Holly Frederick at Curtis Brown has just started shopping Jeff Abbott's new thriller, Trust Me, which is due from Dutton in July 2009. Abbott's last two books, Collision and Panic, were both optioned for film--Collision is at 20th Century Fox and Panic is at the Weinstein Co. with director Richard Shepard attached. This one, about a grad student who catalogues the online activities of supposed terrorist cells before being kidnapped by one, is, Frederick says, "in the tradition of Three Days of the Condor." The manuscript is currently with two studios.
On the sales side, Patricia Burke at Inkwell Management has closed a deal for Lee Tulloch's backlist novel, Fabulous Nobodies. The book, set in the fashion world of 1980s Manhattan, was originally published by William Morrow in 1989 and republished by Avon in 2006. Julie Anne Quay, executive editor of the fashion magazine V, has optioned the book and hired author (and former studio exec) Elisabeth Robinson (The True And Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters) to pen the adaptation. And what of having a veteran of the print world, instead of the film world, as producer? Burke says that since the book is about a Holly Go Lightly type--she pitched the novel as "Sex and the City before the girls 'made it'"--who better to have at the helm than someone who knows the fashion industry?
