Tidy vs. Messy

 

Terry here with our question of the week: Do you prefer endings that “solve” everything neatly, or ones that leave moral or emotional questions unresolved—and have you ever changed an ending because you were afraid of reader backlash?

I think when you’re writing crime fiction, you have to admit that there will always be unresolved questions. Most mysteries, from cozy, to thriller, to suspense involve murder. The question is not just who committed the crime, but why. Someone will (usually) be found guilty, with a good assessment of what drove them to murder. But even a solved crime leaves behind family and community victims who suffer from the perpetrator’s actions. Emotional and moral questions are often left unresolved. What will happen to the family of the man who killed a colleague? What will happen to the friends of the woman who killed her lover in a jealous rage? How will they cope? What will their lasting scars be? No matter how tidy the resolution is, there are those unresolved issues. 

 In my latest Samuel Craddock book, at the end the chief faces a dilemma. If he arrests the person he knows committed the crime, there will be shock waves throughout the perpetrators friends and family, and others will be at risk. Craddock has a dark night of the soul, realizing that he and his deputy maybe be targeted as well. He doesn’t know how to resolve the issue, not because he fears for his own life, but he fears for those who will be targeted because of their proximity to the guilty party. 

In the book, the dilemma does get resolved, but I sometimes think I pulled punches with the solution. I didn’t do it because I was afraid of a reader backlash, but because it seemed that the reader was owed a solution of sorts. I liked the solution, but I was still intrigued with the idea that if I had ended it differently, the book would have been open-ended. That is, the people who were at risk would have remained at risk. There would have been no resolution. 

I think unresolved issues are a matter of the ambiguity of justice. Craddock usually understands why someone committed a murder, and may even feel empathy for the perpetrator. But justice demands that the killer must pay society for what he or she has done. However, justice may not always be satisfactory. Someone who commits murder may leave behind a family facing loss of income, loss of nurturing parent, loss of status in the community, and an uncertain future. He may leave a community shattered because they held the killer in high esteem, and were shocked by his crime. There’s no resolution to this outcome, no matter how satisfying it may be for the reader to find out “who did it.” 

 As for the second part of the question, no I have never changed an ending for fear of reader backlash, and I never will. Nor will I ever not write about something because I think it might offend people. I’ve written two books on difficult subjects—dog fighting, and abortion. I knew some people would have trouble with both. I had trouble writing them. I wanted to give the characters full recognition, while acknowledging the feelings of the characters on more than one side of the issue. I still had reviewers that weren’t happy, but most readers, regardless of their thoughts on the subject, wrote that I had been fair. 

The only reason I’ve ever changed an ending—and this has happened often—is that my agent said she thought I wasn’t “done.” In two cases I can think of, I actually changed the identity of the killer because I realized I had “pulled my punches,” pinning the crime on someone more palatable as a perpetrator. I was hard when I recognized that I was shielding someone I didn’t actually want to be guilty.

Film v Book by Poppy Gee

What is a film adaption that you believe is actually better than the original novel and why?

I’ve just finished watching Off Campus which is based on the books by Elle Kennedy. The series is brilliant. I haven’t read the books and probably won’t, only becuase they’re YA and I’m not the target audience. But the show is fantastic. Romantic, very funny and addictive romance tropes? Tick. A gorgeous, hedonistic cast of diverse characters? Tick. Relationships and friendships that empower? Tick. A male heartthrob whose attractiveness is anchored in the fact that he embodies trust, consent, kindness and thoughtfulness? Tick.

But the online comments are not all positive about the film adaptation. The Off Campus books series have die-hard fans and passionate fans aren't shy in expressing their frustrations at inconsistencies. Gripes include new characters being added, characters being cut, characters having different hair styles to what they do in the books, sex scenes being too hot, or not hot enough, and even Garrett’s tattoos being different. There are sweetly smug Instagram tiles circulating saying things like: 'The people who only watched the show will never know why Garrett hates Halloween'. When a reader falls in love with a book, they become a deeply faithful lover. 

One of the best movies based on a book I’ve seen is Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. One of the reasons that this beautiful, despairing love story about two cowboys on a Wyoming mountainside works so well as a film is because the original Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx is not novel length. It was first published in the New Yorker in 1997 as a short story. Later, Proulx published an expanded version in a collection of short stories called Close Range: Wyoming Stories.

There isn’t a lot of dialogue in the book, and most of it appears in the film, which is satisfying. The dialogue is tender and devastating, with haunting lines like:

“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Set in 1963, it’s a tale of despair, yearning, loneliness, love and masculinity. Two nineteen-year-old ranch boys get jobs herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain. They fall in love in an era when people were murdered for being homosexual. They decide to keep their relationship a secret and they both marry women. The story becomes about the endurance, power and the devastating price some people pay for love.

“We don’t really have a relationship. It’s just Brokeback Mountain.”

