Jacob Stone's "Cruel"

Jacob Stone is the byline chosen by award-winning author Dave Zeltserman for his new Morris Brick series of serial-killer thrillers. His crime, mystery and horror fiction has won top praise and has been translated into six languages. His novels Small Crimes and Pariah were both named by the Washington Post as best books of the year. Small Crimes topped National Public Radio's list of best crime and mystery novels of 2008 and is being made into a feature film.

Here Zeltserman dreamcasts an adaptation of Cruel, the latest Morris Black thriller:

Cruel would have a large cast, and I’m going to limit my casting to the MBI team and several of the more important characters from Cruel.

First off, Morris Brick. My ex-LAPD homicide detective and serial killer hunter, is tough, smart, and relentless, and when I did My Book, My Movie for the first two books in the series, Deranged and Crazed, I cast Jason Isaacs in this role since he showed from the Showtime series Brotherhood that he could play all that brilliantly. Also he physically looks like Morris. But in Malicious, Philip Stonehedge tells Morris about a studio plan to make a movie about the events from Crazed, and since the studio execs were planning to cast Woody Harrelson in that role, I’ll make that change also.

Evangeline Lilly would be a good choice to play Natalie Brick, Morris’s beautiful and charming wife.

Philip Stonehedge, a method actor who became friends with Morris in Deranged has a more limited role in Cruel, but since he’s the easiest role to cast I’ll include him here: Ryan Gosling. In the third Morris Brick thriller, Malicious, there’s a running joke where the killer is described by witnesses as either the actor Philip Stonehedge or Ryan Gosling.

Scarlett Johansson would be a good fit for Annie Walsh, the tough, no-nonsense, and very attractive LAPD Detective who works with Morris and his team.

Morris’s team is made up of three former LAPD homicide detectives: Dennis Polk, a wiseass, Fred Lemmon, who takes it as part of his job to keep Polk in line, and Charlie Bogle, Morris’ right-hand man. Michael Rapaport would be perfect as Polk, Matthew Rhys as Lemmon, and Jon Hamm (who has a bigger role in future books, as well as showing some inner demons) as Bogle.

Finally, to complete the MBI cast, we need to find a lovable and clownish bull terrier to play Morris’s dog, Parker.

Now for critical roles unique to Cruel (Note. I won’t be providing descriptions for these characters so as not to give away any spoilers):

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Ed Blount.

Patrick Wilson as Travis Smalley.

Imogen Poots as Rosalyn Krate.

For Samantha Fine I need a star in the making, and who better than Katharine McPhee.

The versatile actor Pat Healy for the Freak. If he can play Junior in Small Crimes, he can play the Freak!

Visit Dave Zeltserman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Deranged.

My Book, The Movie: Crazed.

--Marshal Zeringue