Meg Gardiner's Jo Beckett series

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Meg Gardiner's novels include the Jo Beckett series -- The Dirty Secrets Club, The Memory Collector, and The Liar's Lullaby.

Here she shares her thinking about casting a big screen adaptation of the novels:

I’m outside the box, thinking.

The characters in the Jo Beckett series live vividly, and sometimes obstreperously, inside my head. I know what they look like. So do readers—when I asked them who should play the characters in the movie, I got twenty-five different answers.

So, how can I pick a single cast? In this era of HD, 3D, avatars and performance capture, why collapse the possibilities to a single face? Let’s not. I’m casting Jo Beckett, The Movie with a few mashups.

Jo is a forensic psychiatrist—a deadshrinker. The Kirkus Mystery and Thriller Review called her a “rock climber, monkey wrangler, and confessor extraordinaire.” She needs spunk, intelligence, and some serious physicality.

Movie Jo: Rachel McAdams crossed with Zoë Saldana (in either Uhura or Neytiri mode). She’d be feisty, tenacious, and could climb mountains until the banshees carried her away.

Gabe Quintana: He’s Jo’s boyfriend—a pararescueman with the California Air National Guard, a grad student, and a single dad. Make him the love child of Daniel Sunjata (Rescue Me, Ranger in the upcoming One For The Money) and Timothy Olyphant.

Amy Tang, SFPD homicide detective—she’s a tough, smart cop, and Jo has been known to call her Spiky, the Goth Gnome: Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica) with a punk haircut.

Ferd Bismuth, Jo’s hypochondriac neighbor—he’s ungainly, smart, and hopelessly in love with Jo: Mike White combined with Dileep Rao.

There. Piece of cake.

Learn more about the author and her work at Meg Gardiner's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Meg Gardiner's Evan Delaney series.

--Marshal Zeringue