Annie Proulx has said that she “might be the first writer in America to have a piece of writing make its way to the screen whole and entire”.  Her evocative descriptions of rural Wyoming are beautifully realised on the screen. Wide plains, snowcapped mountains, wild forests and small-town rodeos and bars… watching this movie is like seeing your imagination laid out before you in magnificent technicolor.

Director Ang Lee doesn't need to cut anything from Annie Proulx's work. Pleasingly, he adds emotional depth and sublime visuals, he fleshes out the side-characters of the two unhappy wives, and he uses music to heighten our emotions. Adapting short stories is how, in my opinion, much-loved prose can be adapted to film in a way that will satisfy even the most ardent fan. 

I forgot about Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation! by Catriona

What is a film adaptation that you believe is actually better than the original novel—and why? 

I quite like films. I watch one every Saturday night (movie night, right?) when I'm not out, and I try to go to the pictures every week. Usually manage it too: there's an independent cinema plus a Regal in town; a bigger indie in Scaramento that shows classics and Live from the Met (which doesn't count as a movie though); plus with a bit of planning there's the Roxy in San Francsisco.

It helps that I don't mind going to the pictures on my own if none of my movie-watching buddies fancies what's on. I couldn't persuade anyone else into The Zone of Interest, and I watched Petit Maman alone too, for different reasons. One drawback is the large category of horror films too scary for everyone else and too scary for me to watch without someone to clutch. I've missed a lot of bangers because of this.

All of which is to say that it's not because I'm not into movies that I've found it so hard to come up with answers to this question. It's just that I love books. Apart from anything else, books get cut to make movies* and - as a lifelong Stephen King fan - I believe more is more. So, even when the film is great - Trainspotting, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Name of the Rose - I'm usually going to think the book is better.

*To make good movies they do. I think the problem with the recent adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club is that the adaptor didn't do this. They snipped and trimmed away around the edges of the book and ended up with something that wasn't a functioning complete movie. Unfortunately one of the elements that got pruned with nail scissors until it collpased was character. It would have been far better, I think, to carve away whole subplots leaving a well-shaped cinematic piece. And then people could have scampred off to the library and found more to love.

My first choice of three movies I think is better than the book it came from (finally!) relates to this. 

84 Charing Cross Road is a very short book and most of it gets into the film, so the only extra treat when you read it is the epxerience of reading. Ordinarily that's enough but this book is epistolary and the letters make it into the film where they are read by Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. Those voices! Even if you don't eat popcorn there's no contest. 

Hear me out! I adore Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I adore all six of her completed mature novels. I adore her juvenalia and could weep for what she was writing and would have written next when she died so young. But. Emma Thompson's adaptation of S&S is a masterclass in axe-wielding and in brio. She gets rid of big characters - Lucy Steele's pointless sister, the dull lady Middleton - and she gives purpose to Margaret Dashwood, who comes tumbling off the screen in a way she never did off the page, and turns Mr Palmer into a hoot. Then there's the casting. Marianne Dashwood, put off hunks for life after what that scoundrel Willoughby did, still marrys Colonel Brandon but in the film he's Alan Rickman. I put it to you that there's not a straight woman or gay man in the world who'd rather be coming out of that country church with Greg Wise.

And then there's Die Hard, which is in the I-never-knw-it-was-a-book zone mostly. It was a workaday action thriller in the 70s, then in the 80s it changed action thrillers forever. Since Die Hard, every decent thriller has humour. Since Die Hard, everyone has a favourite Christmas movie, because people who always hated Christmas movies have Die Hard now. Since Die Hard, every man who loathes dressing up has a Halloween costume he's happy with. 

We won't talk about the sequels, eh?

Cx

Page to screen by Eric Beetner

 What is a film adaptation that you believe is actually better than the original novel—and why?

Let me preface this by saying emphatically that I am not one of the “the book is always better” types. They are two different mediums and should be judged as such. Complaints about all the stuff that gets left out of an adaptation or disagreements with casting of roles is a futile and unworthy discussion. 

But you can judge the two mediums against each other. Is one more satisfying? More impactful? Does more with the core concept?

Two big ones are The Godfather and Jaws. Both massive best sellers in their day, both excellent stories at their centers. Both got film adaptations that surpass the source material.

The Godfather became more focused and personal once we could see the subtlety in the faces of the performances. What verged on caricature on the page, became nuanced and more human on screen.

Likewise with Jaws. A rather simple potboiler in novel form, the film version heightened the frights and the family in equal measure. 

