Thriller novelists get asked -- berated, sometimes -- about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment. You know -- if we write about sex a lot, are we encouraging depravity? If we describe a murder, are we responsible for putting the idea in some random sicko's head?
If I wanted to get Biblical, I might point you toward passages about Cain and Abel, or Lot's daughters, or Jacob's theft of Esau's birthright. The fact is, our best thriller novelists are also some of our sharpest observers of human behavior, and most accurate social historians.
As an example is the latest thriller by Joseph Finder, whom his publishers hype as the "CEO of suspense," presumably because his most recent novels have been tales of intrigue and conspiracy set in the corporate world. (A disclaimer: Finder has written some nice things about one of my previous novels, but I don't hold it against him.)
Power Play's structure is classic, almost archetypal. Jake Landry, your underachieving nice guy, finds himself at a wilderness retreat with a group of intimidating strangers -- his senior colleagues -- and his former girlfriend, for whom he still carries a torch. When a group of armed strangers bursts into the group's opening night dinner and takes them all hostage, blue-collar Jake is the only one who has the skills that really matter: the ones that will get them all out alive.
If you think this sounds like a mid-career Steven Seagal movie -- or maybe "Die Hard With a Blackberry," as one friend cracked when he heard the novel's premise -- you'd be wrong, and you'd be missing both the adrenaline rush and the razor-edged social comedy that is Finder's trademark. In Power Play, Finder uses the thriller structure to make pointed observations about gender in the workplace, the corporate caste system, and the true nature of risk in the global business environment. That, and you won't want to stop reading.
Finder's characters compete with each other about everything imaginable, assigning the same values to wealth and status as they do to their very lives. Early in the weekend, Jake witnesses this exchange:
Bross, who had a klaxon voice you could pretty much hear anywhere, said, "IWC Destriero."
Lummis rumbled something, and Bross went on, "Got it in Zurich in December. World's most complicated wristwatch. Seven hundred fifty mechanical parts, 76 rubies. Perpetual calendar with day, month, year, decade and century."
... Lummis held up his own watch and announced: "Jules Audemars Equation of Time skeleton. Grand Complication."
In Finder's world, it's no accident that Jake, with his $25 Casio, is the better man.
Before Jake saves the day, he must confront his fears: first of those who are trying to humiliate him, then of those who are trying to kill him. In the tradition of Horatio Alger, Jake finds everything he needs for survival within himself -- and with a little help from his friends, who in this case happen to be women.
Which brings me back around to my response to the people who want to scold us poor crime writers for making hay of murder, mayhem and looting. The most satisfying thrillers send ordinary people into battle against the forces of evil -- otherwise known as greed, ego, rage, fear and laziness -- and bring them out bloodied but whole.
Without revealing too much, Jake's resourcefulness, fundamental decency and (it turns out) tangled history wind up outweighing any split-second chronometer. Along the way, he even discovers the value of letting women make the decisions once in a while.
Power Play is a morality tale for our post-Enron world, and -- not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.