Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 51

“A Most Remarkable Writer”:
The Symon Myles Mysteries
and the Non-Series Hero
In his study of what he called “the super-selling giants” of the publishing
industry, J. Kenneth Van Dover noted that by the early 1970s, the most impressive
worldwide sales records were held by three genre novelists, all of whom had writ
ten crime/suspense stories, exploited the popular literary device of the series char
acter, and ultimately contributed the name of that character to the common Ameri
can lexicon. In accounting for the name recognition of Perry Mason, Mike Ham
mer and James Bond, and for the commercial success of their creators, Van Dover
pointed out that while popular writers by definition must cater to their audience,
often by writing varied fiction on topical issues, Erie Stanley Gardner, Mickey
Spillane, and Ian Fleming “hit upon a prototype...which can be endlessly dupli
cated with only nominal variations and yet continue to attract extremely large au
diences” (5).
This model of success would remain tantalizing for many aspiring writ
ers on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain during the early 1970s, a former Uni
versity of London philosophy student, then journalist, issued three “sub-Mickey
Spillane” mystery thrillers (Zuckerman qtd. in McDowell 94) in quick succession
to some modest commercial success. The first book, The Big Needle, appeared in
1974 and was followed a few months later by The Big Black, promoted by its
publishers as “the second in the enormously successful thriller series featuring
Apples Carstairs, by the remarkable young writer Symon Myles” (back cover).
‘Myles’ went on to pen one more mystery in the Apples Carstairs series, The Big
//// (1975), and a review culled for its cover claimed that “Apples Carstairs is fast
becoming literature’s new cult figure.”
Despite such hyperbole and hard-sell tactics, “Myles” abandoned the se
ries that same year. “I was trying to write a big best seller by creating a hero that
would captivate the readers of the world. The Apples books fell a long way short!”
he has said about his earliest novels (“early” 2). Turning from the Apples myster
ies, he attempted one more crime series—this time about industrial espionage—
publishing two “Piers Roper” novels under his own name— Ken Follett— before
going on to many other genuinely successful popular novels such as Eye o f the
Needle (1978), The Pillars o f the Earth (1989), and Code to Zero (2000). But in
assessing Follett’s current place in popular literature and in the history of the thriller,
some critics have maintained that despite Follett’s renown, the lack of a memo
rable series character to link his more than twenty novels may have resulted in a