often, it’s the shot of adrenaline the reader needs.
The best thrillers are the ones that are grounded in reality. The reader would like to know that the events, sinister as they may well be, are within the realms of the possible. Otherwise, it’s either fantasy or supernatural – different, excellent genres in themselves, but not the same as thrillers. It’s important that the events are catastrophic enough for the reader to be engaged to see to it that the disaster does not actually happen. The main protagonists in the thriller, the ones the reader would root for, are often extremely competent physically and mentally, but the best thrillers distinguish themselves in not making the lead characters superhuman. They have to be relatable, the same concerns, fears and troubles as the readers have, would have to be troubles for them too.
Robert Ludlum was perhaps the most successful thriller writer of the last millennium. Today’s recommended thriller, The Matarese Circle, is a fine expression of the standard Ludlum template. There is a secret society, which is led by a shadowy, all-powerful leader— this society could have been germinating for a long time. In this while, it has been able to infiltrate through every layer of the government. Now, the secret society wants to move on to the next stage, that of complete world domination - and right now, they are awfully close to their goal. There is one specific task that has to be accomplished by the society before that goal is accomplished. In parallel, there is our protagonist, a troubled and embittered secret-service man: a soldier, or a spy; who has been recently discredited, injured or traumatized. He somehow gets in the middle of this maelstrom started by the secret society, and at some point, becomes the only man that can stop the secret society from its ultimate goal. How is our protagonist able to save the world from going to the hands of this nefarious secret society?
That is the template. And an excellent example of this template is our recommended novel. This is 1979, the year the novel was published. The secret society, the Matarese Circle, has been able to infiltrate the American and Russian governments at all levels except for right at the top. Instead of one, we have two spies, US agent Brandon Scofield, and Russian KGB agent Vasili Taleniekov — and they have a back story.
Taleniekov has previously murdered Scofield’s wife, and Scofield Taleniekov’s brother, and the two spies have been plotting to kill each other for a long while. And now, as they independently discover the Matarese plot, and since their governments are compromised, they will have to learn to work together to stop the Matarese.Visceral and action packed, it’s a rip-roaring read.
(The writer is a business development executive in Hyderabad)