This week’s books are all suspense novels that have been made into a movie or a TV series.
For Ice Cold Fear, I’m reading, Forty Words For Sorrow, the first book in the John Cardinal and Lise Delorme series which was turned into the TV series Cardinal in 2017, starring Billy Campbell and Karine Vanasse
For Terror In The Tropics I’m reading No Escape which Paramount released as a TV series starring Rhianne Barreto and Abigail Lawrie in May this year.
For Urban Decay, I’m reading Mischief, a classic American golden-age novel that 20th Century Fox made into Don’t Bother To Knock in 1952, starring Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe.
‘Forty Words For Sorrow‘ by Giles Blunt (2000)
I saw the first series of Cardinal a few years ago and enjoyed the way it created an atmosphere of distrust and threat that was partly embodied by the fierce cold weather in which most of the action took place.
I’m hoping the book will be even better than the TV series and that I’ve found another author to follow.
Here’s the trailer for the TV series:
Giles Blunt grew up in North Bay, Ontario, a small city similar to the Algonquin Bay of the John Cardinal novels. After studying English literature at the University of Toronto, he moved to New York City, where he lived for the next twenty years, before moving back to Toronto in 2002.
The first Cardinal novel, Forty Words for Sorrow, won the British Crime Writers Silver Dagger award, and the second, The Delicate Storm, won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis award for best novel, as did the latest, Until the Night. He has been twice longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC award.
‘No Escape’ by Lucy Clarke (2015)
Lucy Clarke is a new author to me. I looked her up earlier this year when I saw that Paramount+ were turning one of her thrillers into a TV series. Apparently, she specialises in a newish subgenera called Destination Thrillers. These are thrillers that take you to dream destinations and then turn your trip into a nightmare.
If the plot of No Escape looks familiar to you but you don’t recognise the title, that might be because it was originally published under the title. Blue, which is the name of the boat at the centre of the story.
Here’s the trailer for the TV series:
Lucy Clarke is the author of eight destination thrillers including The Castaways, One of the Girls, and most recently, The Hike. Lucy’s novels have sold over a million copies.
Lucy’s thriller, No Escape (also published as The Blue) has been released as a seven-part series by Paramount+.
Paramount+ are currently filming a five-part series of The Castaways, starring Sheridan Smith, on location in Fiji and Greece
When Lucy isn’t away on research trips (the real reason she loves being an author!), she can be found writing from a beach hut on the south coast of England. She lives with her husband and their two children.
‘Mischief’ by Charlotte Armstrong (1950)
I came across Charlotte Armstrong’s novel Mischief, in the Library Of America collection: Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s which also includes The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith. Beast in View by Margaret Millar and Fools’ Gold by Dolores Hitchens. I think it’s a great collection and I hope it will bring more readers to all these authors.
Mischief was made into a movie called Don’t Bother To Knock. Unfortunately, Armstrong wasn’t asked to write the script and I’ve read that it creaks a little. Here’s the trailer for the movie (I’m hoping the book is less melodramatic than this):
Charlotte Armstrong Lewi was an American writer. Under the names Charlotte Armstrong and Jo Valentine she wrote twenty-nine novels, as well as short stories, plays, and screenplays and published three poems in the New Yorker magazine..
She also worked for The New York Times‘ advertising department, as a fashion reporter for Breath of the Avenue (a buyer’s guide), and in an accounting firm.
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