Novels with chess themes

Andy Soltis lists a number of novels with chess themes in his book Chess Lists. Many of these, such as Nabokov's The Defence, Zweig's The Royal Game, or Neville's The Eight were already discussed on this forum and elsewhere on chess.com. My question concerns the less-known ones, I wonder if anyone can recommend any of the following:

- James Whitfield Ellison's Master Prim (1968)

- Anthony Glyn's The Dragon Variation (1967)

- S.S. van Dine's The Bishop Murder Case (1922)

- Brad Leithauser's Hence (1989)

- Grandmaster (1984) by Warren B. Murphy and Molly Cochran

I did find praise for Grandmaster on amazon.com, but some of the other titles have no reviews at all.

Thanks for listing these, and starting this thread.  

When you started that those first books you mentioned were already discussed on this forum, which forum or thread,were you writing about. If another, I never knew about it.  There is no way I can keep up with all of these forums.  Anyway, you did list them and I can research them on my own.  However, any comments about any such books are always appreciated.  

 Thanks.

 I blogged my favorite chess fiction here:

http://blog.chess.com/Crazychessplaya/chess-fiction

A bit outdated now, as it was written before my reading Neville's The Eight (which I highly recommend).

 Thanks.

There is a new Matthew Reilly novel out - The Tournament - if anyone has read it please post their comments. I have read plenty of favourable reviews online but they are from the masses, I wouldn't mind having a chess players perspective.

..........................

The year is 1546.

Europe lives in fear of the powerful Islamic empire to the East. Under its charismatic Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, it is an empire on the rise. It has defeated Christian fleets. It has conquered Christian cities.

Then the Sultan sends out an invitation to every king in Europe: send forth your champion to compete in a tournament unlike any other...

Adding White Death, a thriller centered around an upcoming World Chess Championship match. Really enjoyed it. The author is Boris Starling, writing under the pen name "Daniel Blake." Really hard to put down, this book. Some reviewers complain that there is "too much detail about chess".

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17070117-white-death

adding Arturo Pérez-Reverte "The Flanders Panel". Not one of this author's best, and a lot of the chess ideas in the plot are really contrived, but it does feature a murder mystery plot structured after the moves in a chess game.

Adding A Softness in the Eyes by Harry Posner. A somewhat claustrophobic psychological thriller; the murders take place during an elite chess tournament on a tropical island. Light reading.

I have read these two, but I fear that I can only provide a little help. I have COMPLETELY forgotten what happened in Hence and perhaps that says something about it. The Prim book, as best I can remember it, was short and described a reporter covering a tournament. The Prim character was similar to Fischer and some of his comments appeared to have been inspired by comments attributed to the real Fischer in an article about an interview that took place in Fischer's youth.

May  humbly suggest two wonderful books? Novels, most dealing with two players very often spoken but little known-Carl Schlechter and Tartakower.

What a great thread! I haven't read many of these - The Defence, The Royal Game and The Queen's Gambit are the only ones. The Queen's Gambit I thought quite poor because so unrealistic - more than one tournament in which the two main players win every game then meet in the last round. Chess is not Wimbledon. I tried Frances Parkinson Keyes's The Chess Players (about Morphy), but found it boring. One thing to add - there was a good short story in British Chess Magazine in the 1970s called 'A Game of Shakespeare', which was about exactly that, and included the fictitious game itself.

I recently read: The Chess machine by Robert Löhr. Great book!

The in my opinion only novel that correctly shows how chess players think (Stefan Zweig, for example, had no idea how chess players think) is "The Tower Struck by Lightning" by Fernando Arrabal. Arrabal was a member of the Spanish national chess team for some time. In the novel two chess players play the last and deciding game in a world championship. There is a diagram after each half-move. It is actually some game Capablanca once played; I have forgotten against which opponent. At one crucial point in the novel the game deviates from the Capablanca game.

There is a very complex relationship between the two players. There are also some surreal elements in the novel (Arrabal was a surrealist writer and filmmaker). Definitely highly recommended for any chess player!

Even Dead Men Play Chess by Michael Weitz (that's me!) is the first in my 3-book mystery series about a former cop and chess lover. All three were award winners and Alexandra Kosteniak even commented about them on her blog (which was WAY cool!) Yes, a little shameless self-promotion, but you know, starving artist, etc.

Wow, can I shut down a thread, or what?

Thank you, wids88! I really appreciate that and am glad you enjoyed it.