Adrian Magson's "The Locker"

Adrian Magson is the author of 20 crime and spy thrillers, numerous short stories, a YA ghost novel and Write On!-a writers’ help book.

His new novel is The Locker, the first of a new series featuring private security operatives Ruth Gonzales and Andy Vaslik.

Here Magson dreamcasts an adaptation of The Locker:

Like most writers, I do fantasise a little (well, a lot) about this subject.

I didn’t have to think too hard about who might play Ruth Gonzales, because the actress I had in mind – Nicola Walker – had already played another Ruth, this one a member of MI5, in Spooks [US title: MI-5]. I’m not sure which came first – the actress or the name - or maybe they came together, colliding in my brain in a happy coincidence. But I instantly saw her as the capable, unflashy (sorry, Nicola – no offence) and relentless former British soldier and cop, now investigator for Cruxys Solutions.

The male half of the partnership, Andy Vaslik, ex-Dept of Homeland Security agent, slim, neat, watchful and self-contained, I saw as like CSI actor Gary Sinise.

The two are very different (as described so perceptively by Kirkus Reviews: (‘…Gonzales and Vaslik make an appealingly mismatched investigative unit’) but that’s how I saw them in my mind without going overboard and having a beauty and beast situation. They’re opposites in many ways, and there’s a prickliness between them at the start of their pairing up for the investigation, but both have one thing in mind, and that’s solving the puzzles they face. Both these actors have an intensity about them that I feel matches the characters.

Learn more about the book and author at Adrian Magson's website.

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The Page 69 Test: The Locker.

Writers Read: Adrian Magson.

--Marshal Zeringue