CRYPTONYM BLOG

I bring this three-part blog to an end with reviews of another nine manhunt thrillers. And while the chase theme is central to all the books discussed here, it is not the only point of merit, and there are qualities in these novels which I have not had room to adequately describe. But I hope I have encouraged interest.

It will not have escaped your notice that several of Geoffrey Household’s splendid novels were featured in the preceding posts, and I include another two of his books here. Household – one of England’s finest thriller novelists – did not invent the chase thriller but he certainly became one of its leading proponents.

A GUN FOR SALE (1936) – Graham Greene

Hare-lipped assassin James Raven completes his assignment to kill the Czech Minister of War but is paid with purportedly stolen banknotes when he returns to London. Angered at the betrayal, Raven pursues his deceiver to the Midlands while the police hunt him for the faked robbery which he did not commit.

Raven is initially indifferent to the murder and is unaware that its architect intends to push up share prices in his armaments company by plunging Europe into war. The plot of the novel is an engaging one, but the strength of Greene’s story is how he portrays the trials and tribulations of his flawed characters.

Raven is permanently humiliated by his appearance, but every main character is ugly or impeded in some way, whether physically, behaviourally or emotionally. Their interactions occur in the grimy fictitious town of Nottwich, clashing with equally flawed minor characters. In that respect the novel reads like a play.

A GUN FOR SALE is a noir thriller with a curious anti-hero. Raven is a feeble specimen whose strength comes only from his gun and psychopathy. His dialogue with hostage Anne Crowder makes him question his innate mistrust, but he does not exist in a world of positive outcomes. This is a fascinating book.

FELLOW PASSENGER (1955) – Geoffrey Household

Claudio Howard-Wolferstan returns to England from Ecuador in search of treasure after the death of his father. His father told him where in the ancestral home the prize was hidden, but his attempt to find it is thwarted, not least because the mansion is under government ownership and is full of scientists.

Howard-Wolferstan is caught and, because of some youthful and insincere engagement with communism, he is assumed to be a spy. He’s charged with high treason but manages to escape. Not only is he wanted by the British authorities, but the Russians have an interest in this purported party member and asset too.

What follows is an amusing Buchan-esque adventure in which Howard-Wolferstan adopts various disguises and bluffs his way through a host of different situations, relying on ‘sheer eccentric impudence’ to deceive the people whom he encounters on his travels. It is an entertaining tale of mischief and adventure.

Household was said to have been particularly fond of FELLOW PASSENGER, and one can tell he enjoyed writing about Howard-Wolferstan’s antics on every page. It’s a protagonist-at-large novel rather than a true manhunt thriller. For a light-hearted twist on the genre, this droll book is definitely worth a read.

RED ANGER (1975) – Geoffrey Household

Adrian Gurney fakes his own death to escape from a dishonest employer. He allows himself to be found washed-up on a Kent beach by tourists and says he is a Romanian named Ionel Petrescu who has swum ashore from a Russian trawler in the Channel. Gurney is half-Romanian and has no trouble playing the role.

What Gurney doesn’t know is that the Russian ship is engaged in espionage. His invented character is suspected of being a spy. Gurney – as Petrescu – is given a task which binds him to the case of Alwyn Rory, an MI5 agent who is in hiding after wrongly being accused of helping a traitor to defect.

At times the plot seems rather convoluted as clandestine meetings are arranged and the motivations of various characters are tested. But to fault the novel for this reason is to miss the point that this is the grey nature of spy-craft. The cleverness of Household’s novel really only becomes apparent at the end.

Anyone who is in love with England’s West Country will admire and be touched by Household’s vivid prose. As the action moves from the hiding-places among the creeks of South Devon to the ancient burial mounds of Wiltshire, the significance of those haunted locations to this powerful story is slowly revealed.

KILL CLAUDIO (1979) – P.M. Hubbard

Benjamin Selby stumbles across the body of a former associate and suspects it was he, not the deceased Peter Gaston, who was the intended target of the murderer. The killer, Selby deduces, was the third man in a clandestine operation conducted long ago for a shadowy unit nicknamed The Establishment.

The obstacle for Selby is that the mission to acquire a small parcel and bring it by boat to England occurred twenty years earlier, and he barely remembers the associate whom he knew only briefly. After the yacht crashed into rocks near an island in the English Channel, Gaston buried the object for later recovery.

Gaston’s widow, Lisa, hands Selby a note which sketches the object’s location. But this is not simply a treasure hunt, for Lisa wants vengeance. The title of the book reflects this Shakespearian motive. The novel takes place over a year as Selby works out his strategy and his pursuer conducts surveillance upon him.

KILL CLAUDIO was Philip Maitland Hubbard’s final novel. It has a literary style which not only brings depth to the characters but also treats us to exceptional scenic descriptions, especially the wind-blown island. Selby’s realisation that age has dulled his skills for when he most needs them is also artfully portrayed.

NATHAN’S RUN (1996) – John Gilstrap

Nathan Bailey escapes incarceration and goes on the run, pursued by police officers and a sadistic mob enforcer. Meanwhile an ambitious prosecutor publicly declares his intention to seek the death penalty for Bailey. Bailey, however, is not a hardened villain but a vulnerable and scared twelve-year-old boy.

