“ [I]n recent years publishers have grown increasingly fond of describing books as “literary thrillers”. This can mean various things: for example, books whose suspense is located among literary materials, such as Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, or among people with literary preoccupations, such as Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. At a stretch, the phrase might be applied to markedly discursive and “literary” works such as the novels of Javier Marias; but it can also signify genre fiction which the “literary” reader would not be ashamed of enjoying, including the books of John le Carré, Alan Furst, Robert, and at one time Thomas, Harris. (There are of course also a Woolworth’s version of the form in thereligious conspiracy thrillers deriving from ancient manuscripts, written in imitation of Dan Brown, the Enid Blyton of the arcane, which now have a section to themselves in some bookshops, presumably in happy ignorance of the prophetic satire delivered by Umberto Eco twenty years ago.)
