Not Enough Thrills in Parliament Already?

It’s hardly uncommon for political leaders to influence what books the rest of us carry along on our summer vacations. The careers of Dennis Lehane, Walter Mosley, Harlan Coben, and Alex Kava were all boosted after the media pointed out that former U.S. President Bill Clinton enjoyed their novels. And we have mentioned before that the popularity of super-spy James Bond was fueled in part by President John F. Kennedy’s enthusiasm for the works of Ian Fleming, whom he’d met at a party in Washington, D.C.

It seems that UK pols are no less enthralled by reading than their American counterparts, with many of them favoring crime and thriller works. The Guardian reports on the reading habits of the head of Britain’s Conservative Party:

David Cameron will begin his 10-day holiday in France next weekend by relaxing with “a really trashy novel,” the Tory leader confided. Aides said later that may mean a date with bestselling American writer, Patricia Cornwell, and her hardnosed forensic pathologist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, star of 17 corpse-strewn thrillers.

“I always start when I go on holiday with a really trashy novel. You need something to completely empty your mind and take you back,” Cameron told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.

Cameron keeps a volume or two of Evelyn Waugh novels, witty high priest of reactionary Toryism, on his desk at Westminster. But Cornwell is an even more appropriate source of Tory modernizer’s inspiration as a Republican who fell out (“not a democracy so much as theocracy”) with George [W.] Bush.

She is also a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired anti-slavery sentiment before the American Civil War. Her latest thriller, The Scarpetta Factor, newly published in the U.S., is thought to be Cameron’s choice.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is currently vacationing in England’s Lake District, has not released his own summer reading list. But The Guardian reported a while back that Brown is a Harry Potter fan. (“As he gears up to steer the country prudently into a new era, the country clearly needs to know what Gordon Brown will be reading over the summer. In a shock revelation, it turns out that our new PM will not be brushing up on his beloved neo-endogenous growth theory, but J.K. Rowling’s final installment of the Harry Potter stories.”) One can’t help but wonder, too, whether Brown has been keeping up with Tom Cain’s new short story, “Bloodsport,” which is being serialized this week in The Rap Sheet.

Meanwhile, The Telegraph tells about a new survey of politicians’ reading tastes, conducted by the bookstore chain Waterstone’s. It indicates that Stieg Larsson’s thrillers, along with crime fiction by Ian Rankin, Reginald Hill, and Lee Child, can all be found occupying the luggage of UK politicians heading off for their holidays.

One can only wonder what ideas they’ll take away from such books.