Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Gabriel Cohen's "Red Hook," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Red Hook, The Graving Dock, and Neptune Avenue, Gabriel Cohen's three crime novels featuring Brooklyn South Homicide detective Jack Leightner.

The entry begins:
It’s funny—not ha-ha funny, but I just fell down a flight of stairs and got severely banged up but I’m still alive funny—but this was almost not a theoretical question for me. My first novel Red Hook came out in 2001. After it got nominated for the Edgar award the next year, I got a hotshot Hollywood agent. In very short order, she found an interested production company (Denis Leary’s) and an interested screenwriter (Will Rokos, who was very hot that year as he had just co-written Monster’s Ball). There was just one inconvenience: they needed some serious studio money to make the film happen.

I didn’t let that little detail faze me. I was too busy dreaming about the single phone call, the tap from a studio head’s magic wand, that would instantly transform my life for the better. No more struggling to pay the rent. No more part-time gigs doing work I had zero interest in. No more plugging away in total obscurity.

My agent asked me to come up with a list of possible actors for the lead role. I figured, hey, why not start at the top? I still have the list on my computer:...[read on]
Learn more about the author and his work at Gabriel Cohen's website.

Neptune Avenue is out on April 27, 2009, from St. Martin’s Minotaur.

The Page 69 Test: Gabriel Cohen's The Graving Dock.

My Book, The Movie: Red Hook.

--Marshal Zeringue