Jane A. Adams's "Kith and Kin"

Jane A. Adams is a British writer of psychological thrillers. Her first book, The Greenway, was nominated for a CWA John Creasey Award in 1995 and an Author's Club Best First Novel Award. She has a degree in Sociology and was once lead vocalist in a folk rock band.

Here Adams dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Kith and Kin:

Having finally got around to watching The Hateful Eight, I have to wonder what Tarantino would do with Henry Johnstone…

Or maybe Jim Jarmusch. I’d love to know how he’d film a Henry Johnstone book… I’ve a real fondness for both Ghost Dog and Broken Flowers in particular (Ghost Dog inspired an as yet unfinished novella) and though I’m sure I’d end up with a very different Henry, it would certainly be interesting.

So, who would play Henry… Cary Grant would have been nice…

John Light has the right kind of look but I didn’t have a particular person in mind. Henry kind of appeared in a fragmentary way and the first scene I really wrote for him – quite a way into the first book, The Murder Book, and taking place when Henry arrives in the village of Thoresway – I wasn’t actually sure I liked him very much. He has pale grey eyes that can turn really hard and a certain coldness, on occasion, but I think John Light would work really well.

Mickey Hitchens, so my daughter tells me, looks like Jerome Flynn who was recently in Ripper Street and I think she’s probably about right – though Mickey is stockier and more solid.

Inevitably though, if a Henry Johnstone book was ever made into a film, that would then become an entity in its own right and whatever vision I might have would undoubtedly be different, as film is a whole different animal. I once tried to adapt my first book, The Greenway, into a screenplay and found it very difficult – though also fascinating. What the experience taught me, though, is that the decision making process is utterly different and what works on the page when writing a novel often has to be approached from a totally different perspective.

Visit Jane A. Adams's website.

The Page 69 Test: Kith and Kin.

--Marshal Zeringue