Posted on 03/14/2011 11:48:17 AM PDT by Walter Scott Hudson
Throughout the history of popular fiction, the New York Times Book Review and the literati have done their best to focus public attention on writers of the Left. Nevertheless, readers have confounded them by tending to choose heroes with a more traditional, pro-American outlook and a decidedly un-nuanced view of good guys and bad guys.
So while Fletcher Knebel was cranking out critically acclaimed hardcover political thrillers like Seven Days in May from the Left, he and his ilk were being vastly outsold by paperback writers such as Donald Hamilton, Mikey Spillane, and Edward S. Aarons. In other words, by authors whose books featured he-man heroes.
In a more modern era, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz and Vince Flynn have all dominated the bestsellers list, leaving series like Sara Paretskys ultra-feminist private eye, and James Lee Burkes (excellently written but decidedly left leaning) series in the dust.
So, here, in somewhat chronological order, is volume three of my series on 18 19 of the best heroes to star in their own series of mysteries, thrillers, and espionage novels. Some are not overtly political, but none are politically correctstill others deserve mention because they swam upstream against the prevailing literary trend of the time.
To read volume 1 (heroes 1-6) click here.
To read volume 2 (heroes 7-12) click here.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
Charles McCarry’s Tears of Autumn was the book that pointed out to me that Kennedy & Diem were assassinated in the same month.
Some good stuff here, but how can he not include Harry Flashman??
What, no Chesterton’s Fr. Brown?
Im surprised that characters from Tolkien, C. S. Lewis or Ayn Rand didnt make the list.
No one from any of Michael Crichton’s works are there either, and all of his books which I have read do well at refuting the pseudoscience dogma which liberals call “science”
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