You can take the book out of the genre, but you can't take the genre out of the book

I don't know if reviewers were saying "transcended the genre" back in 1976, but they edged awfully close when they discussed Trevanian's novel The Main.

The author himself says he had high ambitions for the book, intending at first to write it under the name Jean-Paul Morin to distinguish it from the thrillers he had written under the Trevanian byline. (His real name was Rodney William Whitaker.):

"Well, The Main came out, and readers who associated the Trevanian name with crisp, shallow action novels blinked and wondered what the ****?!"

I have not read those thrillers, The Eiger Sanction and The Loo Sanction, or seen the Clint Eastwood movie based on the former, but amid its slow buildup and its somber urban anthropology and its study of character, The Main plants two classic thriller time bombs in its early chapters. Each follows the "Will X accomplish Y before Z happens?" formula and, while they're surprising in light of what surrounds them, they work.

What novels can you name by authors who step out of their customary genres or who write in multiple genres? What do you think of such books? Do hallmarks of one genre show up in the author's work in a different genre?

© Peter Rozovsky 2014