Laura Powell's "Witch Fire"

Laura Powell grew up in the Brecon Beacons and spent most of her childhood with her nose in a book. She went on to study classics at Bristol and Oxford, then spent five years working in the editorial departments of both adult and children's publishers. She now lives in West London.

Here Powell dreamcasts a big screen adaptation of her new novel, Witch Fire:

Witch Fire, like its predecessor Burn Mark, gives the crime thriller genre a fantasy twist by putting witches into the mix. The plot moves from London to a secret boarding school in Switzerland to a corrupt South American Republic, so it’s pretty action-packed. Sam Mendes did a great job on Bond so he’d be my top choice for director.

My hero, Lucas, comes from a long line of inquisitors and is struggling to reconcile his powers as a witch with his family’s status as famous witch-hunters. Skander Keynes, who played Edmund in The Chronicles of Narnia films, is now too old for the part, but he’d convey the right mix of posh-boy arrogance, charm and vulnerability. A young Billie Piper would be great as my heroine Glory, the trailer-trash witch girl with criminal ambitions.

Lucas’s dad, the formidable Chief Prosecutor for the Inquisition, would have to be Jason Isaacs, partly because I’ve got a crush on him. Plus he’s got the right icy blue stare.

Speaking of cold stares … I imagine Troy Morgan, the reluctant heir to a mafia-style coven, as looking like a red-headed version of Benedict Cumberbatch, and would cast Eddie Redmayne as the inquisitor Gideon Hale. Eddie’s good-looking but I also think he’s got what it takes to play a convincing psychopath. And I’d pick Rachel Hurd-Wood, the English actress and model, to play the beautiful and enigmatic Rose Merle.

Since Witch Fire has a large and varied cast – spies, mobsters, witch-hunters, party girls and politicians – I would insist on having a cameo role myself. Perhaps I’d pop up as one of the patrons in the seedy Carabosse Club, where Glory gets a job turning magic tricks for tips. Or else I’d like to appear as a kick-ass inquisitor, hunting witches through the South American jungle…

Read more about the book and author at Laura Powell's website.

Learn about Laura Powell's top ten heroes in disguise.

--Marshal Zeringue