IP Picks🔎: A Sudsy, Sexy Wisteria Lane Whodunit
âž• We double down on murder and mystery for Thriller Week
Welcome to The Optionist. Between the ongoing L.A. fires, the coronation we shall not speak of in D.C. and yesterday’s Oscar nominations, the IP news front has been unusually quiet. Or maybe it just feels that way with all of the other headlines. That said, I’ve still come up with an extra-full list of picks this week. But before we get to them, two quick items . . .
This may finally be happening: After 20 years and countless hiccups and false starts, Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City may be heading to the screen. Leonardo DiCaprio, who has held the rights to the bestseller since 2010, is reported to be reuniting with Martin Scorsese. The pair have been trying to get the project off the ground for a decade and a half at this point, including an aborted attempt to make it as a TV series starring Keanu Reeves that Leo would have produced. As a big fan of the book, I’m surprised by how long it’s taken to get this commercial no-brainer to get a green light. If it does get made, I’ll be extremely curious to see what effect it has on the author’s other work. Larson, who’s written a half-dozen nonfiction books since Devil first broke out in 2002, has at least two other titles in development (and several others that are very adaptable, IMHO). If this latest incarnation pans out, I’m convinced it could jumpstart period true crime as a hot genre.
Will the real Freida McFadden please stand up? McFadden, the prolific author of a dozen books in the past four years, including The Housemaid, which is being made with Sydney Sweeney in the lead, has kept her real identity a secret. So secret, in fact, that many of her fans thought she might not be real. Well, not only is she real, but The Times of London tracked her down. And it turns out she’s a doctor by day — talk about making a guy feel lazy!. The article is an eye-opening read that includes a terrific anecdote about how the author’s own book club didn’t believe her when she revealed her secret identity.
On to this week’s picks, which all share a mystery theme. Okay, it’s not that big of a mystery. It’s Thriller Week here at the Optionist! The full lineup:
A procedural thriller that follows a criminal investigator for an unlikely government agency
A political thriller about a plot to bring down the U.S. economy and a 200-year-old plan from one of the Founding Fathers that might stop it
A family thriller about a woman who might finally learn the truth about her father and whether he was involved in the murders of his siblings 50 years earlier
A domestic thriller about three wealthy suburban couples whose friendship is torn apart by the unsolved murder of one of them
A campus thriller about a group of students who go missing on Parents Weekend
A grifter thriller centered on a man with a dubious claim to the throne of an Eastern European country
