Thoughts about the Action Thrillers that I have Read and those I Still Read!
I guess I started reading action thrillers back in the early 1980s, when a work colleague introduced me to the works of Clive Cussler and his hero Dirk Pitt! My first encounter with Mr. Pitt was in the book Raise the Titanic. I quickly went back and read his previous books and continued to follow Dirk’s adventures for several years. The novels always had a good mix of history and action.
At the same time I started to read The November Man novels from Bill Granger. The November Man books were James Bond and Jason Bourne type novels with an intriguing character. I followed this series for many years reading most of the twelve books in the series.
During this period, I also read most of Robert Ludlum;s action thrillers, along with books from David Morrell like The Brotherhood of the Rose and The League of Night and Fog. Richard Hoyt was another author whose action thrillers I enjoyed. His character was James Burlane.
I also read several of the John LeCarre George Smiley novels I know for sure that I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I may have read another but I’m not sure.
More recently the three action thriller series that I have followed, though I am way behind on all of them are the Mitch Rapp novels of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor‘s Scott Harvath novels and Alex Berenson‘s John Wells series. I have enjoyed all the books in these series, but over the last few years, I have read fewer and fewer of these types of books. At this point I think I will just have to just pick up one of the recent books, read it, and then go back and read the earlier one. It seems that if I don’t do that, I will just keep putting off reading books that I like!!!
One action thriller series, that I have kept up with pretty well, is the James Rollins Sigma Force series. The latest book in that series is The Bone Labyrinth, which is number 11 in the series. I have read all of the books except the first book Sandstorm and the two most recent books The 6th Extinction and of course The Bone Labyrinth. I have both of those books checked out of the library right now and Sandstorm has been on my TBR pile forever!! Prior to starting the Sigma Force Series, Rollins wrote several standalone thrillers like Subterranean, Excavation and Deep Fathom all of which were great reads
Hey I forgot the Gabriel Allon books from Daniel Silva.and what about the Bob Lee Swagger books from Stephen Hunter, those are good too!! Can you say too many books too little time!!
Now I haven’t even touch on the suspense and psychological thrillers that I have read…….that’s for later now it’s back to The Forgotten Room by Lincoln Child. Child is half of the writing team of Preston & Child whose Pendergrast series I also have read!! Hmm, that reminds me that the Pendergrast series is up to Book 15 and that I am only on book 7 …..argh!
So who is your favorite action thriller character????? Hmm, maybe Mitch Rapp, no John Wells…….
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