In honor of the recent launch of Bodies on Potomac by Dan O’Neil, we would like to dedicate this week’s edition of Inspired By to the five authors that have inspired him most…

 

“If I note each author with a Roman Numeral, then maybe no judgment will be made as to who is number 1 and who is number 5. Each author will be accompanied by one of his great novels. It isn’t that I rate it as number one on his list, it’s simply that it’s likely the most memorable title, or the first that I read. Novel names are an identification device, nothing more.

There is no question that I was captured by fiction early in life. I wasn’t keen on history—other than World War II history—but sometime while in the 8^th grade (I think) I discovered Ian Fleming. Or better said, James Bond.

After all, to a 14 (or so) year old boy, what could be better than a world of high stakes card games, fast cars, speeding bullets, sultry ADULT women, and flowing martinis. No, I’m not forgetting the Cold War, the dark alleys demanding superlative trade craft to stay alive, and all the other mundane things an MI 6 operative must do, but at that age I preferred whenever possible to live on the hot fudge sundaes of life. I don’t remember which Bond novel was first, but it was—I think—in paperback. It might have been From Russia With Love, but I cannot say that with any certainty.

 

I.  Herman Wouk – Winds of War

 Captivating is the best word I can find to describe his work. Wouk had my mind spinning from the moment I opened the book. I was enthralled at the way he could transform words into real live human beings. I didn’t realize what a master he was because it wasn’t the craft that interested me at that time, but the story, and the characters that made it all work.  Pug Henry. What a name for a Naval Commander.

 

II.  Robert Ludlum –  The Osterman Weekend

 Ludlum stunned me with his creativity, with his ability to weave disparate threads into a cohesive story. His early career works appealed to me more than some of his later ones, but he was a master storyteller for a long time, and a new release by him was an event. He paved the way for epic thriller writers so much that I’ve often wondered how much Clancy learned from reading Ludlum during the 1970’s and early 80’s.

 

III.   Tom Clancy – Without Remorse

 I confess. Clancy is the headliner on my Mount Rushmore of authors. At the height of his powers, he could chill the reader to the very bone with his combustible narrative, encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. weapons systems, and ability to foretell political turmoil with searing accuracy. He was a glorious writer with a diabolical imagination. One memorable day I heard him interviewed. In response to a direct question, he admitted that he would write his 900 page epics in three months (not counting research).  I simply shook my head in awe.

 IV.  Robert B. Parker-Melancholy Baby

Parker’s dialogue made me laugh and made me cry, on occasion almost simultaneously. But that wasn’t his best asset. Nor was it his ability to write the Sunny Randall series in first person when Sunny was female—I never tire of admiring his ability to pull that off with such incredible aplomb. No, Parker’s greatest asset was his ability to nail life right between the eyes. Whether it was Sunny or Spencer or Jesse Stone or his men of the old West, reading a Parker novel always moved the reader closer to earning a PhD in what life is, not what it’s supposed to be. But in the end, his stories were simply damn good fun.

 

 V.  Nelson DeMille –The General’s Daughter

 The first DeMille book I read was Gold Coast. It was big, and flashy, and very real. The way he told the story was so effortless, or so it seemed. I wanted to do it, too. Then I learned that he writes—to this day!—his manuscripts longhand on legal pads in a nearly indecipherable chicken scratch.  Anyone who can do that while causing a reader to suffer in abstentia from tunnel claustrophobia as he did in Up Country, simply cannot be kept off my personal Mount Rushmore. Welcome to the gang of 5 Mr. DeMille, and thank you for such great entertainment over the decades.