Mark T. Sullivan grew up outside Boston. He attended Hamilton College, graduating in 1980 with a B.A. in English. He later attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Before embarking on his writing career, he worked as a journalist at Reuters, States News Service, and the San Diego Tribune. His first novel,The Fall Line, was published in 1994, followed by Hard News one year later. But it was not until 1996, with The Purification Ceremony, that his career took off. A finalist for the Edgar Award for best novel, it also won the W.H. Smith Award for best “new talent.” His other works include Ghost Dance, Labyrinth, The Serpent’s Kiss, and Triple Cross. Sullivan lives in southwest Montana with his wife, Betsy, and two teenage sons, Connor and Bridger.

  32

  James M. Cain’s

  THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1934)

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Born in Annapolis, James M. Cain (1892–1977) studied at Washington College, in Chesterton, Maryland, earning his B.A. and master’s there. He worked as a journalist, screenwriter, and novelist. His novels are often mentioned in the same breath with those of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as a key contributor to the so called hard-boiled school of crime fiction. Cain resisted that label, however, stating that he belonged “to no school, hard-boiled or otherwise.” Several of Cain’s novels were adapted into films. Three—The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934),Double Indemnity (1936), and Mildred Pierce (1941)—are considered classics of the American screen. Cain’s post World War II works include The Butterfly (1947), a story of incest and murder set in Kentucky, as well as his personal favorite, a Depression hobo novel,The Moth (1948). In 1970, he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

  James M. Cain was the master of hard-boiled prose, lean clean dialogue shiny as a new dime. He wrote like a demon on holiday, sexed up and hung over, and he changed the landscape of literature as surely as Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner or Raymond Chandler. But as Tom Wolfe wrote: “Nobody has quite pulled if off the way Cain does, not Hemingway, not even Raymond Chandler.”

  In fact, Chandler thought very little of Cain and then adapted one of his best books into Billy Wilder’s noir film Double Indemnity. The dialogue is snappier than Cain’s, and some of the scenes have a kind of high poetry about them. But Cain’s fiction stands quite well on its own and has about it a kind of working man’s muscular poetry, soaked in sweat and hormones so ripe you can almost smell it.

  The characters themselves are not poetic at all. At first glance, they appear to be everyday people. They want what most people want. A good life. But the cold difference is they’re unwilling to work for it. At their core they feel entitled, above and beyond the working person’s code. With The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain established this theme at the start of his career, and in most of his novels it’s hammered at with the hardworking mentality of a blacksmith shaping a horseshoe. Later, he perhaps shaped too many similar horseshoes, but he pounded out two masterpieces that changed the landscape of crime writing and other forms of writing dramatically. His work inspired so many novels, films, and even comic books, that if they were piled on top of one another they’d reach to the moon and beyond.

  Those two masterpieces were The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. The former is possibly the most famous, if for no other reason than the title is a mystery unexplained by the book. Nowhere inside the story does the line appear, or anything that resembles the title, but the title works. It brings to mind a kind of dead certainty like the arrival of the postman, who, if you don’t answer the call on the first ring, you will on the second. And that’s exactly what happens in the novel; there’s a chance to miss that first ring, to not reach out and take hold of the bad choice, but it’s a chance you know will be denied and that these characters will most certainly open the door on the second ring. What’s behind the door is not mail delivery, but a fate carved deep into the walls of hell.

  “They threw me off the hay truck about noon” is one of the best opening sentences ever written. Simple though it is, it carries a lot of information. The main character, Frank Chambers, telling his story in first person, with that one line has revealed all we need to know about him. He’s a loser, constantly cast aside by mainstream society. He’s someone on the edge, trying to get a free ride through life. And there’s something about him that makes certain people, those in the know, not want to have anything to do with him. They realize he’s, well, “wrong.” They can sense the shark under the water.

  The plot is simple as well. In fact, it’s boy meets girl. But the problem is the girl is married to a Greek named Nick Papadakis, an unattractive guy with an accent and a tourist court, a filling station, and a sandwich joint. The woman, Cora, though not classically attractive, has a hot body and a look about her that makes a man want to mash her lips. For Frank Chambers, she’s a walking, talking, sex-charged dream; she’s everything he’s ever wanted, and if the dice roll right, she comes with a sandwich shop.

  Cora is the fine, shiny, tasty-looking apple on the outside with the big fat worm in the middle. She’s everything a mother fears for her son. She’s the hot patootie with her soul on ice. She’s just what Frank Chambers has been looking for when he’s thrown off that hay truck at noon and comes walking into Cora’s and Nick Papadakis’s life. As for Cora, Frank is what she’s been looking for, a big, handsome lug with all the willpower of a marionette; the only thing she needs to do is fasten the strings.

