Perhaps you've even made comparisons and wondered fancifully, could Ian Rankin's Rebus for example, work with Peter James' Roy Grace.
In Face Off, truth being stranger than fiction, they do work together in the short story In the Nick of Time. For Face Off is just that, a face-off between 23 celebrated thriller writers, (two were already writing together), working in tandem to produce 11 short stories.
The concept, to take iconic writers with their iconic characters and face them off against each other, sufficiently intrigued David Baldacci, himself a thriller writer, to take on the task of editing the book.
That the book exists is thanks to the dream of two thriller writers, Gayle Lynds and David Morrell, who started the trade group International Thriller Writers (ITW) in 2004.
The organisation supports itself by creating its own books which are then sold to publishing houses. All are created by author-editors who volunteer their time and writers who donate their stories.
Face Off is a once-in-a-lifetime event and, as Baldacci points out in his foreword, shouldn't even exist. Normally this book could never happen, he writes. Contractually it would be impossible and publishing is fraught with difficulties as well.
Only with ITW's model, Baldacci adds, with the stories being donated and the money going to the organisation, would this work. The 23 writers, all ITW members, eagerly contributed to this book.
James Rollins (v Steve Berry, The Devil's Bones) had tested the waters earlier in his 2006 thriller Black Order by making a no-name reference to Berry's hero, Cotton Malone. People noticed and Berry reciprocated in one of his books.
Another writer, and part of the anthology, Raymon Khoury joined in on the fun. The welter of emails that followed proved readers noticed the references and alerted the writers to the fact readers wanted to see the characters together again.
Face Off is inventive spirit at its best. The book ''buttonholed'' me as it were, from the first story and kept my interest to the last.
It was, however, a little like sampling a smorgasbord and only being able to have a very small forkful of each dish. At the end of each story I found myself tantalised and wanting more.
The story Silent Hunt (John Lescroart v T. Jefferson Parker) produces some unintentional humour, when Wyatt Hunt buys ''long pants of good wicking material that with a zip converted into shorts and two long-sleeved shirts''. Now that would make getting dressed an interesting experience!
- Ted Fox is an online marketing and social media consultant.
Win a copy
The ODT has five copies of Face Off, edited by David Baldacci (RRP $37.99), to give away courtesy of Hachette and its imprint, Sphere.
For your chance to win a copy, email helen.speirs@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address in the body of the email, and ''Face Off Book Competition'' in the subject line, by 5pm on Tuesday, August 12.
Winners of last week's giveaway, Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith, courtesy of Polygon and Newsouth Books, were: Doreen Edwards, of Balclutha, Beverley McIntosh, of Mosgiel, Judy Davies, of Wanaka, Barry Jones, of Dunedin, and Leonard Bruss, of Alexandra.
