Don't be beastly to thriller writers

Book lovers are always pleased when water-cooler conversation turns to the latest phenomenon in which a novel or author has had the kind of popular success that extends far beyond the usual book reading public. The general tenor of such discussions runs along the dyspeptic lines of: ‘Why aren’t people reading better books?’ I have heard the following: ‘I find it really depressing when I see an adult reading a JK Rowling novel on the tube’, and ‘Steig Larsson may keep you turning the pages, but what a shame he died before his books could be properly edited.’ And as for Dan Brown and E L James, they have almost become shorthand (certainly among middle-class readers) for bad writing that sells in massive numbers. But do such dismissals tell the whole story?

There is another (and in this writer’s view) more welcome attitude to be found among readers of the non-snobbish variety — and that is a realistic welcoming of the fact that a great many people who would not otherwise pick up a book do so because of these popular writers (who clearly make up in sheer readability what they may lack in style — why, otherwise, are their novels consumed in such vast numbers?)