Sometimes the drastic changes that can occur between source material and the screen can kill a movie version, or it can elevate it. John Carpenter’s The Thing is an adaptation of an adaptation and becomes the most successful of the trio. The original short story, Who Goes There? By John W Campbell Jr., is a fine and complex science fiction tale, but gets a rather radical overhaul on screen. The original adaptation, The Thing From Another World (1951) already takes liberties with the story and creates an effective thriller by 1951 standards. Carpenter’s reinterpretation is more paranoid, more intense, bloodier and bolder than the story, while retaining several key set pieces (the blood testing, the unexpected thaw of the creature). But if you’re seeking maximum thrills, go to the 1982 movie before the story.

I’m sure I won’t be the first to cite The Shawshank Redemption as a highly effective adaptation of a perfectly fine short story by Stephen King, but not one that hinted at the truly excellent film that would come of it. King has had more adaptations than any other modern writer and has a pretty low average of quality material, but when they work, they work exceptionally well. A few are also that rare case where they stand on equal footing, like Misery. Great book. Great film. Both tense and thrilling, both leave you fully satisfied. 

I think Jurassic Park edges out the novel by the sheer scope of it. Crichton likes his science talk and that can never compete with 80 foot dinosaurs lunging at us out of the darkness. And everything is made a little bit better with a John Williams score.

Oftentimes a dramatic interpretation of a non-fiction source can elevate the more academic prose of a historical account, say, into high drama that reaches more people. Take Band Of Brothers, the HBO series about WW2. Reading the true story is harrowing enough, but seeing it play out over a limited series with a sprawling cast brings it to life in a way most people would never get from a written account. Homicide: Life In The Streets let writer David Simon expand on his own true-life account of the street-level view of a crime-ridden city into something more expansive and dramatically complex.

Likewise Orange Is The New Black takes the true story of its protagonist and spins out an ensemble series that is larger and more satisfying than the book upon which it is based.

There are also examples of a series running past the plot of a novel and moving into original territory, with middling results. See The Handmaid’s Tale’s later seasons once they’d run out of book.  

The obverse of that trap is when the source material is merely a jumping off point. Elmore Leonard has had his share of film and TV adaptations, but none more successful than the series Justified which is based off a short story that doesn’t seem on its face to be enough to spin out into 6 seasons (and a reboot 7th season). By having the simple setup and open-ended possibility, it turned out to be the perfect property to adapt and gave us one of the all-time great TV characters and shows.

People will always take issue with this or that (“Cruise is too small to play Reacher!”) but even among the complaints you will find dedicated fans of adaptations. Die hard Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings fans will find quibbles with the films, but still own the box set and show up opening night for the next installment. 

Just remember, they can both exist independently of each other. Your love of one doesn’t diminish the quality of the other. It’s possible to love both for different reasons. And above all, don’t be a jerk about it. Let people love what they love.

The Art of Creative Infidelity

 

      What is a film adaptation that you believe is actually better than the original novel—and why? [Alternatively: is there a sequel—film or book—that surpassed the original in impact, depth, or execution?]

Most discussions of film adaptations begin with the wrong question: Was the movie faithful to the book? Fidelity is an admirable quality in spouses and Labradors; it is not necessarily an artistic virtue. A novel and a film speak different languages. One thinks in sentences, interiority, and digression; the other in images, rhythm, performance, silence, and omission. To ask whether a film reproduces a novel is rather like asking whether a violin faithfully reproduces a piano sonata. It may preserve the melody, but it must invent a new instrument.

 

The best adaptations understand this instinctively. They are not acts of translation but acts of criticism. They identify what is essential in the source material, discard what belongs only to the page, and reconstruct the work according to the grammar of cinema. This is why I have long suspected that the finest adaptations often come not from literary masterpieces but from books that are merely very good.

 

That may sound perverse. Surely the greatest novels should yield the greatest films. Yet masterpieces are often already complete. They have solved their own artistic problems. There is comparatively little left for a filmmaker to discover beyond the formidable task of not diminishing them. The ‘merely excellent’ novel, by contrast, often contains a remarkable dramatic idea obscured by excess baggage: subplots that diffuse the narrative, conventions inherited from its genre, or pages of exposition that illuminate psychology but dissipate momentum. Such books invite—not merely permit—creative intervention.

 

This account, however, risks overstating subtraction as the dominant mechanism of adaptation. Not all successful films improve their sources by stripping them down. In some cases, the transformation is achieved through the imposition of a new interpretive intelligence—one that reorganizes rather than reduces. The novel supplies a set of narrative materials; the film supplies a way of structuring perception itself.

 

This is most visible in cases where the director’s sensibility becomes inseparable from the source text. Blade Runner, for example, does not simply condense Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; it replaces the novel’s metaphysical framing with a dense visual ontology of entropy, surveillance, and decayed futurism. Likewise, The Shining is less a faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s novel than a reconfiguration of its psychological materials into an architectural system of repetition, symmetry, and spatial dread. In each case, the film does not merely clarify the book’s underlying structure—it substitutes a different organizational logic altogether.