  Written so tightly that it squeaks like new shoes, the story shows Frank and Cora embracing their doom in their sleazy quest for easy money and minor position. Cain dramatizes their destruction step by relentless step, and it’s like watching someone walking down a railroad track with a train coming, lacking the will to step off. For Frank, it’s suicide by sex drive. For Cora, it’s suicide by greed. There’s real attraction between the two, but there’s no trust. The clock is set, and all we need to do is wait and watch until the alarm goes off.

  I’ve always loved Chandler and Hammett and Hemingway, but over the years, I’ve come to think that Cain, with this novel and Double Indemnity, was the master of the lean mean writing machine, and that although his reputation is high, it might have been higher yet had he written fewer books that were weak specters of this perfect little gem.

  Where does mojo storytelling come from? How does one learn to spin yarns in any genre, whether it be horror, suspense, science fiction, or western? First you need to see the world, like Joe R. Lansdale, who has lived most everywhere, if you count a small area of east Texas as everywhere. Second, you need to learn how to take a punch. Or a kick. Then, learn how to avoid them. (Lansdale has long been an ardent student of the martial arts.) The author of dozens of novels (including seven featuring the delightful Hap Collins and Leonard Pine) and several short story collections, Lansdale has been called “an immense talent” by Booklist. The New York Times Book Review declares that he has “a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.” He received numerous awards, among them the Edgar, seven Bram Stoker horror awards, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, and two New York Times Notable Book citations. His novella “Bubba Hotep” was made into a film by the same name and is considered a cult classic. Lansdale lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife, Karen.

  33

  Daphne du Maurier’s

  REBECCA (1938)

  Allison Brennan

  Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) penned one of the most famous first lines in any novel: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Rebecca remains one of the best-known novels of the twentieth century and the first major Gothic romance, paving the way for modern-day romantic thrillers. Du Maurier wrote fifteen novels and numerous short stories (“Don’t Look Now”), many of which were made into film and stage productions, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Academy Award winning adaption of Rebecca in 1940, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Hitchcock also directed film adaptations of du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and her short story, “The Birds.”

  I have a confession. I first read Rebecca in 2005, shortly after I sold my first novel. For years, friends talked about the book, and I nodded and contributed where I could, and over time I came to know the story so well it was as if I’d read it.

  When I sat down one Sunday afternoon to finally read cover to cover a copy I’d purchased years before, I couldn’t put it down. I was transfixed not only in another time and place—Cornwall, England, in 1938 and the grand estate of Manderley—but thrilled with the realization that Daphne du Maurier had created the genre I love and write: romantic suspense.

  Romantic suspense novels are unique to thrillers in two primary ways: first, there are usually two protagonists, a hero and a heroine, who are equally important to the story. Second, there is a happily ever after as in a traditional romance. In all other ways, they follow the traditional thriller format: high stakes, something personal at risk, and strong pacing.

  In Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier created a world that is as relevant today as it was more than seventy years ago. The timeless quality of the story causes us to reflect on the nature of love, betrayal, and loyalty, and could happen today just as easily as 1938. A young, innocent, naïve heroine—who is known only as “the second Mrs. de Winter”—falls in love with an older, experienced widower. The heroine, a first-person narrator who is given no name by the author, is now part of a world she’s never known. She’s taken to the estate of Manderley. She has wealth and position through her marriage to Maxim de Winter, but she’s still timid and insecure. How can this kind, older, wealthy man truly love her? In many ways,Rebecca is a Gothic version of Cinderella.

  Had the story been merely about the second Mrs. de Winter overcoming her insecurity—which she does—the reading public wouldn’t have been enthralled for more than seven decades. What Rebecca did was take a rather common romance premise—young poor woman falls in love with older rich man—and turn it completely around. Immediately, you’re drawn into the story because it starts at the end: Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Chapter one ends: For Manderley was ours no longer. Manderley was no more.

  Who doesn’t want to know what happened to Manderley? When the young second Mrs. de Winter moves into her new home with her new husband, she sees Rebecca—the first Mrs. de Winter—everywhere. In the décor, the paintings, and of course, the antagonist: the cold, evil Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers loves Rebecca—is in fact rather obsessed with her—and in every way possible manipulates, degrades, and tries to destroy our young heroine.

  The second Mrs. de Winter is much stronger than she thinks. Although she walks into Manderley the first time timid and insecure in her relationship with Maxim—believing he still loves his dead wife—she grows into a woman all of us can be proud of. She learns to stand up for herself, to accept that she has value, and that she is worthy of being loved. The heroine becomes the strength of the relationship, as Maxim’s guilt and pain make him turn to her for solace and support.

  Yet it’s precisely as the heroine begins to grow and mature that the story kicks into high gear. In the beginning, the atmosphere and the psychological suspense provide the page-turning thrills—the sense of foreboding is on every page. When Rebecca’s body is found, all bets are off as secrets become threats, and not only is the future happiness of the hero and heroine at stake, but their lives as well.

