Robert Stone

Setting is Everything

By Gordon Chaplin

July 5, 2016

I can’t read a book of any kind—thriller, literary fiction, memoir, biography, even history—unless the setting speaks to me. I need to feel, with all my senses, the physical world in which the writer is trying to involve me. Often, that’s what I’m left with years later when I think of the work: not the…

Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose

What Is a Literary Thriller, Anyway?

By Richard Z. Santos

January 22, 2012

Recently, I’ve noticed a genre label being used, and I don’t understand what it means. I’m hoping CE readers can help define this slippery term: “literary thriller.” It’s in use by authors, agents, marketing departments, reviewers, bloggers, tweeters and a host of others. However, its usage is also inconsistent, confusing, and mystifying. I think it’s…