After successfully transferring to Hollywood with last year’s $200 million-plus grosser Safe House, the projects have been piling up for Easy Money director Daniel Espinosa. Having finally decided on his next film a few weeks ago with the Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace-led, Ridley Scott-produced drama Child 44, another potential project is now on his radar.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Espinosa is now developing an adaptation of John Grisham’s latest novel The Racketeer with Fox 2000 and New Regency. Released just around four months ago, it is already a #1 New York Times bestseller, as per usual with Grisham’s works. With a writer search underway for the film that follows a judge-murdering mystery, check out an extended synopsis of the novel below thanks to Amazon.
Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five.
Who is the Racketeer? And what does he have to do with the judge’s untimely demise? His name, for the moment, is Malcolm Bannister. Job status? Former attorney. Current residence? The Federal Prison Camp near Frostburg, Maryland.
On paper, Malcolm’s situation isn’t looking too good these days, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve. He knows who killed Judge Fawcett, and he knows why. The judge’s body was found in his remote lakeside cabin. There was no forced entry, no struggle, just two dead bodies: Judge Fawcett and his young secretary. And one large, state-of-the-art, extremely secure safe, opened and emptied.
What was in the safe? The FBI would love to know. And Malcolm Bannister would love to tell them. But everything has a price—especially information as explosive as the sequence of events that led to Judge Fawcett’s death. And the Racketeer wasn’t born yesterday . . .
Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this wickedly clever new novel from John Grisham, the undisputed master of the legal thriller.
Would you like to see Espinosa take on this material?