Some do it with skill, flair and aplomb ( Inspector Montalbano Grantchester Vera et al), others take the ‘two out of three ain’t bad’ route (the 2016 film version of British writer Paula Hawkins’ edgy 2015 psychological thriller The Girl on the Train was pretty much universally panned, but the 2018 stage adaptation was a theatre-world hit) and several deserved to die a horrible, lonely death (Dan Brown’s 2003 epic mystery thriller The Da Vinci Code, for example, was a huge, highly acclaimed lit-hit, but the 2006 film version tops multiple ‘worst book-to-film adaptation’ charts watch this space for a forensic examination of the stage version, coming to Theatre Royal Bath early next year). The journey of popular contemporary fictional detective flitting from book to TV screen to stage can be a complicated case to follow. Top left: Gaynor Faye as Kellie Bryce, Luke Ward-Wilkinson as Max Bryce, Leon Stewart as Branson and Adam Woodyatt as Tom Bryce top right: Adam Woodyatt as Tom Bryce and Gaynor Faye as Kellie Bryce Cue the already troubled Bryce family’s life drastically unravelling while Detective Grace attempts to get behind the high-tec smoke and mirrors to reveal the shocking plot-within-the-plot. His teenage son Max manages to unlock the stick… and dad and son witness a live screening of a horrific murder, the details of which they decide to keep away from Tom’s wife/Max’s mum Kellie. The plot: Tom Bryce finds a memory stick left behind on a train seat, and brings it home, ostensibly planning to do a bit of domestic detective work in order to return the stick to is owner. James penned 18 books in the Roy Grace series, and both the first ( Dead Simple, 2005) and this one, the second in line published in 2006, have been adapted into feature-length films for ITV in the popular Grace series of crime dramas. Eighteen million people across the globe are familiar with the character of crime writer Peter James’ Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace: a complex man haunted by the disappearance of his own wife, now hell-bent on solving seemingly unsolvable murders and wrongdoings on his own East Sussex coast beat.
0 kommentar(er)