 

The resulting work cannot be reduced to either origin. It is neither illustration nor condensation, but a second construction built from the same narrative components, governed by a distinct aesthetic intelligence. There is, however, another way films surpass their sources that does not depend on reimagining the material, but on removing what obscures it. Less, in this case, becomes decisively more.

 

Jaws is perhaps the clearest example. Peter Benchley’s novel is an entertaining bestseller, but it wanders into adultery, organized crime, and municipal politics before remembering that its principal character has literal teeth. Steven Spielberg’s film performs an act of elegant subtraction. By stripping away everything that distracts from the central conflict, it creates not a simplified story but a purer one. The shark ceases to be one narrative thread among several and becomes the organizing principle of the entire film. Less, in this case, has become more.

 

The same could be said of Die Hard. Few viewers realize that it is based on Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever, a darker and more cynical work. The screenplay does not merely modernize the story; it discovers its emotional center. John McClane is no longer simply a beleaguered detective but an ordinary man whose resourcefulness matters precisely because he is so plainly outmatched. The wisecracks, the vulnerability, the accumulating physical exhaustion—these are not ornamental additions but the qualities that transformed a competent thriller into the template for an entire genre/franchise.

 

An even more revealing case is Three Days of the Condor. James Grady’s Six Days of the Condor is an accomplished espionage novel, but Sydney Pollack’s adaptation absorbs the anxieties of post-Watergate America so completely that it becomes something larger than a spy story. The film is not content to ask who the villains are; it asks whether modern institutions have rendered the distinction almost irrelevant. The source provides the plot. The adaptation supplies the historical consciousness.

 

In each case, the filmmakers do something that might once have been condemned as infidelity. They omit, compress, rearrange, and reinterpret. Yet these apparent betrayals reveal a deeper loyalty—not to the literal text but to the dramatic possibilities concealed within it. They are, in effect, saying to the novelist: This is the story you gave us. This is the story we see.

 

Perhaps that is the paradox of adaptation. The most faithful films are often those least interested in literal fidelity. They preserve not every scene or subplot but the animating idea that justified the book in the first place. A merely competent adaptation illustrates its source. A great adaptation argues with it.

 

So when asked to name a film that surpasses its novel, I find myself resisting the temptation to nominate an adaptation of a canonical masterpiece. I would rather point to those rarer occasions when a gifted director looked at a very good book and perceived the greater work hidden inside it. The finest adaptations are not those that love their books most. They are those that understand them best.

 

Riffing on the question of the week

What is a film adaptation that you believe is actually better than the original novel-- and why?

I read on social media that an author of a best-selling book won’t watch the movie based on her work because she’s unhappy with the outcome, which makes this week’s question not only timely, but necessary.

I’ve always been bothered by simple comparisons. During a film studies class in college, I asked my professor to define adaptation after a class discussion about movies ruining books. That was decades ago, but to this day, I still remember the slow and careful phrasing of her response. It was as if she were attempting to tango with a porcupine. She used words like “translation” and “interpretation” and no, I was never completely satisfied with the answer. But I left it alone. I wasn’t interested in writing screenplays or making films. My business was novels. And I agree with Stephen King who is quoted as saying, “Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.”

As a writer, I have had some experience with adaptations. My short story, "Althea", is based on a Grateful Dead song. I based other short stories on African myths as a way to reimagine those tales in a modern context. In my short story, "The Long Night", an old woman who swallows the sun in an African myth reappears as a homeless woman in the contemporary fictional town of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana. She becomes Mama Rhett with her shopping cart and layers of skirts, and unwittingly swallows the sun because it smelled good. Here is a piece of that story:

Mama Rhett stood next to a yard can looking down at something in her hand. It was small and round and glowed a soft yellow. Fleur took a step forward. Mama Rhett sniffed it, and then gave it to the ancient yellow dog to sniff. The animal whimpered and backed away. The old woman brought it close to her face, poked out a red tongue, and licked it. Fleur started to yell stop, but before she could get the word out, Mama Rhett popped the small orb into her mouth.

In this case, and those of movies, do you ask yourself which is better or just enjoy the riff? There is no easy answer to this question, but perhaps its beneficial to add some nuance by borrowing from film studies critical theories. The website "Literary Latitude" in their blog post “Adaptation Theory in Film Studies” offer several ways we can solve the apples and oranges problem.

Take my favorite movie of all time, Stephen King’s Misery about an over-invested fan who tortures an author, actually hobbles him, because he killed off her favorite character and won’t bring her back to life.                            

Using the critical theory Fidelity, we ask if the movie stays true to the original text, and the spirit of the book itself. We recognize the film as simply a vehicle through which the book lives. It’s not supposed to stand on its own as art. This is the most traditional view, and the one the casual viewer employs most often. Though there are deviations based on constraints in film, Misery indeed stays true to the spirit of the book.

