What puts the 'killer' in 'thriller'?

The writing is informal, as if the author were shooting the breeze in a late-night bar, and rife with sharp observations: "If we could remove Hannibal [Lecter]'s style and sophistication and consider only its rapes and cannibalism and people-eating hogs, many of us would find it disgusting and probably unreadable. But to write well is like being blessed with a beautiful face -- you can get away with almost anything."

For Anderson, "crime-related fiction we loosely call thrillers" includes "hard-core noir, in the Hammett-Chandler private-eye tradition, as well as a bigger, broader universe of books that includes spy thrillers, legal thrillers, political thrillers, military thrillers, medical thrillers, and even literary thrillers." He gives us a bit more insight: "In the modern thriller, suspense has replaced sex as the engine that drives popular fiction."

Anderson lavishes praise on favorites like Michael Connelly ( the Harry Bosch series, he says, is "the finest crime series anyone has written" ) and heaps abuse on others ( of James Patterson, he writes: "He panders to ignorance, laziness, and prurience " ).

When you look at the panoply of authors Anderson assembles, one thing becomes clear -- it's a guy's game. Women authors get a 14-page chapter ("Dangerous Women") plus a few short mentions elsewhere. Anderson devotes the most ink to Sue Grafton, not a thriller writer in my book. Consider his observation that her recent novels are longer than her early ones: "The difference is not due to greater complexity of plot so much as it is to the lengthy descriptions . . . that Grafton lavishes on us." Grafton may do this, he says, because she's good at it, or because they lend the novel an "aura of authenticity." He adds, " Insofar as she's often describing hairstyles, home furnishings, and women's clothing, they presumably interest her women readers."