The Problem of Verisimilitude in the "High" Thriller

Looking at what Harry Connolly called the "high" thriller against the "low," and how much more popular the latter have long been against the former it can seem that they have a good many point in their favor here in the view of most readers--not least stories more focused on a protagonist, "relatable" characters and surroundings, an absence of the kind of heavy "information load" the reader of a high thriller has to keep up with. All this makes it easier for them to "get into" the story and want to follow it along. However, that doesn't seem to exhaust the issue, with at least one more striking me as relevant--the different challenges with which they face a writer seeking to achieve verisimilitude. As Connolly observed of the high thriller, in fiction of this type there is an expectation of the writer, if understood to be presenting a piece of fiction, having done his homework, often very demanding homework, so as to get the facts right. It may well be that, in spite of the hype of publicists, few writers really live up to the expectation. But even those who do the job well are, in depicting the "commanding heights" of the modern world on which the high thriller tends to be set, likely to find that the broad, deep and precise command of detail that enables one to imagine a place or a scene "to saturation" as Henry James had it, is beyond them. They just don't have the level of access to the figures, places, things they would need to in order to do so (and the very few who do have access rarely include anyone with much writerly skill, which is why their "books" are almost always ghostwritten). The result is that there are gaps, which either they do not fill in, leaving the whole hazy, or fill in by making things up, which is apt to make it all look silly. Meanwhile, virtually all are forced to take liberties with the facts for dramatic purposes, which is especially problematic in the commercial political thrillers. Being bound by the constraints of an orthodox political outlook, where politics more or less corresponds to the middle school civics class textbook description of them, leaves one's credibility before a discerning reader paper-thin.

The result is that, all other things being equal, the depiction of the White House Situation Room at a moment of crisis is less likely to convince and to engage than that of some small-town greasy spoon late at night. Especially given the weaker treatment of the political element that is apt to be part of this, a discerning reader can be forgiven for thinking the game not worth the candle.