suspense have sold more than 8 million copies around the world. At CrimeReads they write:Writers (and readers) ... are drawn to leading characters who are active, who go out into the world and solve problems. Grief is the opposite of that, and grieving involves the acceptance that some problems cannot be fixed, they can only be lived with. That acceptance can be immensely important in getting through the dark periods of our life but it is a very bad basis for a thriller. So what do we do with grief when we write a thriller?They tagged "ten books which make use of grief, or pointedly avoid it, or turn it into something else," including:
Tell No One by Harlan Coben (2001)Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.
Here, finally, is a book that starts with a hero experiencing full-on grief for his wife, who, eight years earlier, was kidnapped and murdered. But this apparent exception to the rule that grief must be displaced in order to be used in a thriller is actually another example of it. Suddenly he gets a mysterious message which suggests his wife may be still alive. He’s reached the stage of acceptance under a misapprehension. Thrillers are all about ‘what if’s’ and here Coben asks: what if the ‘denial’ stage and the ‘anger’ stage were the authentic ones. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross would not approve.
--Marshal Zeringue