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Title details for Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang by Mike Ripley - Available

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

The Boom in British Thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed

by Mike Ripley
Lee Child
ebook
1 of 2 copies available
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1 of 2 copies available
WINNER OF THE HRF KEATING AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTION CRIME BOOK 2018An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her thrillers helped save the world. With a foreword by Lee Child. When Ian Fleming dismissed his books in a 1956 letter to Raymond Chandler as 'straight pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety' he was being typically immodest. In three short years, his James Bond novels were already spearheading a boom in thriller fiction that would dominate the bestseller lists, not just in Britain, but internationally. The decade following World War II had seen Britain lose an Empire, demoted in terms of global power and status and economically crippled by debt; yet its fictional spies, secret agents, soldiers, sailors and even (occasionally) journalists were now saving the world on a regular basis. From Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean in the 1950s through Desmond Bagley, Dick Francis, Len Deighton and John Le Carré in the 1960s, to Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins in the 1970s. Many have been labelled 'boys' books' written by men who probably never grew up but, as award-winning writer and critic Mike Ripley recounts, the thrillers of this period provided the reader with thrills, adventure and escapism, usually in exotic settings, or as today's leading thriller writer Lee Child puts it in his Foreword: 'the thrill of immersion in a fast and gaudy world.' In Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Ripley examines the rise of the thriller from the austere 1950s through the boom time of the Swinging Sixties and early 1970s, examining some 150 British authors (plus a few notable South Africans). Drawing upon conversations with many of the authors mentioned in the book, he shows how British writers, working very much in the shadow of World War II, came to dominate the field of adventure thrillers and the two types of spy story – spy fantasy (as epitomised by Ian Fleming's James Bond) and the more realistic spy fiction created by Deighton, Le Carré and Ted Allbeury, plus the many variations (and imitators) in between.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 18, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780008172244
      • File size: 9790 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780008172244
      • File size: 5233 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 11, 2017
      British author Ripley’s title for this highly readable, anecdotal survey comes from a 1956 letter that Ian Fleming wrote to Raymond Chandler: “You, after all, write ‘novels of suspense’... whereas my books are straight pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety.” It was Fleming who kicked off what Ripley (Mr. Campion’s Abdication) considers a golden age for British thrillers with the publication of Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, in 1953. Following a suggestion of Len Deighton, who achieved fame with The IPCRESS File in 1962, Ripley makes an important distinction between spy fantasy (Fleming and his successors) and spy fiction (John le Carré and other, more realistic writers) in lucid, conversational discussions of individual books that supply just enough of the plot while avoiding spoilers. Ripley concedes there was no sharp cut-off to the boom, which gradually petered out in the 1970s as Americans began to dominate the genre. For U.S. readers, this is a useful guide to many lesser and forgotten authors; thanks to Ripley’s infectious enthusiasm, they will be keen to seek out those writers and their works. Lee Child, author of the bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers, provides a foreword.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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