What's that genre? Dan Brown, Steve Berry, etc

JoyceH

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Hey, folks, is there a name for the sort of thriller I see a lot recently? Dan Brown writes them, but also Steve Berry and a whole host of others whose names escape me at the moment.

They're thrillers, but seem to me to be a specific sub-genre. The hero and the baddies are chasing around to exotic locales around the world in search of a long-lost historical secret and/or artifact, the rediscovery of which is going to Change Everything.

Is there a name for that sort of thing? Historical Thriller to me would imply set in the past, but these are contemporary people dealing with historical issues, so that's not quite right. There are enough entries in the genre that they ought to be called something, but I don't know what that is.
 

cbenoi1

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Religious thriller (Dan Brown, Raymond Khoury, etc)
Action-Adventure thriller (Clive Cussler {Dirk Pitt / NUMA Files series} )
Historical thriller (Clive Cussler {Isaac Bell Adventures / Oregon Files})

-cb
 

Melville

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I've heard such books referred to as "Adventure/Suspense" but I bet that's not all they're called!
 

WeaselFire

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I lump them all together under "adventure thrillers".
As do most book catalogs. Unless you have an established name and/or series, you're likely just a thriller writer, adventure thriller writer or possibly suspense thriller writer.

Jeff