Writing popular fiction

left-wingers and most often a part of the government itself.
    No matter which of the six kinds of spy plots you employ, you may either paint the world of international espionage as thrilling, glamorous, and desirable—or as a necessary but sordid environment where the souls of its inhabitants wither early. Any of Ian Fleming's novels about the
    Suspense glamorous counter-intelligence operative James Bond would serve as an example of the first method, while John Le Carre's justly famous
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
would make a fine model for the moody spy story.

DETECTIVE STORIES
    In the suspense novel, a detective hero is usually a member of some public police force; private investigators are reserved for use in mystery novels where there is a puzzle to solve and an identity to uncover. These stories deal almost exclusively with violent murder or kidnapping; in either case, remember that the unveiling of the criminal, to the suspense reader, is less important than
how to stop him
.
    When a suspense novel centers on a kidnapping, the child is rarely murdered. If you kill off an innocent child, your reasons must be more complex and artistically justifiable than "for the shock value."
    If you are thinking of tackling a kidnapping story, you should understand that the form has been used many times and that the basic plot progression—child kidnapped, child threatened, child traced, child rescued—is so familiar to suspense readers that a new novel of the type can only be successful if it contains a fresh slant or gimmick.
    Evan Hunter's 87th Precinct novel,
King's Ransom (
under the pseudonym Ed McBain), is a kidnapping story that works. King, the wealthy man of whom ransom is demanded for the return of his son, is on the edge of making a business deal that will make or break him financially. He can't afford to put up the cash for the ransom without missing out on the deal and losing most of his fortune. When it turns out the kidnappers have accidentally taken a servant's child, and not his own, King's moral dilemma is knottier rather than more simple: just because the child isn't his own, is he now free of all responsibility, even though the kidnappers
were
after his son? King's conflict of values gives the novel a dimension without which it would have been far less successful.
    Stanley Cohen's fine novel,
Taking Gary Feldman
, deals with the kidnapping of a rich man's son. When the boy and one of his abductors begin to take a strong liking to each other, and when the abductor finds out that the child's parents do not give him much love or respect, it becomes clear that Gary Feldman would be better off if he were
not
returned to his family. This slant, marvelously developed by Cohen, makes for a suspense novel as fresh and innovative as the reader could wish.
    When murder, not kidnapping, is the subject of a
suspense
detective story, the chase and capture of the killer is more important than learning his identity. Usually, he is a psychotic, for such a man does not need intricate reasons for murder and does not provide grist for a mystery-type plot.

CRIME STORIES
    When your protagonist is a criminal, he may "be either admirable or evil. The evil protagonist is usually mentally unstable rather than rationally motivated, because his crimes can be made more horrifying and suspenseful that way than if the reader can sympathize with his reasons: one of the most frightening villains is the utterly unpredictable man. Perhaps the best suspense novel using a madman as its lead character is Stephen Geller's phenomenal
She Let Him Continue
, also published under the title of the movie version,
Pretty Poison
. In this masterpiece of horror, the protagonist is an extremely unbalanced young man who has convinced himself that he is employed by the CIA and that it is his duty to investigate and kill those "subversives" working around him. He enlists a young, sexually precocious
but utterly vicious girl in his campaign, and their activities lead the reader
rapidly to as spectacular and gruesome a climax as anything ever written in the
genre. Because readers tend to identify more readily with fictional characters
they can like, the evil protagonist should be used only rarely. When a story
demands him, he should get his just rewards in the end.
    If your hero is an admirable criminal, in
the vein of Donald E. Westlake's Parker or Dan Marlowe's Drake (in Marlowe's Operation Breakthrough, Operation Flashpoint, Operation