Who Stole the Thriller?

It was once owned by Americans. It's now owned by writers who don't write in English. The Daily Beast tries to dig up some answers.

From the piece...

Culturally, we’re not doing much better—unless, of course, Jersey Shore had some profound significance that escaped me. An American author hasn’t won the Nobel Prize in Literature for nearly two decades. A judge from the Nobel committee caused a small row in 2008 when he called American literature “too isolated, too insular.”

In fact, even the popular literature we read is no longer necessarily homegrown. This past winter, I read four genre novels of the thriller/suspense/crime variety. Two were American, two were from abroad. They further confirmed my suspicion that good things are happening. They’re just happening elsewhere or yesteryear.

Is it possible that the entire Anglo-American world offers too narrow a scope? That even the work of whiskey-swilling private eyes has been outsourced? In one word, yes. The finest thriller I’ve recently read was not written in English.