IP Picks🔎: 'Lessons in Chemistry' With a Whodunit Twist
➕ Gothic horror, a real-world feel-good story and grown-up 'Mean Girls'
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along. Before we dive into this week’s picks, a quick update on a couple of recent stories.
"Love That Dirty Water," Part I: It's the 35th anniversary of the biggest and most famous art theft ever recorded — the sensational 1990 heist of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. While the case has no doubt inspired one thousand writers rooms, there's never been a scripted adaptation of the headline-making crime, maybe because it remains unsolved. The FBI's former lead investigator on the case has a theory about who did it — something he lays out in his in-the-works memoir. Needless to say, I think it is very adaptable. In fact, I already said as much in a previous issue of the Optionist.
"Love That Dirty Water," Part II: While we're on my hometown, the Karen Read case, which also I flagged early on as a very adaptable true-crime story, is barreling toward a second trial after the first ended in a hung jury. For those who aren’t up-to-date on the case, the story centers on the death of Read's boyfriend, police officer John O'Keefe, who was found in the snow outside a fellow officer's home after a night of partying. The two main theories: Either a drunken Read ran over O'Keefe or he was beaten to death by his fellow officers, who are covering up their role.
One part of the case that has always fascinated me is the role of “Turtleboy” (real name: Aidan Kearney), a local blogger who believes Read is being framed. He's ridden the case to a minor degree of fame. Normally, I’d say that a passionate true-crime blogger would be a great character on which to hang an adaptation. Indeed, someone did make a deal with him for a movie. But I've always thought Turtleboy was a problematic character because of the way he kept inserting himself into the case. Whether he becomes a witness as a well as a chronicler has been a battle between Read's defense team and prosecutors. This recent Atlantic piece on Kearney ("A profane blogger believes an innocent woman is being framed for murder. He’ll do anything to prove he’s right — and terrorize anyone who says he’s wrong") reminded me why I think of this story as a cautionary tale about deciding which participant in a true-crime adaptation to align with.
(Side note: "Dirty Water" is unofficially Boston's true anthem. If you're ever seated next to me on a flight into Logan Airport, you'll hear me humming it as we touch down.)
Speaking of object lessons, Facebook has done everything wrong in responding to Careless People, a memoir by former executive Sarah Wynn-Williams that is highly unflattering to the company, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and other key executives. Facebook tried to stop its publication, which of course only brought more attention to what's in the book, and now it’s just debuted at No. 1 on the NYT bestseller list. Facebook has managed to turn a campfire into a raging inferno. Oxygen feeds a fire. Public Relations 101: Don't feed the fire!
On to this week’s picks, which feature a trio of books with compelling female lead characters. Plus, a feel-good story that could be seen as an antidote to our dark times. The full lineup:
A dark comedy/mystery about rich people behaving badly at a NYC private school
A period-procedural that’s Lessons in Chemistry with a twist of murder
A dark comedy/procedural inspired by the 2006 teen comedy John Tucker Must Die
A gothic horror tale of demonic possession in Colonial Mexico
A feel-good drama in the vein of Pay It Forward
