(photo: catalog.lambertvillelibrary.org)
How many of the “best” in mysteries and thrillers have you read? I’ve read about 30 of the Amazon 100 best list, though if I could count the movie versions the number would rise to about 42. No double-counting for both reading From Russia with Love and falling for Sean Connery. Especially note how the cover for Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Circular Staircase could be mistaken for a “Carolyn Keene,” represented in the Amazon list by The Secret of the Old Clock, my very first Nancy Drew.
The compilers seemed to go for the first in a series, like the first Jason Bourne or the first Inspector Gamache, perhaps thinking that a strong beginning will lead people to subsequent books in the series.
We’ve read the statistics about how Americans are reading fewer books. But they still love mysteries and thrillers. Some people are drawn to reading because they can identify with the characters and others because of “that excitement of trying to discover that unknown world,” said author Azar Nafisi. That might be a foreign country, a foreign planet, a foreign psyche. Mystery and thriller readers get both. A protagonist they can identify with and a journey through that foreign world (of crime, of spies).
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