Genre fiction, also known as formula fiction or popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
Thriller is a genre of fiction with numerous, often overlapping, subgenres, including crime, horror, and detective fiction. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving their audiences heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. This genre is well suited to film and television.
The Day of the Jackal (1971) is a political thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France.
Frederick McCarthy Forsyth is an English novelist and journalist. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and The Kill List. Forsyth's works frequently appear on best-sellers lists and more than a dozen of his titles have been adapted to film. By 2006, he had sold more than 70 million books in more than 30 languages.
Tommy and Tuppence are two fictional detectives, recurring characters in the work of Agatha Christie. Their full names are Thomas Beresford and his wife Prudence . Tommy and Tuppence first appeared in Christie's The Secret Adversary (1922). They started out their career in search of adventure and money, and the detecting life soon proved profitable and very exciting.
Brian Denis Cox is a Scottish actor. A classically trained Shakespearean actor, he is known for his work on stage and screen. His numerous accolades include two Laurence Olivier Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award as well as a nomination for a British Academy Television Award. In 2003, he was appointed to the Order of the British Empire at the rank of Commander.
Michael Francis Gilbert was an English solicitor and author of crime fiction.
Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating was an English crime fiction writer most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID.
No Comebacks is a 1982 collection of ten short stories by English writer Frederick Forsyth. Each story takes place in a different setting and ends with a plot twist. Several of them involve a central male character without any apparent strength who is put under pressure, but who does not give in.
Jason Webster is an Anglo-American author who writes on Spain. He was born in California to British parents in 1970. He has spent most of his adult life in Spain, having settled in Valencia with his Spanish wife, actress and dancer Salud Botella. He is a director of The Scheherazade Foundation.
Witness for the Prosecution is a play adapted by Agatha Christie from her 1925 short story "Traitor's Hands". The play opened in London on 28 October 1953 at the Winter Garden Theatre. It was produced by Sir Peter Saunders.
Helene Tursten is a Swedish writer of crime fiction.
The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, the film is about a professional assassin known only as the "Jackal" who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963.
Chris Petit is an English novelist and filmmaker. During the 1970s he was Film Editor for Time Out and wrote in Melody Maker. His first film was the cult British road movie Radio On, while his 1982 film An Unsuitable Job for a Woman was entered into the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. His films often have a strong element of psychogeography, and he has worked frequently with the writer Iain Sinclair. He has also written a number of novels, including Robinson (1993).
Mute Witness is a 1995 horror thriller film written, directed and produced by Anthony Waller, his feature film debut. It stars Marina Zudina, Fay Ripley and Oleg Yankovsky and features a brief cameo appearance by Alec Guinness, his final film role in a theatrically-released film. The plot follows a mute American makeup artist working on a slasher film in Moscow, who is pursued by a crime organization making and dealing snuff films after she stumbles upon one of their film sets and witnesses a murder.
Harry Brown is a 2009 British vigilante action-thriller film directed by Daniel Barber and starring Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Jack O'Connell, and Liam Cunningham. The story follows Harry Brown, a widowed Royal Marines veteran who had served in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, living on a London housing estate that is rapidly descending into youth crime. After a violent gang murders his friend, Harry decides to take justice into his own hands.
Ripper Street is a British mystery drama television series set in Whitechapel in the East End of London starring Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, and MyAnna Buring. It begins in 1889, six months after the infamous Jack the Ripper murders. The first episode was broadcast on 30 December 2012, during BBC One's Christmas schedule, and was first broadcast in the United States on BBC America on 19 January 2013. Ripper Street returned for a second eight-part series on 28 October 2013.
Mr. Mercedes is a crime novel by American writer Stephen King. He calls it his first hard-boiled detective book. It was published on June 3, 2014. It is the first volume in a trilogy, followed in 2015 by Finders Keepers, the first draft of which was finished around the time Mr. Mercedes was published, and End of Watch in 2016.
Awaiting Strange Gods: Weird and Lovecraftian Fictions is a collection of dark fantasy and horror short stories by American writer Darrell Schweitzer. It was first published in hardcover and trade paperback by Fedogan & Bremer in September 2015.
Even Murderers Take Holidays and Other Mysteries is a collection of mystery stories by British thriller writer Michael Gilbert, first published in 2007 by the British company Robert Hale and unpublished in the United States. It contains 25 previously uncollected stories, as well as an introduction by John Cooper and an appendix. The first twelve stories feature Inspector Petrella, one of the many recurring characters that Gilbert created throughout his long career of writing both novels and short stories. Its next story has Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens, and there are four stories about Inspector Hazlerigg. Gilbert, who was appointed CBE in 1980, was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers' Association. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1988 and in 1990 he was presented Bouchercon's Lifetime Achievement Award. The locales are mostly set in London and its environs. A number of the stories, such as "Somebody" and "Old Mr Martin", have an unexpected grimness about them. "Michael was an exceptionally fine storyteller, but he's hard to classify," said one of his American publishers after his death. "He's not a hard-boiled writer in the classic sense, but there is a hard edge to him, a feeling within his work that not all of society is rational, that virtue is not always rewarded."
