The entry begins:
Actually, my books have been made into movies--five big-production TV movies--back a few years. I think the reason so few people remember them is the same reason people supposedly forget the real pain of childbirth or dental procedures: they are too wretched to bear remembering. In 1990 (I think), ABC TV brought Columbo back for another round, along with two other shows with which it would alternate. The other shows were B.L. Stryker, with Burt Reynolds, and Gideon Oliver, with Louis Gossett, Jr., which was based--very loosely--on my Gideon Oliver series. They all flopped, deservedly, and never returned for a second season.Fellowship of Fear is the first Gideon Oliver novel; the latest (#16 in the series) is Skull Duggery, new in bookstores this month.
Inmy case, they changed the protagonist from white to black; they moved him from the University of Washington to Columbia University; they converted him from a physical anthropologist to a cultural anthropologist; they changed him from a joyfully married man to a widower, but gave him a nineteen-year-old daughter to compensate; and they awarded him a black belt in kick-boxing or karate--I forget which.
Other than that, of course, they stuck quite closely to my character.
They took a few interesting liberties with the tenor of my stories too. Those of...[read on]
Visit Aaron J. Elkins' website.
My Book, The Movie: Aaron Elkins' "Gideon Oliver" novels.
--Marshal Zeringue
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