Today: Korean Cannibals, Lady Assassins + 6 More Great Tales
A newsletter about available IP; I do the reading for you
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I've been catching up on my viewing of shows adapted from other material this week. I finally got to Pachinko, which I found totally engrossing and wonderfully different than my usual fare. I also finished off the Dropout and WeCrashed. I've been geeking out to Moon Knight as well. Twelve-year-old me still can't believe how many of my favorite superheroes are on screen now. This weekend I’m going to check out David Kelly's new series, Anatomy of a Scandal. Oh, and the trailer for the new version of Time Traveler's Wife looks great. I’m curious to know: What’s been your favorite adaptation so far this year and what one has done the best job adapting its source material? Drop me a note at andy@theoptionist.community. I’d love to include some of the highlights in a future newsletter.
Now let's get to this week's selections which includes a new detective series that could make for a great network show, a creepy Korean novel and a story that has someone time traveling back to 1930s Los Angeles.
BOOKS I LIKE (current)
Action/thriller
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley, Sept) You know what Meryl Streep has never done? Play a hitman. Here's her chance. The premise: Four women who have spent their lives working as assassins for a clandestine international organization and now that they've hit 60 they're sent on all-expenses paid retirement vacation, which they realize is a one-way ticket to death. So now it is kill or be killed as the four team up to take on their former bosses. I love the premise of this. Why should aging male action stars have all the fun in stuff like The Expendables? Bring on some of that Helen Mirren in F9 energy. How much fun would it be to see Meryl team up with Mirren and maybe Whoopi Goldberg and Michelle Yeoh or imagine an ass-kicking Maggie Smith (though at 87 she might not be up for an action movie). We could probably cast this six different ways with all the great older female actresses out there and every version would be fun. The book has a fab tagline as well: "Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon." REPS: WME
Mystery
Acts of Violet by Margarita Montimore (Flatiron, July) A true-crime podcaster investigates the disappearance of Violet Volk, the most famous female magician in the country — who went poof mid-act. The big get he's after is the sister Sasha: responsible, shy and not interested in talking. As the podcaster's pursuit of the interview grows more intrusive, Sasha's teen daughter Quinn launches her own investigation into what happened to her beloved aunt. Strange coincidences and dreams start to pile up for Sasha that all point to a connection to Violet, and Sasha realizes she must solve the mystery to resolve her own painful feelings about her sister. Montimore's last book, Oona Out of Order, was a bestseller, a GMA book club pick and is in development at Amazon. Both novels play with story in fun ways. Acts mixes podcast transcripts, emails, news stories with narration to tell the story in ways that could be fun on screen. I was thinking about how Murders in the Building played with the podcast and texts as narrative devices that added to the story. I also liked the relatable relationship dynamic between the three Volk women (Violet, Sasha and Quinn). Feels like a limited series but enough is left open at the end to imagine more story if the interest was there. REPS: PFD (UK)
Procedural
Quarter to Midnight by Karen Rose (Berkley, Aug) You could launch a good crime procedural off of this New Orleans-set book, which has Iraq War vet Molly Sutton teaming up with her former CO, Burke Broussard, to open a private investigative service and try to help up-and-coming chef Gabe Hebert prove that his cop dad didn't commit suicide but was murdered by some corrupt fellow officers. There's a lot of world-building and character introducing here in a good way as we get to know Molly and Gabe (sparks fly, duh), Burke, the rest of the investigative team, Molly's sister and niece, lots of colorful New Orleans cops, chefs and underworld types. There's also a lot of death and danger. The vet-turned-PI is a classic TV character and Molly is a great version — I was imaging Charlize Theron if she wanted to do a TV series — and New Orleans is such a great place to set a crime series. Imagine all the atmosphere of Treme but structured around the classic conventions of a network detective show. Think a female Magnum, P.I. for the 21st century. This is the first in a new series for Rose, who has landed multiple books on the bestseller list here and in Europe. REPS: Writers House
Romcom/coming of age/diverse
