Patricia Cornwell Readers? Need movie recommendation.

[Mike Lowe]

I teach a Cornwell novel (Postmortem) and over the years my students have had trouble transitioning into our next book/author so quickly (Ed McBain, Mischief). I'm thinking of breaking things up a bit and was wondering if anyone had a good recommendation for a murder/mystery/serial killer type movie that would work well after having finished reading Cornwell's Postmortem?

Thanks for the insight! I found a movie called "ATF" which was a TV movie written by Cornwell (1999) but I can't seem to find a copy anywhere (no surprise).

Thanks folks!

[NoMyths]

In what course do you teach those books? Sounds like a fun one.

[Mike Lowe]

Originally Posted by NoMyths

In what course do you teach those books? Sounds like a fun one.

It's a class called Modern Novels, but should really be called mystery novels as that's all we really read. It was created by a predecessor of mine and has a strong showing of female lead roles which puts a nice/interesting spin on things.

We read:
A is for Alibi (Grafton)
Postmortem (Cornwell)
Mischief (McBain)
1st to Die (Patterson)
Client (Grisham)
2 for the Dough (Evanovich)

This is junior/senior level high school and the course is designed to introduce you to a number of author's and their first works in the part of a series (excepts for Mischief, and 2 for the Dough...and perhaps Client).

[rowech]

I think the Alienist by Caleb Carr would be a FANTASTIC fit as a retro look at the start of forensics. In addition, anything by Jeffery Deaver.

[Shkspr]

THe Michael Mann - directed "Manhunter" starring William Petersen would be a good fit. It's Hannibal Lecter, it's well respected, it's pretty recent, but it's also a TV movie which means it should be school-friendly.

As far as the curriculum goes, the only clunker on the list. I think, is 1st to Die - Patterson may not have even written that one. Far better, if going for a Patterson, to do an early Alex Cross like Along Came a Spider. Killing Floor by Lee Child would be a strong addition as series books go. You might read Kate Atkinson's book Case Histories and see if it might be suitable; that's a title that might raise the literary level a bit while still being a strong mystery.

I think anything by Deaver would be too strong, but he's got some good stuff. One interesting thing about him is that he's one of the few writers in the early days of the Internet to actually write plausible scenes featuring IRC, message boards, virtual spaces, etc. Everybody else seems to make things up based off of Hollywood, but he did his homework.

[rowech]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

THe Michael Mann - directed "Manhunter" starring William Petersen would be a good fit. It's Hannibal Lecter, it's well respected, it's pretty recent, but it's also a TV movie which means it should be school-friendly.

As far as the curriculum goes, the only clunker on the list. I think, is 1st to Die - Patterson may not have even written that one. Far better, if going for a Patterson, to do an early Alex Cross like Along Came a Spider. Killing Floor by Lee Child would be a strong addition as series books go. You might read Kate Atkinson's book Case Histories and see if it might be suitable; that's a title that might raise the literary level a bit while still being a strong mystery.

I think anything by Deaver would be too strong, but he's got some good stuff. One interesting thing about him is that he's one of the few writers in the early days of the Internet to actually write plausible scenes featuring IRC, message boards, virtual spaces, etc. Everybody else seems to make things up based off of Hollywood, but he did his homework.

I have a 15 year old niece who is a Sophomore in a private school that eats Deaver up. There has to be one that would be good for a school.

As for the internet stuff I agree and I'll put one other one out there...Greg Iles in Mortal Fear. He got made fun of a bit for how over the top some of that book was and now looking back, it's almost not enough. It was written in '97 and if you read it today, it's unbelievable how closely it could model many of the sad situations we read about.

[Shkspr]

My bad; I meant that in the sense that I thought saying ANYTHING by Deaver would be good was too strong; he had some clunkers before starting the Lincoln Rhyme series. I don't mean to single him out as being too intense for the age range.

[rowech]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

My bad; I meant that in the sense that I thought saying ANYTHING by Deaver would be good was too strong; he had some clunkers before starting the Lincoln Rhyme series. I don't mean to single him out as being too intense for the age range.

Ahh....makes more sense now and I definitely agree with that. I'd think "The Bone Collector" would make an excellent addition to the class.

[3ric]

Kathy Reichs' "Deja Dead" is an excellent debut novel with a female lead