I would classify some of my favourite authors as writers of suspense novels.  Most noteworthy for me in this category is the author P. M. Hubbard.  Hubbard was masterful at building up tension in his stories; slow-burning plots, which gradually developed, irrevocably, to a climatic conclusion.

During the decades when Hubbard was writing––principally the 1960s and 1970s––his main publisher, Macmillan, had an entire imprint devoted to ‘suspense’.  During the same period, Jay Suspense was a popular paperback imprint, reprinting many John Creasey novels amidst their output; and Cassell were regularly promoting their books as ‘novels of suspense’, most notably the George Gently novels of Alan Hunter.

Sadly, I believe that ‘suspense’ as a genre has suffered at the hands of the ‘thriller’.  Suffered, also, in a modern, low-attention-span society, which demands instant gratification, and no longer has the patience to read through 200 pages of a story before it gets the pay-off.  Publishers and literary agents are equally to blame: unless they get a ‘hero’ moment within the first couple of pages of a prospective novel it is consigned to the slush-pile.  I doubt that any of P. M. Hubbard’s excellent novels would have seen the light of day in the current quick-fix marketplace, despite them being some of the finest writing of their kind.

I would advocate that as a society we all adopt a Guinness approach to reading.

Good things come to those that wait.

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow enjoys a bit of suspense.