Jacob Stone's "Crazed"

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 Crazed, the second Morris Black thriller:

I get to cheat a bit with this since Crazed is the second book of my Morris Brick crime thriller series, and I already provided my dream cast for the first book, Deranged.

Major characters who appear in both Crazed and Deranged:

Morris Brick, my ex-LAPD homicide detective and serial killer hunter, is tough, smart, and relentless, and Jason Isaacs showed from the Showtime series Brotherhood showed that he could play all that brilliantly, plus he physically looks like my Morris.

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

Sheila Proops, the wheelchair-bound serial killer who escaped prosecution from Deranged and is back in Crazed. Elizabeth Banks would be a good choice, although she'd need a lot of makeup and prosthetics to play my twisted (both physically and emotionally) Sheila.

Philip Stonehedge, a method actor who forces himself into the investigation, and for most of the book acts as Morris’s sidekick, is the easiest role to cast—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 cast, we need to find a lovable and clownish bull terrier to play Morris’s dog, Parker.

Now for the two starring characters unique to Crazed:

Chris Evans would be playing against type to be cast as the serial killer Griffin Bolling, but I think he'd be a fun choice for the role, even though Bolling is quite a piece of work.

Josh Gad would make a perfect Perlmutter--a desperate wannabe filmmaker who catches on to what Sheila and Griffin are up to, and tries to deal himself into the action.

Simon Helberg would be pitch perfect to play Perlmutter's nemesis Bloom.

We'd also need the right fat, orange tabby to play Perlmutter's cat, Orson.

Visit Dave Zeltserman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Deranged.

--Marshal Zeringue