We can have more discussion, however, by judging the movie through the Intertextuality lens. Here we assess to what extent the book maintains connection to the text it has adapted, similar works of art in its genre, and the culture to which it belongs. One image keeps coming to mind when I think about this lens—a thousand voices in the biggest conference room in the world, everyone debating and talking at once. I can see Kathy Bates, who portrayed Annie Wilkes in the movie, storming into the room wearing her tweed jumper and carrying the infamous sledgehammer all the while embodying societal problems such as isolation, loneliness, and mental illness. After she sets things straight, she leaves only to walk into books by other authors, plays, and tv series like "Castle Rock".

Annie looking askance

The final lens I’ll discuss here is Adaption as Interpretation where the movie stands on its own as a work of art. Rather than strict fidelity to the author’s text, the movie becomes an expression of the filmmaker’s vision. In Misery, the biggest achievement was to cement Annie Wilkes into our social consciousness. I don’t know if it was the filmmaker’s vision, but still, the movie rocked.

It’s not lost on me that I interpreted the question of the week in a way that the author probably didn’t intend. I adapted. I riffed. But it was a good question that finally gave me the answer I was looking for all those years ago in that college classroom. Is the movie better than the book? Well, it depends.

Looking over my Shoulder from James W. Ziskin

How has writing crime fiction changed the way you see ordinary people and everyday life—and has it made you more suspicious, more empathetic, or both? 

I don’t believe writing crime fiction has changed the way I act toward people, but I will say that it has made me think about what they’re capable of. As a reader and a writer, the stories that interest me are about regular people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. And it’s even more compelling when good people are pushed to do unthinkable things. I’m not interested in stories about evil people doing evil things. They’re dull. No internal conflict for them. It’s so much more satisfying, terrifying, conflicting when an average guy or gal loses control for a split second, crosses the line, and does something horrible.

Why is that? Why do I find that satisfying? Well, for one thing, because once that split second has passed, sanity returns. And with it, guilt. Or maybe regret, remorse. Denial? A marvelous spectrum of emotions and dilemmas presents itself to our malefactor. And for another thing, I wonder if I might not be capable of crossing the line. What if something drove me mad for a split second? Am I a murderer-in-waiting?Now there’s a story.

In general, I don’t trust people I don’t know. At least not implicitly. That’s why I don’t worship actors or politicians. I don’t know what they’re like when they go home to their private lives. Maybe they shrink heads in their basements, or commit unspeakable crimes against human dignity, or worse. All I can do is judge them for their talent or their public behavior. Think of someone like Cesar Chavez or Kevin Spacey. Publicly, one helped millions of oppressed, exploited people. The other was an incredibly talented performer. Privately, they did things that disappointed me. I don’t necessarily hate famous people for their personal shortcomings, but I can’t admire them unquestioningly for their public persona either. I often say that they’ll surely let me down eventually, so why take the chance and gush over them? Why invest emotionally in someone I can’t be sure won’t steal my wallet?

All this to say that my attitudes toward others haven’t changed due to my crime writing. I feel the same today as I did twenty years ago. In life, I give strangers a chance, the benefit of the doubt. But not carte blanche to my devotion. I reserve that for people I know. The ones who have proven themselves worthy of my trust and admiration.

So even if I’m wary of people I don’t know—careful not to put too much faith in them—I don’t walk down the street looking over my shoulder in fear. Rather, I watch them and wonder about their struggles and breaking points. Might they be doing the same with me? After all, they don’t know me. Yes, I wonder about them. About what they might be capable of. What horrible things I might be capable of. I think of that a lot. Then I make up stories about those people (and me).

*********************

THE PRANK…enigmatic and unnerving. The pace never flags for a second. This is some masterly plotting. I loved it.”

—Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond

 

“The Holdovers meets The Bad Seed,”

THE PRANK. A picture clipped from Playboy magazine, a missing Swiss Army Knife, and a prank gone terribly wrong conspire to make Christmas 1968 a deadly holiday to remember.

From two-time Edgar Award finalist, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity award-winner James W. Ziskin, THE PRANK releases July 2026.

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On the Fence

What is a film adaptation that you believe is actually better than the original novel—and why?

By Dietrich

It’s a tough call to crown one over the other. Books and films are different beasts with their own strengths. A novel can burrow deep into a character’s psyche or wander through philosophical tangents that would drag a movie to a halt. Books allow more interiority, nuance and unfiltered authorial voice. A film can offer a punch in ways pages can’t match. The best adaptations don’t just translate, they transmute. Sometimes the result is a step up in impact. Sometimes it’s a compelling companion piece, but, many times the movie version just falls short.

A great example of a novel and its adaptation that bring the best of both worlds is Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men. In the book, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell’s internal monologue gives the story a philosophical weight—meditations on aging, morality, the erosion of a way of life, and a world growing meaner. We’re given Llewelyn Moss’s background and motivations, and the novel’s unrelenting bleakness and historical gravity hit hard.

