Wendy Church's "Murder on the Spanish Seas"

Wendy Church has been a bartender, tennis instructor, semiconductor engineer, group facilitator, nonprofit CEO, teacher, PhD researcher, and dive bar cleaner. Her first suspense novel, Murder on the Spanish Seas, is set on a luxury cruise in the Iberian peninsula, and introduces amateur
sleuth Jesse O’Hara, whose adventures are partly informed by Church’s expertise and international travels.

Here Church dreamcasts an adaptation of Murder on the Spanish Seas:

The main protagonist in Murder on the Spanish Seas is Jesse O’Hara, a profane, introverted, hard drinking, 30-year-old woman. She’s smart, impatient, and fiercely loyal to her few close friends. She’s also really smart/witty, which helps her unravel mysteries, and solve crimes. When I think about casting her in a movie, I imagine Angie Harmon in her role as Rizzoli, or Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games, if they remade it with an ongoing internal dialogue from Katniss that was snarky and funny.

Jesse’s best friend and sidekick, Sam, I envision being played by Eva Mendes, thinking about her role in The Other Guys as Will Ferrell’s wife.

I’d love to have Mel Brooks direct a movie based on my book, as he can carry on a suspenseful/interesting story that maintains a baseline of funny the whole time. He’d probably add in a bunch of stuff that would make the movie way funnier than the book, which would be great. I’d also want him to do a cameo, maybe playing the role of the bumbling ship security officer.

Visit Wendy Church's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder on the Spanish Seas.

Q&A with Wendy Church.

--Marshal Zeringue