  Over and above the story itself, the novel’s structure and style play a huge part in its success. Starting at the end to hook the reader, showing the future strength of the heroine so the reader is already engaged and curious about how she became such a woman, and, of course, what happened to Manderley; never naming the heroine, to further show her sense of worthlessness both to herself and to others; and using a deceptively simple storyline that, only as it goes on, allows the reader to appreciate the complexities of both character and plot.

  Many analysts have suggested that du Maurier created the relationship between Rebecca, Maxim, and the heroine to parallel her own marriage with Sir Frederick Browning, who had been engaged to a beautiful and vibrant woman before breaking it off and marrying Daphne. Others have suggested that the relationship between Maxim, Mrs. Danvers, and the heroine was Daphne’s view of her relationship with her parents. But all good authors draw upon their own pain and happiness, twist it around, and shake it up to tell a unique story. This authenticity creates characters that seem so real they could walk off the page.

  Daphne du Maurier herself was surprised at her novel’s popularity, saying it was “simply a study of jealousy.” It’s often the case that an author doesn’t see the depth in their stories. Even critics don’t understand a novel’s enduring qualities, such as V.S. Prichett who wrote in the Christian Science Monitor in 1938: “I have no doubt that anyone who starts this book will not be able to put it down until he has finished it; after that, I hope that he will wake up and laugh at himself . . . It would be absurd to make a fuss about Rebecca, which will be here today and gone tomorrow like the rest of publicity’s ‘masterpieces.’”

  The point of a good thriller is precisely that readers can’t put down the book until they are finished. In that, Daphne du Maurier was a truly brilliant storyteller, and there is nothing “simple” about her work.

  I leave you with these words that Daphne du Maurier wrote near the end of her life:

  I walked this land [Cornwall] with a dreamer’s freedom and with a waking man’s perception—places, houses whispered to me their secrets and shared with me their sorrows and their joys. And in return I gave them something of myself, a few of my novels passing into the folk-lore of this ancient place.

  New York Times and USA Today best-selling and award-winning author Allison Brennan writes romantic suspense and supernatural thrillers. A four-time RITA nominee for best romantic suspense, her novel Fear No Evil won the Daphne du Maurier award in 2007 for Best Mainstream Mystery/Suspense. Allison’s recent romantic thrillers include her FBI trilogy—Sudden Death, Fatal Secrets, and Cutting Edge. In 2010, she launched her “Seven Deadly Sins” supernatural thriller series. A former legislative consultant, Allison lives in Northern California with her husband and their five children.

  34

  Agatha Christie’s

  AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1939)

  David Morrell

  Agatha Christie (1890–1976) was born Agatha Miller in Torquay, England. In 1912, she met Archie Christie; they married in 1914. When Archie left her in 1926, Christie disappeared for eleven days. Exactly what happened during that time remains a mystery. Christie later met and married archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930. They remained together for forty-six years. According to her official Web site, Christie “is the bestselling author of all time. She has sold over two billion books worldwide and has been translated into over forty-five languages.” She also wrote over a dozen plays, including The Mousetrap, the longest running play in theatrical history. Christie published her first novel,The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920. That book featured the debut of her famous character, eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Another notable creation was Miss Jane Marple, who bowed in a short story in 1927 and appeared three years later in The Murder at the Vicarage. Her most controversial novel is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) in which the murderer turned out to be the first-person narrator.

  Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is a brilliant example of how a mystery can also be a thriller. Ten strangers are invited to an estate on a remote island. Trapped there, each is murdered in a way that mirrors a line from a children’s ditty about ten little indians. “One went to sleep, and then there were seven. . . . One broke his neck, and then there were six.” As the bodies accumulate, the survivors become convinced that one of them is the killer. Eventually, though, all ten people are found dead, and searchers fail to discover anyone hiding on the island. A police inspector reviews the evidence and can’t figure out who the killer is. Finally, the murderer (one of the ten) solves the mystery by leaving a note in which he explains that a terminal disease motivated him to select nine people whom he felt had committed an unforgiveable crime and who had escaped punishment . In his final days, he resolved to see that justice was served. An apparent early victim, he pretended to be dead and then was at liberty to kill the others, one by one, while they focused their suspicions on their companions. When his goal was achieved, he committed suicide, appearing to be one of the victims.

  Summarized this bluntly, the plot feels strained, but in actuality it’s a tour de force of invention, executed so efficiently that the reader doesn’t have a chance to question details. The pace and the tension, not to mention the atmosphere of fear and violence, are the elements that make this mystery a thriller—as opposed to mysteries that emphasize the reader’s intellectual satisfaction in assessing clues and trying to solve a puzzle before the fictional detective does. If a mystery focuses solely on the cerebral aspects of a criminal investigation, it lacks the sensational aspects of a thriller.