I’ve yet to meet a crime writer who doesn’t hope to have his books filmed or televised. If there are any I’d say they’re pretty rare animals. I write a detective series about Frank Merlin, a World War 2 police detective in London, and readers often enquire whether there’s any chance of there being a screen version of my books. Like those readers, I believe my stories naturally lend themselves to screen adaptation and am optimistic they may be filmed one day. I have indeed already had a few skirmishes with film and tv producers in the UK and in America. I even got to tell Tom Cruise about Frank Merlin once. However I won’t say any more about Merlin’s film prospects in case I jinx them!
In any event, the subject of this article is not Frank Merlin but crime fiction authors who have had the luck to see their books up on the big screen. With some difficulty I’ve picked a list of 6 of my favourite screen adaptations of crime books. To make my task marginally easier I’ve excluded tv/streaming adaptations and confined myself to good old-fashioned cinema films. I did consider ranking them but decided it was too difficult. So here goes.
THE THIRD MAN
I’m a bit of a sad case when it comes to The Third Man. On a conservative estimate I’ve seen it at least forty times. I love everything about it. The famous Anton Karas zither music, the brilliant acting of Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton and the rest of the superb cast, the atmospheric photography of post-war Vienna, all shadows and striking angles. Unusually Graham Greene’s book was written as direct preparation for the screenplay which followed. Voted in several critics lists over the years the greatest British film of all time, if ever there was a classic ‘noir’ film this is it.
THE GODFATHER
Mario Puzo’s tumultuous Mafia book was turned into a film masterpiece by Francis Ford Coppola. Like The Third Man, it has a terrific score (Nino Rota) and wonderful acting with Marlon Brando giving a towering lead performance. I had a fleeting personal connection with this film. In 1972, in between school and university, I went to an American school for 6 months. After term finished I bought a Greyhound bus pass and travelled the country. In San Francisco, my sponsors had arranged for me to stay with quite a well to do family on Nob Hill. One morning, as I was coming out of the front door with my host, he pointed towards a bearded gentleman exiting his house a few doors down. ‘That guy’s a Hollywood film director. Making some film about the mafia. Hope he’s got good security.’ The Godfather came out later that year. Coppola survived.
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
There have been numerous film adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s compelling thrillers. This film adaptation, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is my favourite. The director made one major change from the book, with the architect Guy becoming a professional tennis player in the film. This gave Hitchcock the opportunity to portray some marvellous tennis scenes in places like Forest Hills where they used to hold the US Open. In the 1980s I was living in New York and was invited to a tennis party at Forest Hills and all I could think about was the film. (Forest Hills last hosted the US Open in 1977.) Farley Granger and Robert Walker play the two main protagonists brilliantly.
LA CONFIDENTIAL
James Ellroy has a unique style as a writer and I think the film of LA Confidential captures this style well. I’ve read pretty much all of Ellroy’s books. My three favourites are American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and LA Confidential. The film of LA Confidential was directed by Curtis Hanson and is a wonderfully atmospheric piece of work. Set in 1950s Los Angeles, the plot revolves around police corruption, sleaze and murder and has a fantastic cast led by Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger.
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Double Indemnity was filmed in 1944 by Billy Wilder from a book by James M Cain. Cain had a number of classic films made from his books, including The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce, but this is, to my mind, the best. Featuring wonderful performances by Edward G Robinson and Fred Macmurray, the story is about the murder of sultry Barbara Stanwyck’s husband for the insurance money. Slick dialogue, gripping action, a great movie.
NIGHT AND THE CITY
A little more obscure than the other films on this list, Night And The City comes from a book by the underrated British author Gerald Kersh. Two films have in fact been made from this book but I am choosing the earlier 1950 version directed by Jules Dassin and set in London, not the later New York version starring Robert de Niro. The star here is the stolid hard-bitten actor Richard Widmark, and he’s backed up by Gene Tierney and several great British character actors such as Francis L Sullivan and Herbert Lom. What I particularly love about this film is that much of it was shot on location in the West End and elsewhere in London. At the end there is a great chase scene in Hammersmith and this had some influence on scenes in my latest book Dead In The Water.
Obviously by restricting myself to a list of only six film adaptations I’ve had to leave out a lot of wonderful films. No room for Silence of the Lambs, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Rififi, Brighton Rock etc etc. They’ll have to go on a second or third list one day. Meanwhile I think it’s time to get in front of a screen and get down to some serious viewing!
DEAD IN THE WATER by Mark Ellis
Pbk Original £9.99
Amazon
Blackwell's
Publisher's Synopsis
Summer, 1942.
The Second World War rages on but Britain now faces the Nazi threat with America at its side.
In a bombed-out London swarming with gangsters and spies, DCI Frank Merlin continues his battle against rampant wartime crime. A mangled body is found in the Thames just as some items of priceless art go mysteriously missing. What sinister connection links the two?
Merlin and his team follow a twisting trail of secrets and lies as they investigate a baffling and deadly puzzle .
'This is to my shame the first Mark Ellis book I've read. If the others evoke a vanished London so impressively, are graced with such complex plots and deep characterisation, and, above all, are written so well I shall have to read them all.'
THE TIMES - PICKS OF THE WEEK
Praise for the DCI Frank Merlin series:
'Masterly . . . compelling . . . one of the most attractive characters to emerge in recent detective-thriller fiction'
ANDREW ROBERTS, SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
'Against the backdrop of Blitz-hit London, this stylish thriller sees Scotland Yard's Frank Merlin investigate a tangled conspiracy' SUNDAY MIRROR