The Stand-In by Lily Chu (Sourcebooks, May) This is a cute and fun switching places story. Who among us hasn't dreamed (at least for second) about how cool it would be to switch places with a celebrity? Gracie Reed's life isn't going well — her skeezy boss just fired her and she's struggling to get her Alzheimers-suffering mother into the right nursing home — when Chinese superstar Wei Fangli rolls up in a limo and asks her to be her double since they look alike and Wei is burnt out. Wie's hunky boyfriend Sam Yao (Simu Liu maybe?) doesn't like the idea and doesn't like Gracie at first. Sure we can see where this is going but the ride is fun and there's a lot here, from Gracie's relationship with her mother to Wei's burnout to questions about sexual harassment, bi-racial identity and the burdens of fame that give the story added depth. Gracie's a very relatable millennial character and her coming of age has universal appeal. (There's also going to be an Audible exclusive version narrated by Philipa Soo, who so totally could play Gracie.) REPS: UTA
Backlist Gems (books deserving a second look)
Horror/thriller
The Cannibals Within Us by Park Young (Eunhaeng Namu Publishing, 2019) I think this creepy Korean novel that mixes a hitman story with elements of The Island of Dr. Moreau will get a lot of attention from Parasite fans who liked the mix of horror and social commentary. So far it has only been published in Korea but there's an English translation in the works now and Park Young is an up-and-coming talent who won a prestigious Korean young writer award. Cannibals Within Us is about Jinwoo, who was sold by his father as child to a mob boss to pay off a debt and has now grown up to be his hitman. Along the way, he fell in love with and then lost touch with a prostitute in the boss' employ. Years later he reconnects with her and begins to learn secrets that might earn him his freedom — secrets that have to do with the island inhabited by mysterious cannibals where he dumps his victims. To me the hitman + horror story has a cross-cultural appeal that would make this interesting to audiences in lots of different countries. REPS: The Artists Partnership (UK)
SciFi/diverse
The Perishing by Natashia Deon (Counterpoint, 2021) This story reminds me of some of my favorite about time travel and immortals like Octavia Butler's Kindred and Matt Haig's How To Stop Time and I love the way it brings alive 1930s Los Angeles. Here Louise Willard, a teen girl narrating from 2102, wakes up in 1930 Los Angeles without any memory and nearly naked. She is placed in a foster home, befriends an aspiring Chinese-American actress and her family who run a legendary boxing gym and becomes the first Black woman at The Los Angeles Times. Along the way she meets a handsome firefighter, whom she doesn't know but whose face she has been drawing her whole life, and tries to figure out the mystery of her existence — is she immortal? Has she lived past lives? How does the fireman fit in? Deon does a great job immersing the reader in Depression Era Los Angeles while the fantasy/mystery keeps you turning pages. You could easily pencil in Zendaya for this role but I'd also love to see what someone like the talented Dominque Fishback, who was so good in Judas and the Black Messiah and the recent The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, could do with this role. REPS: ICM
JOURNALISM
True crime
"A Murder Solved in DMs: When Daisy De La O was killed, friends looked to social media for the man they suspected had done it. They found him." by Jennifer Swann (The Cut, April 18) This is a great story about how social media has become the new amateur crime-solving tool. When Rebecca Fuentes' best friend Daisy was murdered in 2021 by an ex-boyfriend, she turned to TikTok for help in finding the suspect when it felt like the police and the media didn't care. Tips and sympathy poured in and eventually the killer was found hiding in Mexico, arrested, extradited and is now awaiting trial. REP: Scoop Wasserstein
Treasure hunting/doc
“The book that sank on the Titanic and burned in the Blitz” by Tim Stokes (BBC News, April 15) I wavered about including this because I'm not sure what you'd do with it. A doc is the obvious answer. It is probably more inspirational for a writer looking for a hook for an episode than optionable, but its got treasures, curses and the Titanic and that's too fun a combo to pass up. In the early 1900s, a bookmaker created a jewel-encrusted version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam. He tried to sell it for the then-princely sum of £1,000 but there were no takers. Finally, they sold it to an American collector for less than half the amount. Wealthy bibliophile Harry Widener was entrusted to ferry it back to America on the Titanic…and we know how that ended. A few weeks later, the bookmaker drowned at sea. Then during the 1930s, someone decided to recreate the fabled book, spending nearly a decade on it, only to have it destroyed in a German bombing raid soon after. A third copy was made in the 1980s, which was finished just before the that bookmaker's death. It remains looked up in British Library, where few have access to it. REPS: BBC
Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend and happy reading. See you back here next week. Remember, the free beta period is coming to a close.
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