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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 11, No. 1 |
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A DECADE OF DARKNESS  JAMES PATTERSON, creator of such Alex Cross mysteries as "Along Came A Spider" and "Kiss the Girls," is the all-time champ of The New York Times best-seller list with 45 books reaching No. 1. |
Mysteries, thrillers rule
among modern readers
of TheColumnists.com
Ever since we began the Dark Corridors section of TheColumnists.com in late 1999, the "dark influence" has continued to spread so rapidly in the world of fiction that it's now obviously the dominant force on the best seller list.
By that, I mean the most respected of all best seller lists--that of The New York Times, which began in August of 1942--a time when mysteries, thrillers, horror stories and science fiction almost never appeared among America's most popular new books.
For instance, of the 33 novels that reached the No. 1 spot on the list through Nov. 29 of this year, I would consider all but four of the titles to fall into the "dark corridors" thematic area. The dark novels range from the romantic vampire thriller "Dead and Gone" by Charlaine Harris and the Swedish techno-thriller "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson through John Grisham's legal thriller "The Associate" and Mary Higgins Clark's "cozy" mystery "Just Take My Heart."
Stephen King's sic-fi scarefest "Under the Dome" was No. 1 last week. I guess we all are aware that King doesn't write romances or historicals, the kinds of books that dominated the lists in the 1940s. Among the other authors with No. 1 ranked novels this year are Dean Koontz, Dan Brown, Christine Feehan, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Janet Evanovich, Catherine Coulter, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, John Sandford, David Baldacci, Harlan Coben, Jonathan Kellerman and J.D. Robb, all of them familiar walkers in literature's dark corridors.
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 Three authors with multiple books that reached No. 1 during the past 10 years. From left: John Grisham (13), Stephen King (11).Mary Higgins Clark (9). |
Lost among all the dark works were such traditional mainstream novelists as Nicholas Sparks ("The Last Song") and Pat Conroy ("South of Broad"). Once the foundation blocks for the best seller lists, those kinds of novelists now seem oddly out of place.
Why has this happened? I can only hazard a guess or two. First, the best seller lists with the most impact almost universally deal with hardcover novels, even though the bulk of books sold in the U.S. today are paperbacks sold from racks just about everywhere. To get people to pony up the money for a hard cover novel, lots of promotional effort must go into it--and the thrillers are much easier to sell to a large audience than mainstream novels--unless, of course, the book is heavily woman-oriented and Oprah Winfrey brings the author onto her TV show to talk about it.
Times really have changed, too. In her glory years, even the great Agatha Christie had trouble making it to the No. 1 spot on The New York Times best seller list, In fact, she only got there twice--for "Curtain," the final Hercule Poirot mystery, and "Sleeping Murder," the final Miss Marple mystery, both published after Christie's death in 1975.
Only a handful of contemporary mystery writers still write novels that, like Christie's classics, avoid sex and violence. Mary Higgins Clark is just about the only American mystery writer to keep having No. 1 best sellers without resorting to "the hard stuff."
The much more liberal atmosphere of television today--especially pay cable television networks like HBO and Showtime--has bred a whole new reading public that expects the grisly details of the autopsy table. Modern movies also have fostered a new generation of readers who are engrossed by serial killers, monsters and people who don't mind getting naked in the course of a story.
One of the great literary success stories during our first decade of Dark Corridors has been the unflagging popularity of Patricia Cornwell, whose Kay Scarpetta novels revel in forensic crime evidence. Cornwell had 10 No. 1 best-sellers during our first 10 years online. Meanwhile, her rival in the forensic mystery genre, Kathy Reichs, finally reached the No. 1 spot last year with "Devil Bones," perhaps the result of an extra push from the "Bones" TV series based on her characters.
Franchising is another possible reason for the rise of the mystery/thriller to dominance in the past decade. Some of the most popular novelists write about the same character in most of their novels. Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone private eye mysteries--with their "alphabet" titles--continue to hit the No. 1 spot. Grafton had five of them at No. 1 on the Times list during the past decade.
The all-time No. 1 writer--with 45 books reaching No. 1 on the Times list--is James Patterson, who has taken franchising to a new level. His Alex Cross mysteries have been steady chart-toppers through the decade, most recently at No. 1 with "Alex Cross's Trial" this year. But Patterson began taking on "partners" during the past decade, writing several different series with co-authors, including Andrew Gross, Peter de Jonge, Howard Roughan, Maxine Paetro, Michael Ledwidge and Gabrielle Charbonnet. He may be the Alexandre Dumas of his generation.
In fact, Patterson is by far the champ during our specimen decade. Starting with "1st To Die" in 1999, he has placed 28 novels at No. 1 during the past 10 years.
Stephen King is still the "king" of horror thrillers, despite the inroads made by the new female "vampire" story-tellers Stephenie Meyer ("Twilight," "The Host") and Charlaine Harris. King had 11 No. 1 best-sellers in the past decade. He needed only one co-author, Peter Straub, for one of those: "Black House" (2001).
Some of the other prominent mystery writers to rack up multiple No. 1 honors are:
Janet Evanovich (14); John Grisham (13); Nora Roberts (10, counting two under her pen name, J.D. Robb); Mary Higgins Clark (9); (8); David Baldacci (6); Dean Koontz (5); John Sandford (4); Michael Connelly (4); Jonathan Kellerman (3); Sandra Brown (3).
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 JANET EVANOVICH, left, has placed 14 titles at No. 1 in the past 10 years while Patricia Cornwell (above) put 10 at the top of the list. |
Missing from the list of No. 1 authors are some of the genre's very best, including Robert B. Parker, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Minette Walters, Sara Paretsky.
This feverish rush to the best-seller list by authors whose writing comes straight from the darker recesses of their minds makes me wonder how some of the literary giants of the past might have fared against such competition. Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger--they all had No. 1 books on the Times list. But I wonder if Hemingway's "Across the River and Into the Trees" or Budd Schulberg's "The Disenchanted" would make it to the top today.
For those of us who love mysteries, thrillers and horror stories, I suppose it's a welcome trend, but there's a part of me that wonders if it wouldn't be a better reflection of our society if the occasional work of pure literary merit might occasionally reach the No. 1 perch on the list.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The photo of James Patterson is courtsy of National Public Radio. The photo of Stephen King is courtesy of Wikipedia. The photo of Mary Higgins Clark is courtesy of the BOMC. The photo of Janet Evanovich is courtesy of Macmillan. The photo of John Grisham is courtesy of Random House. The photo of Patricia Cornwell is courtesy of the BBC. This column first posted Dec. 7, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He most recently
was the TV columnist for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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