It makes sense that thriller authors would occasionally get the urge to set their novels in the book publishing world -- write what you know, etc. -- and besides, so many readers today are aspiring writers that the realm of big-ticket publishing has taken on some of the wish-fulfillment glamor of locales like Paris and Hong Kong. A seven-figure advance on royalties is, for some of us, far more alluring than James Bond's Aston Martin zipping over the cobblestones of Monte Carlo.
On the other hand, the book business isn't exactly thrilling, and efforts to gin up the sort of tension required to fuel a good suspense novel tend to lead to ludicrous excesses. Take Joel Dicker's "The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair," published in English in the U.S. earlier this year after attaining bestsellerdom in French. (Dicker is Swiss.) In 2012, "Harry Quebert" won a major literary prize in France (the Grand Prix du Roman, awarded by the Academie française) and its American publisher, Penguin Press, reportedly shelled out a handsome advance for the rights in hopes that it might become the next "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." No one can accuse Stieg Larsson of crafting deathless works of literature, but for sheer, unadulterated silliness, Dicker has the Swede beaten, hands down.