James Patterson's Good Fucking Call

Hey, if you live in St. Louis and would like a chance to meet one of James Patterson's favorite authors, swing on by the University City Library tonight for Scott Phillips speaking and signing copies of Rake. In an interview published last week in The New York Times, Patterson named Phillips' The Ice Harvest as one of his 'one-off besties' alongside Kent Anderson's Night Dogs, William Goldman's Marathon Man, Stephen King's Different Seasons and Newton Thornburg's Cutter & Bone. He also drops names like Cormac McCarthy, Walter Mosley, Don Winslow, James Lee Burke, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price, so... yeah, he's got some solid taste. It's kinda like finding out that Ronald McDonald frequents that hole-in-the-wall bistro you love so much.

And if you dig Phillips' work, (if you don't, why the hell are you reading this blog?) you almost assuredly dig that of the late-great Charles Willeford. If so, dig this, Willeford's Hoke Moseley books are going to be the basis for the new FX pilot, Hoke, starring Paul Giamatti in the title role. This could be excellent effing news. Excellent if the show is good, and excellent if the show gets more folks reading Willeford's books. The casting of Giamatti has me optimistic (though, having Fred Ward reprise the role he played in the George Armitage adaptation of Miami Blues would be sweet) as does scribe Scott Frank - who's proven a feel for the odd crime script in the past (including adaptations of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty and Out of Sight, as well as Dead Again, The Lookout and let's hope his success with Lawrence Block's A Walk Among the Tombstones resembles that of his Leonard and less his James Lee Burke adaptation Heaven's Prisoners).