Thrillers. John Fraser

After years of intellectual nourishment from thrillers, along with the delights of suspense, Fraser explores the thought-processes of representative thriller characters coping with high-tension situations that require intelligent problem-solving and bring their values into a sharper focus. <br><br>With alert empathy, he follows Jack Carter as he hunts down his brother&#39;s killers in Ted Lewis&#39;s masterpiece Jack&#39;s Return Home (&quot;a kind of dark English Gatsby&quot;) ; suffers along with violence-averse Rae Ingram coping alone on a small yacht with a dangerous paranoid in Dead Calm (&quot;a philosophical thriller&quot;) by that fine Gold Medal novelist Charles Williams; and gives a lot of attention to Donald Hamilton&#39;s young professional men entangled with enigmatic young women in pre-Helm works like The Steel Mirror (1948) where he was learning his craft. <br><br>In a fourth chapter, he hacks at the wall between &quot;art&quot; and &quot;entertainment&quot; and loose talk about the &quot;world&quot; of the thriller. Lastly, he reminiscences about a fascinating safari that he made into the sex-&#39;n-violence &quot;Mushroom Jungle&quot; (British pulp fiction ca.1946-54), and offers conclusions about violence and peace.<br><br>He avoids jargon, combines an aficionado&#39;s enthusiasm with a scholar&#39;s accuracy, quotes generously to convey the texture of a work, provides background information for readers new to the topic, and illuminates &quot;craft&quot; aspects of fiction in general. His emphasis throughout is positive.