Bill Crider's "The Wild Hog Murders"

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Bill Crider is the winner of two Anthony Awards and is an Edgar Award finalist.

Here he shares some ideas about the leading man--and the titular squealers--in an adaptation of his new novel, The Wild Hog Murders, the latest of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes Mysteries:

I think that the last time I answered this question, I said I’d like to see Tommy Lee Jones play the part of Sheriff Dan Rhodes. That must have stuck with me because I wrote a joke about it into The Wild Hog Murders. I’d still love to see Jones in the part, but what I’m wondering about now is how they’d do the wild hogs if they made a movie of this book. With all the CGI special effects these days, they’d probably just do them with a computer, but it would be more fun if they used real wild hogs. Real ones would be hard to control, and they’d need a good hog wrangler. They’d probably need some brave stuntmen, too.

The hogs have been in every book about Rhodes, including the first one (Too Late to Die), in which they played a major role. At the time I wrote that one, more than twenty-five years ago, I had no idea that they’d become such an integral part of the series. The real ones were already making pests of themselves, but I didn’t know that they’d become such a huge problem in the state of Texas. Nobody else did, either, but just as they’ve been taking over more and more real territory, they’ve been occupying more time in the books. This time they get center stage, so if there was ever a movie, maybe one of them would become a breakout star, the Lassie of hogs. Hey, it could happen.

Seepy Benton, by the way, insists that if there is a movie, he’s going to play himself.

Learn more about the book and author at Bill Crider's website and blog.

Read the Page 69 Test entries for Crider's A Mammoth Murder, Murder Among the OWLS, Of All Sad Words, Murder in Four Parts, and Murder in the Air.

The Page 69 Test: The Wild Hog Murders.

Writers Read: Bill Crider.

--Marshal Zeringue