Government Conspiracy Fiction Books You Won't Want To Put Down

By Ann Lee


For a book that is packed with excitement, nonstop action, and a main character who is heroic as they come, the classic novel The Thirty-Nine Steps is a great pick for a revolutionary paranoid thriller. Author John Buchan might not have known just how many more government conspiracy fiction books he would feature his character of Richard Hannay in when he published this story in 1915. In the character's debut novel, he finds himself on the run in a series of unlikely situations.

While there are plenty of great novels about conspiracies that take place on a very high level, such as within or between governments, sometimes it is easier to relate to a story when it isn't on such a large scale. "Nightmare Town" is a short story that Dashiell Hammett wrote in 1924. The plot consists of a small town that plans to commit insurance fraud and results in people being murdered.

The Ministry of Fear was written in 1943, when people wanted to read stories about Nazis and World War II. Graham Greene's book is about the Nazis' method of blackmailing people into submission. It's easy to understand the title after reading this book.

Many people have heard of The Manchurian Candidate because of the film by the same title featuring Denzel Washington, but plenty of others knew about it long before that. Richard Condon wrote the novel in 1959, and the fear of communism definitely had a big influence on the writing of this book and its reception. The protagonist is subject to brainwashing to make him carry out an assassination.

One of the tragic events that happened in US history with unsolved mysteries surrounding it that have made conspirators come up with their own theories is the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Winter Kills was one of the first novels to explore this mystery. Richard Condon wrote this book in 1974, and it is very dark in nature considering the material it covers.

When Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson got together to write a book about counterculture and conspiracies, they might not have known just how big it was going to become. Their work became known as The Illuminatus! Trilogy, three novels that are usually printed as one anthology. Published from 1969 to 1971, their work combines genres like psychedelia, horror, and comedy.

The Crying Lot 49 came out in 1966, and it is one of the shorter pieces by the author Thomas Pynchon. What this story lacks in length, however, it makes up for in the quality of the narrative and story being told. The story, filled with cultural references to the Beatles and other icons of the 60s, is about a mail service's plot that is over 500 years old.

Gravity's Rainbow is one of the deepest and most complex novels a reader might come across when looking for a paranoid thriller. Although there is a large number of characters and the book deals with topics that are at a very high level, if the reader is up for the challenge, it can be very illuminating. When the book came out, many people saw it to be too obscene or not comprehensible at all.




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