Steve Robinson's "The Penmaker's Wife"

Steve Robinson is a London-based crime writer. He was sixteen when his first magazine article was published and he’s been writing ever since. A love for genealogy inspired his first bestselling series, the Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mysteries, and he is now expanding his writing to historical crime, another area he is passionate about.

Here Robinson dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, The Penmaker's Wife:

I’ve had several social media discussions about this over the years with my earlier books, about who might play the characters if a TV or film adaptation was made. It’s always fun to imagine such things. The main character in The Penmaker’s Wife is a femme fatale called Angelica Chastain. I chose the surname for its French origins because Angelica was born in France, although she moved to England when she was quite young. The person I would choose to play her in the movie, shares the same surname, and perhaps this also helped to guide my choice. The actress is Jessica Chastain. She always seems to exude such confidence in her roles on screen, and is often portrayed as a strong woman who knows exactly what she wants. That’s the kind of character I was looking for when I imagined Angelica.

Another key character in the book is called Effie Wilmington-Reed, whom I see as Angelica’s opposite in many ways — a young and naive ‘English rose’ type of character that I can see someone like Emilia Fox (as she was in Pride and Prejudice) playing. There’s also a rather officious character in The Penmaker’s Wife called Violet Cosgrove, and my inspiration for her was drawn from the 1940 adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I just couldn’t get the the movie’s opening scenes in Monte Carlo out of my head as I was writing Violet. The character from Rebecca is called Edythe Van Hopper, played by Florence Bates.

For Stanley Hampton, the lead man of the story and the pen maker himself, who quickly becomes besotted with Angelica, I can see Benedict Cumberbatch fitting right in. Minus the pipe and deerstalker from his role in Sherlock of course.

It’s an all-star cast! Anyone got the budget?

Visit Steve Robinson's website and Facebook page.

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--Marshal Zeringue