Some would call it dissipation, but I choose to call it character. You look as though you may have acquired a few of the social graces along the way. As wealthy editor Nancy deChant Orumber says to tough-guy Mike Padillo in Thomas’s The Backup Men (1971): So class-ridden are some of Thomas’s characters that they appear to have leapt from the pages of a British spy novel into the rarefied atmosphere of suburban small-town America.

He wrote with equal ease about those at the top or at the bottom of society’s ladder. Even Stephen King, having stated that Thomas was “the Jane Austen of the political espionage story,” compared him to Don DeLillo.īorn in Oklahoma in 1926, Thomas’s writing cut across social and political classes. Westlake, and President Bill Clinton, as well as that renowned cultural critic Lynne Cheney.

MacDonald, Eric Ambler, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Moreover, he had been a favorite of such diverse readers as John D. It’s hard to understand why his books always sold reasonably well. Having written some 25 books, including his incomparable Chinaman’s Chance (1978) and five under his well-chosen nom-de-plume Oliver Bleeck, Thomas, even at his worst, is no less compelling than the great Elmore Leonard - though perhaps not so self-conscious or style-obsessed.Īt some point during the 1990s, not long before his death, Thomas seemed to fall out of favor. Amongst these one would have to add the name of Ross Thomas, surely one of the best crime writers of the last 40 years. At the same time, there are a number of excellent noirists who have either been forgotten or, for one reason or another, remain unrecognized or underappreciated. When it comes to crime fiction, flavors-of-the-month are a dime a dozen, and self-parody is an occupational hazard. IT'S NOT UNCOMMON these days to stumble across some critic extolling the merits of the latest hotshot crime writer.

Dolan dark,darker,darkest