The Coen Brothers took a story (originally conceived as a screenplay) and turned it into pure cinema. Tommy Lee Jones does a first-rate job conveying Bell’s weariness and Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh becomes an icon of unsparing fate—those dead eyes and the coin toss scenes create terrific tension. 

While the book is richer in introspective depth, the film strips away some interiority yet gains in atmosphere and pacing. I liked them equally and think they complement each other. Read the book for McCarthy’s voice. Watch the film for how the Coens visualized the terror in the silences. Why choose when you can have both?

A newer example is Shane Black’s Play Dirty, based on Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novels written as Richard Stark. The film offers a fun, modern riff on the original Parker stories. The Parker novels are lean, efficient crime fiction from the ’60s and ’70s. They excel at brutal competence and moral grayness, though are light on character warmth.

Shane Black paired Mark Wahlberg (as Parker) with LaKeith Stanfield (as Grofield), injecting rapid-fire dialogue, capturing the spirit of Stark’s novels while adding wise-ass humor. The heist mechanics are updated, trading vintage safe-cracking for edge-of-your-seat choreography without losing the gritty realism.

Here again, the books are great examples of pulp purity. The film offers more of a cinematic experience for contemporary audiences. It’s not better, but it gives the material impact and entertainment value in ways that feel true to the spirit of the Parker novels. Again, why not enjoy both? Dive into the paperbacks for their stark efficiency, then catch the movie for the Shane Black swagger and the updated heist thrill. No need to pick one over the other. Both have plenty to offer.

Classics such as The Godfather, where Coppola elevated Puzo’s pulp, show that when the right filmmaker meets the right material, cinema can deliver something special.

And since we’re into the summer months, here are a few titles I’ve recently enjoyed that I’d like to recommend for your beach reading. None have been made into feature films, but each remains a standout read and all offer cinematic potential.

Bomber by Len Deighton

This classic masterpiece chronicles a single, tragic WWII bombing raid from both the British and German perspectives. It’s a gripping, page-turner that’s perfect for history buffs. Outside a 1995 BBC dramatization, there’s been no film adaptation.

Gunman's Rhapsody by Robert B. Parker

Unlike many other Wyatt Earp retellings like Tombstone, this one hasn’t been adapted to film. Written in his signature style with sharp dialogue, Parker breathes fresh life into the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It’s a lean western with pace.

Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

The first of the series, it introduces us to John Corey, a wounded NYPD homicide detective recovering on Long Island. He gets involved in a double murder case involving a biological research island. It’s packed with DeMille’s trademark cynical humor, sarcasm and punch. While there were announcements around for a potential TV series, it didn't go forward.

The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille

DeMille delivers a sleek thriller in this standalone story about a US Army veteran-turned-charter boat captain who is lured into a dangerous, multi-million-dollar covert mission to Cuba. It also offers a lot of potential for a film.

The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson

This highly anticipated 22nd installment in the Walt Longmire series takes the Wyoming sheriff on a journey that blends cowboy grit with deep-rooted family secrets. Johnson’s lyrical prose and rich character work shine as bright as ever. No film yet, but the Longmire series was a popular TV adaptation, which drew from earlier books.

Suspicion or Empathy?

 

Terry here with our question of the week: 

How has writing crime fiction changed the way you see ordinary people and everyday life—and has it made you more suspicious, more empathetic, or both? 

 I have been blessed or cursed with a sunny disposition. I once went camping with a woman who was always morose (for many good reasons, but that’s another story). One morning she groused that she hated waking up to my cheerful voice around the morning campfire. So in that sense, I guess it can be a curse. Not that I don’t have my grumpy days. But my “set” disposition is cheerful. 

Writing crime fiction has not changed that. About halfway through every book I write, I say to myself, “Terry, everyone in the book is too nice. You have to have some characters who aren’t so nice.” Then the real writing begins. Because I do know that in real life there are lots of people who lie, cheat, steal, snark, criticize, and murder…sometimes with no conscience. 

I also know that even ordinary people can find themselves in situations where they think their only way out is to lie, cheat, steal…or murder. And it may not even be "their only way out." It may just be for a lark. I once knew a perfectly lovely girl in college. She stole things. All the time. And had no qualms about it. She shrugged it off as stealing from people who could afford the loss. The crazy thing is, she gave away the things she stole. She tried to give me things she’d stolen and I didn’t feel right about it. But did I turn her in? No. 

Have I ever lied? You bet. In fact, in my callow youth I used to find it funny to lie about who I was. People I met and whom I’d never see again, I’d tell all kinds of outlandish things. Have I ever cheated…at cards or whatever? Not that I can remember. But when I was a kid and played monopoly, I’d hide money under the board so other players wouldn’t know how much I had. Someone told me that was cheating, but I didn’t think so. I haven’t murdered anyone, though. At least, not intentionally. 

