We asked Kevin Wade, the author of the new novel, Johnny Careless, and longtime screenwriter (Working Girl, Meet Joe Black) and showrunner (Blue Bloods), to tell us about some crime novels and movies that have been important to him along his writing journey.
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The Executioners (1957) by John D. McDonald, was the basis for the both the original Cape Fear (1962) starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum and the way more graphic 1991 remake starring Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro. Notable for the John D. skill sets put to use seven years before Travis McGee was born, in a highest-stakes story about a lawyer defending his family from the brutal rapist he’d helped put away.
The Last Good Kiss (1978) and The Mexican Tree Duck (1993) by James Crumley. Both feature gonzo private investigator C.W. Sughrue, casts of colorful broke-down characters, and barbed-wire descriptions such as “he had a heart as big as all outdoors, and a liver the size of a salmon.”
Rebecca (1938) by Daphne Du Maurier, and Laura (1943) by Vera Caspary. Two novels by writers turned into classic films where the reader (and eventually, the viewer), are challenged to solve the mystery of the title characters almost exclusively through the cracked prisms of the men who survived her.
Against All Odds (1984) directed by Taylor Hackford from a screenplay by Eric Hughes.
Very loosely based on the 1946 novel Build My Gallows High by Daniel Manwaring and first filmed as Out of the Past the following year. Perhaps the most blue-skied, sun-baked “noir” ever, with a great cast led by Jeff Bridges, James Woods, and an icy-hot Rachel Ward, and featuring a Porsche vs. Ferrari chase down Sunset Boulevard that’s among the best ever staged.
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