I’ve been a fan of spy fiction since I was a teenager in the 1960s. The 1960s was a time of spy mania in novels, films and on TV. 

I read Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, John le Carre and many other spy thriller writers. I went to the movies and saw the Sean Connery-James Bond films, and I watched Patrick McGoohan on TV in Secret Agent and The Prisoner. I also liked the early Mission Impossible TV show and I loved the TV spy satire Get Smart.

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Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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I’ve been reading Frederick Forsyth since his classic thriller The Day of the Jackal came out in 1971.  

I like that Forsyth uses his skills as a journalist to infuse his thrillers with true facts and details about crime, espionage, terrorism and war. Forsyth also offers a good, thrilling and suspenseful story. 

His new thriller, The Cobra (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), continues in that fine tradition.

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Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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Last month I wrote a piece here about John le Carre’s disparaging remarks about Ian Fleming’s iconic character James Bond. The piece generated some interesting responses.

Although I attempted to offer a spirited defense of Ian Fleming and James Bond (the character from the novels not the films), I did note that I also liked le Carre’s novels, especially Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.    

This is perhaps le Carre’s year as a film is being made of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy  (the TV miniseries based on the novel was outstanding), and he has a new novel coming out called Our Kind of Traitor.

To promote his new book, the 79-year-old author gave an interesting interview to the British newspaper the Sunday Telegraph.

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Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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A team of U.S. Navy SEALs huddles around a coffee urn at their firebase in Afghanistan after an exhausting firefight with the Taliban.

“How can you account for people doing something so … savage?” asks the team’s shocked and appalled medic.

“Easy,” replies the more jaded SEAL team leader. “They’re savages.”

Don Winslow’s crime thriller Savages (Simon and Schuster) opens with two words:

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Regarding John le Carre’s recent critical remarks  about fellow thriller writer Ian Fleming’s iconic character James Bond, the author of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold  and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy  is right about one thing.

Le Carre is correct in stating that the Bond films have overtaken the books. Its true that the general public’s image of the fictional secret agent is that of the often silly, superman-like film character, rather than the darker, more complex and more realistic Bond character in the novels.

Le Carre is wrong about everything else.

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Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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As I’ve noted here before, I believe thrillers are an art form. Thrillers are like jazz to literary fiction’s classical music.

I devoured thrillers when I was a teenager and I still read and love them today.  

So I was very interested in reading Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads (Oceanview), edited by thriller writer David Morrell and critic Hank Wagner.

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I love short stories and I truly love short stories about crime.     

Back in May I wrote a column about a collection of short stories called Boston Noir. At the end of my column I asked why there was no Philly noir collection and an editor at Akashic Books subsequently informed me that a collection of Philly crime noir stories would soon be published.

So while I wait for the Philly collection, I read another one of Akashic’s noir series, Manhattan Noir 2, The Classics.

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Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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I’ve been a student of crime since I was an aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia in the early 1960s.

My interest in crime, and my particular interest in organized crime, stems partly from my being half-Italian and my coming of age in South Philly, the hub of the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra organized crime family. Angelo Bruno, the long-time local mob boss, lived around the corner from my home.

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Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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In My Little Chickadee the late, great comedian W.C. Fields played a wily card sharp.

In this classic comedy film an eager sucker sees Fields spreading cards across a table and asks excitedly, “Is this a game of chance?”

“Not the way I play it, no,” was Fields’ classic answer. [Read more →]

Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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John Timoney, the man Esquire magazine called “America’s Top Cop,’ has written a book about his experiences commanding police forces in New York City, Philadelphia and Miami. The book is called Beat Cop to Top Cop: A Tale of Three Cities (University of Penn Press).

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Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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