 My point is that no matter how much I view the world with good cheer, I’m not a fool. I know that people do bad things. Writing crime fiction has not significantly changed my assessment that most people may commit “small” crimes, but most people don’t commit “big” ones. And it’s the big ones we write about as crime writers. 

I frequently run into people who are suspicious of others. They are quick with tales of how something bad happened to someone out of the blue. So I know it can happen. I know people who have been mugged, victims of home invasion, and in one case a woman who was threatened with rape and murder (she talked the guy out of assaulting her, managed to get him to give her his knife, and then ran). I also know people who have been under siege from people with guns. They survived, but people near them did not. I can, and do, imagine their horror, grief, and terror. 

But when I write, I have to dredge up the feelings of victims because I don’t live with that kind of suspicion or fear in daily life. As to whether it has made me more empathetic, not really. Samuel Craddock, protagonist of twelve books, is an empathetic lawman. He understands what drives people to commit crimes. But that doesn’t change his view of justice. No matter how kindly he feels toward someone who has been driven to commit bad crimes, he believes that justice must be done. In fact, he believes that deep down, criminals feel a sense of relief when they are caught. Is it true? I don’t know. Maybe for some; and for others, they justify their behavior and are furious when they are caught. 

There is one brand of criminal that stands out—the lunatic. I once spoke to a guard at San Quentin who said that most men on death row are dangerous because they are absolutely nuts and will do anything with no sense of guilt. Can you be empathetic about someone like that? I guess you can if you think they would have preferred not to be nuts. 

But then, who designates whether someone is crazy? I’d argue that abruptly cancelling USAID, which resulted in thousands of lives lost, was the work of a crazy person. But that person and his helpers are walking around free, and thought by many to have no blame attached to their actions. Am I empathetic toward people like that? People who are cruel to others and feel no remorse? Not really. In fact, I hope one day they get the other end of the stick. But writing crime fiction didn’t change my view about that. I’ve always felt that way.

Imagine a Crime... by Matthew Greene

How has writing crime fiction changed the way you see ordinary people and everyday life—and has it made you more suspicious, more empathetic, or both?

I think one of the reasons I've been drawn to crime fiction is my propensity to imagine drama everywhere I go. And I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill-soap-opera-style stuff: crushes and grudges and love triangles, oh my. I mean something a bit more sinister.

You could try this yourself. The next time you're at a boring party, in an interminable meeting, or stuck on the subway, start to imagine what would happen if someone in your midst suddenly dropped dead. (This is, and I cannot stress this enough, strictly imaginary.) Who would do this him him/her/them?! And then, like you'd do in any good closed-circle mystery, let your eyes flit from one suspect's face to the next. Was it the brooding man in the corner? The aloof older couple? The single mom at the end of her rope? It's surprisingly easy to assign motives to strangers if you just let your mind wander to some of its darker corners.

The trick, I've found, is to believe that anyone is capable of anything if pushed. (Except me, of course. I would never hurt a fly.) I find this thought endears me to the strangers I see in situations like these. Instead of letting them pass me by, I suddenly find them endlessly interesting. I want to plumb their hidden depths and understand their hopes and dreams.

Although I know the sensationalized story I spin about them isn't accurate, neither was the knee-jerk narrative that popped into my head when they first came into view. At least this way, I'm training myself to believe that everyone around me is complex, multi-faceted, and worthy of attention. I may be casting them in a short-lived mental drama, but it only serves to remind me that there is more to everyone than meets the eye.

Of course, I make no promises that you'll find a solution to your impromptu improvised mystery. Endings are hard, but character intros are so much fun. And I can assure you that before you've had time to interrogate all your suspects, the party will be picking up, the meeting will be ending, or the train will be pulling into the station.

I'm starting to realize how terribly strange this all may sound, and I'm tempted to delete this rambling confession and start the blog post over again. (Perhaps this is the danger of missing too many therapy sessions while I'm rehearsing a new show.) But where's the fun in that? After all, I'm complex and multi-faceted, too.

So...does anyone else do this? Am I assuming this behavior is more normal than it really is? Is this like that time, before I came out, when I insisted to a group of guy friends that "all guys check each other out" and expected them to back me up? (Spoiler alert: they didn't, and I'm gay.) Or is this common among crime writers? 

God, I hope it is...

Rinse and Repeat by Poppy Gee

Aside from promotion, what’s the first thing a new author should do after publishing their first book? 

1. Start work on your next one. A new novel is the best way to promote the old one, and working on a new novel is the best way to keep yourself busy and productive during the rollercoaster of publicity. This is my key advice, but there are two other things I also do...

