Brit TV Adaptations of Works on Amazon’s 100 Mysteries and Thrillers to Read in a Lifetime

You’ve got to hand it to the book editors at Amazon. Out of the 271,852 listings under the online retailer’s “Mystery, Thriller & Suspense” category, they managed to cull them down to a list of the 100 Mysteries & Thrillers to Read in a Lifetime. Brit TV-obsessed as I can be, I was curious about how many of the titles had been adapted for UK television.

Researching all 100 titles was a bit more than I cared to take on, so I focused on the ones that were written by authors from the UK and Ireland.

For the sake of simplicity, series of written works with a particular lead character (e.g. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot) count as one title (as on the Amazon list), which brought the list down to a manageable 24. Of them…

These 9 titles have been adapted into British TV series or made-for-TV movies:

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie — new TV adaptation commissioned by the BBC

• Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers — episode of the Dorothy L. Sayers Mysteriesseries

• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie — made-for-TV movie and feature-length episode in Agatha Christie’s Poirot series starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot

• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith — BBC/HBO series featuring Idris Elba (Luther)

• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier — made-for-TV movies, including the 1997 version starring Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) and Emilia Fox (Silent Witness)

• Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — several TV adaptations, including Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett and Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman

• Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson — several adaptations, including the BBC’s Jekyll series starring James Nesbitt (Monroe)

• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James — BBC series starring Helen Baxendale (Cold Feet)

• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins — made-for-TV movie starring Tara FitzGerald (Waking the Dead), Justine Waddell (Wives and Daughters), Ian Richardson (original House of Cards), and Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead)

These 11 titles have been or are being adapted into feature films, British or otherwise:

• Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson — film to be released in 2014
• A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler — 1944 film retitled The Mask Of Dimitrios
• The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
• Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
• From Hell by Alan Moore
• From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming
• Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes — film is in development
• A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell — French film La Cérémonie
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• Sister by Rosamund Lupton — film in development
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

And these 4 titles have not been adapted to date:

• Berlin Noir Trilogy: March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem by Philip Kerr
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
• In the Woods by Irish novelist Tana French
• Killing Floor by Lee Child

I love reading as well as watching a good mystery or thriller, and there are many on Amazon’s list that I haven’t read yet, so guess who’s going shopping!

—————————