5 Authors Following in the Footsteps of Older Writers

Ryan Gattis (The New Richard Price)
Richard Price is far from retired, and is still among the modern day’s most compelling chroniclers of urban life, in all its violence and occasional grace. Gattis brings a mixture of Midwestern and West Coast attitude to his books, which explore the same territory: sprawling urban milieus packed with viscerally real characters struggling for and against monumental forces, finding small moments of triumph and emotion amidst the noise and dehumanizing bustle of modern life. Gattis taps into the same pulsing vein of gritty, violent, and of-the-moment stories that has supplied Price with so many memorable works, giving us books with the same you-are-there immediacy and dialogue that feels like eavesdropping on real people in real place.

Mike Ransom (The New Michael Crichton)
In the world of techno thrillers (and just plain thrillers), scientific accuracy is often a low priority; research sometimes seems to consist of walking through a room that contains an open Google search window. Michael Crichton made his name by crafting tense, imaginative stories that often crossed boldly into science fiction without ever forgetting the science part. With his electric debut The Ripper Gene, Ransom brings his scientific background (he’s a molecular pharmacologist) to bear in a story about the hunt for a serial killer that involves identifying a genetic trait shared by 70 percent of all known mass murderers, resulting in a story that slips perfectly into the vacuum left by Crichton’s passing.

Gillian Flynn (The New Patricia Highsmith)
As Gone Girl-mania subsides to merely fanatic levels, Flynn still reigns as one of the top writers of thrillers-with-a-twist working today. Her work is dark and edgy, infused with a strain of misanthropy that places most of her characters squarely into categories like “unreliable,” “unlikable,” and “unthinkable.” This is a trait she shares with Highsmith, the master of misanthropic thrillers, whose clever mind constructed the sort of twisting, unexpectedly dark stories in which people kill for small profits and become caught in webs of lies and violence of their own creation. Flynn’s bleak worldview continues in grand Highsmith tradition; Amy Dunne just might be the Tom Ripley of a new generation.

Garth Risk Hallberg (The New Tom Wolfe)
Hallberg’s much-anticipated opus City on Fire sprawls, an ambitious novel with scope and intent that will take your breath away. If Hallberg didn’t quite hit the heights that Wolfe’s all-time classic Bonfire of the Vanities managed 30 years ago, it certainly isn’t for lack of talent, incendiary writing, or willingness to dive into characters’ inner lives in a way few other writers would even attempt, much less pull off as thrillingly. When it comes to big, fleshy books that bring an entire world to life (even as they threaten to drown us in detail), we can never have enough. Hallberg’s attempt to step into Wolfe’s famous white-shoes is more than welcome—it’s necessary.

Laird Barron (The New H.P. Lovecraft)
Barron has been the thinking horror fan’s writer of choice for years, quietly building an empire of poetic horror fiction that explores much of the same psychological territory as Lovecraft, minus the problematic political and social beliefs, and with a firmer grasp on why the darkness can be so darn attractive. No other working writer can boast as great an excess of muscular imagery or as fluid and adaptive a style. Barron has turned Lovecraft’s epic mythology into something purely his own—a terrifying wordscape presented with such ornamental flourish, you sometimes forget you’re supposed to be terrified—until he forcibly, skillfully reminds you.