I’ve always been interested in books that explore themes of identity, with characters either discovering who they are under extreme pressure or who they’re not. I also love books that work on several different levels, especially ones that seem as if they’re "just" a thriller, but there’s so much more going on underneath. This list has some great examples of that. Can characters in a novel have more than one identity? And do they - and we as readers - always know who we are? I’m a pseudonym, so I should know...
This is the novel, more than any other, that inspired me to write my book.
It’s the story of Pale Fire, the final poem of the murdered American poet John Shade. It’s put into an anthology, and his editor, Charles Kinbolt, is asked to provide a preface, commentary, and notes. As these notes get wildly out of hand, another narrative starts to emerge. Did Kinbolt murder Shade? And was he using Pale Fire to identify his murderer? A great book.
Nabokov is a modernist master, and in no way can I compete with him, so I didn’t try. But it’s kind of the first metathriller and should be read by anyone with an interest in great writing.
A darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue—and "one of the great works of art of this century" (Mary McCarthy)—from one of the leading writers of the 20th century.
In Pale Fire Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreword and commentary by Shade's self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.
Or The Disappearance, as it was renamed to coincide with the Donald Sutherland film of the same name.
It’s the story of a hitman whose wife has disappeared while he’s given a new assignment. Instead of going after his target, he tries to find his wife. It’s a study of a man beyond cynicism, beyond despair, almost. Marlowe, who also wrote the brilliant A Dandy in Aspic.
I often think it’s my duty to keep the memories of forgotten writers alive because I’ll be there one day. An ex-agent of mine told me she thought I wouldn’t be famous until my breaks were rediscovered about a hundred years in the future. Which is nice, I suppose, but I can’t take that to the bank and ask for a mortgage with it.
Jay's wife is missing. He's offered four times his usual rate to kill a man called Feather. He dithers. Goes places. Searching for Celandine, dodging his assignment, running into trouble. A contact is killed. Friends blur into foes. More and more it looks like Jay's last job... Echoes of Celandine is a tense, close-knit triumph in which Derek Marlowe deploys highly wrought thriller tactics to X-ray the soul of a man whose cynicism has hardened into an arctic despair.
Jose Castillo is a cynical, wise-cracking Cuban-American who restores classic cars. He’s also a private eye whose sarcastic ways sometimes get him into trouble.
One day, in the process of installing a four-barrel carburetor on a 1965 Mustang, into his shop walks trouble—in the shape of a mysterious, beautiful woman…
I’ve chosen this because it was the first of the Slough House books I read. I soon remedied that, of course.
Mick Herron is a modern master of the spy novel. He showed me how to drag it into the present day and make it as relevant as the headlines while also creating characters you care about, losing nothing of thrilling plotting, and being sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
This was in there at the back of my mind when I started my book. Yes, a modern spy novel can be done without the old cliches and baggage.
'The finest British spy fiction of the past 20 years' Metro
Slough House is the Intelligence Service outpost for failed spies, former high-fliers now dubbed the 'slow horses'. Catherine Standish, one of their number, worked in Regent's Park long enough to understand treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back, and she's known Jackson Lamb long enough to have learned that old sins cast long shadows. And she also knows that chance encounters never happen to spooks, even recovering drunks whose careers have crashed and burned.
No list of mine would be complete without a Graham Greene novel on it.
My favourite author, the one I return to time and again. I reread this novel while I was writing my book, and it had lost none of its power or, indeed, glory since the last time I read it.
The story of a whisky priest on the run in the anti-Catholic purges in South America, it’s about faith, hope, self-worth, and fear. And redemption? Maybe. Maybe not. No one writes tortured souls like Greene. No one makes you care for them more.
During an anti-clerical purge in Mexico, a priest is hunted like a hare. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the little worldly priest is nevertheless impelled towards his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
Like Graham Greene, I could have picked just about any Leonard novel for this list.
Like the Greene Novel, I was reading it while writing my book, so it seeped into my writing DNA. Although, to be fair, Leonard’s been in my writing DNA since I first read him.
No one else could take the Southern Dixie Mafia, a high diver, an over-the-hill baseball player, and a smooth African American gangster transplanted from Detroit and turn it into both a fast-paced thriller, a laugh-out-loud comedy of manners (in which lots of people get shot), and elevate it into a kind of prose poetry that blows most Literary novels out of the water.
Leonard said it was one of his favourites of all of his novels. Mine too.
Vintage Elmore Leonard - a searing tale of gambling, gangsters, hidden agendas and a whole heap of trouble from the virtuoso of American crime fiction.
Daredevil Dennis Lenahan has brought his act to the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi - diving off an eighty-foot ladder into nine feet of water for the amusement of gamblers, gangsters, and luscious belles. His riskiest feat, however, was witnessing a Dixie-style mob execution while atop his diving platform.
Robert Taylor saw the hit also. A blues-loving Detroit hustler touring the Southland, Taylor's got his own secret agenda and he wants Dennis in…
So what’s my book about? Thematically, authorship and identity. In plot terms, is a famous writer who’s been missing for over a decade alive or dead? Read the book, solve the clues, race to the end. It’s written stylistically in two ways: as a spy thriller and as a book within a book. It’s my first attempt at writing both kinds of things, and I’m pretty happy with how it came out.
One thing that does annoy me about the book within a book thing: most writers, when they start this soon realise it’s a lot of work and start to just dip into the book within a book narrative. That’s for losers. In The Final Chapter, you get two books for the price of one. And they’re linked. So with that in mind, here’s a list of books that inspired me in some way while I was writing this. Hope you enjoy.
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
Ophelia, a professor of Dante, is stricken when she discovers that her husband Andy has been cheating on her with a winsome colleague. What follows is Ophelia’s figurative descent into hell as she obsessively tracks her subjects, performs surveillance in her beat-up Volvo, and moves into the property next door…