This clever choice of protagonist is what distinguishes NATHAN’S RUN from most chase novels. Gilstrap gets inside Bailey’s head and reveals the young man’s fears, but all characters are masterfully written, especially radio presenter Denise Carpenter who becomes an ally despite the mounting evidence.

Converging plot lines are woven together as the danger grows. The foreshadowing is deft and measured, enticing the reader to turn the pages. The relationship between Bailey and Detective Warren Michaels at the end is unsurprising but satisfying. The revelations about the boy’s troubled life give depth to the plot.

NATHAN’S RUN has all the hallmarks of an enthralling manhunt story, but it is the empathy for Bailey which the author evokes that defines the book. Gilstrap, like his main character, defied the odds with this novel. It was rejected 27 times before it was published and became a huge success. It’s a very enjoyable read.

AT ALL COSTS (1998) – John Gilstrap

Jake and Carolyn Donovan have been living with false identities for years in order to avoid capture for a terrorist attack at a munitions silo that left many people dead and created an environmental disaster. An encounter with FBI agent Irene Rivers forces Jake and Irene to go on the run with their son Travis.

The boy knows nothing of his parents’ past nor why they never settle in one place for long. Pursued by the FBI and a nasty wet-work contractor who calls himself Wiggins, the Donovans must take drastic measures to prove their innocence and identify the culprit behind the conspiracy which targeted them.

Rivers is persuaded to review the case and realises that it blames the Donovans for the crime but actually lacks substance and evidence. Urged to capture her prey by FBI deputy director Peter Frankel, Rivers starts to unravel a plot by powerful people involving illegal arms trading and unexplained deaths.

Gilstrap leaves just enough questions unanswered to keep the reader engrossed in the story. He also uses quickly alternating points of view to add terror to tense scenes. The author doesn’t hold back on the cruelty and violence, particularly with the Wiggins character. AT ALL COSTS is a fine suspense thriller.

RUNNER (2014) – Patrick Lee

Former extraordinary rendition specialist Sam Dryden encounters a scared little girl named Rachel Grant who is running from a kill squad. Dryden makes a snap decision to help Rachel and goes on the run with her, trying to hide from her pursuers and the prying eyes of state-of-the-art surveillance satellites.

When the girl demonstrates a remarkable ability to read Dryden’s thoughts and emotions, the novel reveals itself to be more than a manhunt thriller. The author uses a fictional laboratory in the Fort Detrick research base as the starting point of Rachel’s story. The blend of techno thriller and chase novel is intriguing.

I enjoyed reading RUNNER for this blog, not just because it’s a very good suspense thriller, but also as a comparison to my first novel, STATION HELIX, which I published the same year. My story had more of an espionage focus, but the premise of government-led experiments on human subjects was similar.

In Lee’s book the science element dictates everything about the plot, and the nature of Rachel’s abilities affects the action throughout. That allows the author to put a very clever spin on the dialogue and how the characters interact. I’d not read anything like this book before, and I was impressed by its uniqueness.

THE KILLING SEASON (2014) – Mason Cross

Manhunter Carter Blake is called in to help the FBI track down escaped Death Row convict Caleb Wardell, also known as The Chicago Sniper. Blake attempts to figure out Wardell’s moves before he makes them, but resistance from the FBI, who aren’t happy about working with the contractor, hinders him in his task.

While trying to find Wardell and put a stop to his killing spree, Blake begins to doubt that Wardell’s escape from a poorly guarded prisoner transport van was just good fortune. Special Agent Elaine Banner learns to trust Blake’s instinct and gradually realises that their adversary has a deadly plan and a target list.

THE KILLING SEASON is the first novel in the excellent Carter Blake series. The tough protagonist is a great character, well crafted by the author, and the book’s first line tells us that Carter Blake isn’t his real name. A secret organization named Winterlong is mentioned briefly to foreshadow plot threads in the later books.

I was really impressed by this novel. From the unrelenting suspense to the neat plot twists, everything is beautifully structured and precise. It takes a huge amount of work plus natural talent to make prose seem so effortless, and the author is to be applauded for a novel of this quality. Definitely one to read.

HUNTING TIME (2022) – Jeffrey Deaver

Reward hunter and survivalist Colter Shaw is hired to track down and protect Allison Parker, a brilliant nuclear engineer, and her daughter Hannah. Parker’s abusive husband and former detective, Jon Merritt, has been released from prison early. Shaw tries to locate the women before Merritt finds and kills them.

Parker tries to stay off the grid, knowing her ex-husband is a proficient investigator, despite his addiction to alcohol. A further complication is the presence of two hitmen, making Shaw’s mission even more difficult. With these – and other – elements in play, the story moves briskly and is suspenseful from start to finish.

I don’t think any thriller author pays as much attention to detail as Deaver. He outlines with great precision and rewrites the books over and over before submission to his publisher. He is the master of the plot twist and always catches the reader by surprise. In this novel the first trick occurs within two pages!

HUNTING TIME is the fourth novel in the Colter Shaw series. Shaw – known as the Restless Man – is a great character whose background is revealed gradually in the earlier books. Tracking people is always a part of each story, but HUNTING TIME is the first true manhunt novel of this fine and engaging series.

I hope you have enjoyed these posts. If you’ve read my novel THE FILE you will understand why I find manhunt thrillers so intriguing. Readers should discover much to enjoy in the novels I’ve selected here. Writers should study these books too, for they abound with great examples of writing techniques.