2. Mark the milestone. On the day I signed my publishing contract, I bought a small glass jar with some shells in it from an second hand shop. I keep it on a shelf in my house. Everytime I see it, I think of the excitement of that day. When my first novel came out, I cooked a nice dinner and my husband and I celebrated with a glass of bubbles. In some ways, that was nicer than the actual book launch because I wasn't feeling nervous about my speech!

3. Take photos of your book in the wild. It's incredibly special to see your book in a library, a bookstore, or in the hands of a friend or stranger who's about to read it. This is your books' most special birthday and you'll cherish all those photos in years to come! I have a slightly skewed photo my mother took of my book in a newsagency (a shop that sells newspapers, magazines and birthday cards) in St Helens. My book was set in that area and the staff were excited and created a wonderful display of my book. I cherish this photo now!

Mum took this picture in the St Helens Newsagency, 2013.

It's later than you think, by Catriona

Aside from promotion, what’s the first thing a new author should do after publishing their first book?

Angela, Gabriel and Eric have said a lot of it and very well already this week, but I'll chip in. It's about promotion, The thing is, by the time your book's out it's quite late (too late?) to start promoting it. I've learned this the hard way. Ideally, you should be on the case months before the publication date - sending out review copies, pitching articles and guest posts, building a list for a newsletter, getting a vibrant online presence up and running . . . putting the finishing touches to the bunker where you'll go and hide because that all sounds too dreadful to be borne.

Truly, it's quite an unusual combination to find inside just one human skin: a love of sitting alone in a room typing for 90% of the time; and a passion for jumping up and down saying "buy my book!" for the other 10.

What makes it less dreadful is to be among friends. Angela's point about building community is really key. If people are boosting your signal because you're a good 'un who lifts up other voices in between hoping they'll lift yours, it's a lot less soul-destroying, like peeing in the ocean, lonely.

I don't know what writers would do who don't LOVE reading books quite like the books they write - not my only or even main question for these individuals (because isn't that kind of weird?) - but it's quite easy for me to spend almost all my online time talking about the wonderful books I've read, am reading, want to read, can't believe I've only just heard about . . .

For example. here's what's happened since I got to Scotland on the 2nd of June:

The one bit of promotion that does need to wait until the book actually exists - so yay you're not too late for it! - is personal appearances. Whether it's public libraries, schools, Rotary clubs, bookclubs, writers' groups, conventions, festivals . . . there are a lot of committees with a lot of speaker slots to fill year after year. If you're willing to travel a bit, donate profits from books sales to a good cause and be felixible, easy to deal with and entertaining, you can be quite busy while you write that second book, submit satellite short stories all over the place, plan the next round of promo further in advance and . . . remember to take your book off the shelf and smell its wondrous pages every now and then,

Cx

Get (back) to it by Eric Beetner

 Aside from promotion, what’s the first thing a new author should do after publishing their first book?

There are a lot of answers to this including taking a moment to enjoy the feeling, be proud of what you’ve done. There are an equal number of things authors should NOT do, including obsessing over reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. 

I think one thing that doesn’t get discussed enough, or practiced enough, is to get to work on the next thing. Always be writing. Ideally, this process should have started long before a book is released in that slow liminal space while the gears of publishing grind slowly to move the lumbering beast forward inches at a time. But please don’t ever sit back and enjoy the glow for too long. Anyone who has ever sat in front of a fire knows that in time, usually shorter than you think, the fire dims, the coals stop giving off heat and you are left cold and alone.

Let’s think positively and say your book does well. Readers, agents, publishers will all be anxious for your next book. Maybe it’s a sequel, maybe another stand alone, but either way if you haven’t even started it yet, then the gap between books will stretch to a point where readers might move on.

Use the momentum of a fresh release to urge you on. Writing is all about inertia. If you don’t let the engine stop turning, then it won’t fight you the next time you try to fire it up. 

And don’t rely on a contract deadline because there will come a time when you don’t have that to motivate you. Every writer starts writing without that looming deadline to all them along, so you know you can do it. Write each new story under your own deadline where the goal is simply to finish and make it great. You don’t need the carrot on a stick to keep you trotting along. 

Yes, take the time to share each new triumph whether it is appearing on a best seller list or just getting a 5-star review. But never dam up that creative river with a book that’s already out in the world. Keep writing, keep working. 

There is a difference between a writer and someone who has written. If you are a writer, then you have more than one story to tell. Keep writing as if hordes of readers are banging down your door to get to the next story. Write as if Hollywood producers are pacing the floors of their ocean-view offices wondering where the next blockbuster will come from your pen. Write because you are a writer and that’s what you do.

Every writer should be able to tell anyone what their latest book is about and also be able to give a tease about the thing they are working on now. Don’t delay.

If you look at the output of your favorite writers, the most prolific and most successful, they will all be working constantly on the next thing.

So congratulations. Now get back to the keyboard and do it again.