Cold Cases Heat Up: MGM Television Is Adapting The Book of Cold Cases Into a Series
MGM Television has won a bidding war to bring Simone St. James' The Book of Cold Cases to the small screen, with a series adaptation now in the works.
File this under: spooky page-to-screen news I will absolutely watch with the lights on. MGM Television just won a multi-studio bidding war to turn Simone St. James' 2022 Berkley novel 'The Book of Cold Cases' into a TV series.
Who is making it
Steve Stark and Stacey Levin are executive producing for Toluca Pictures, with St. James herself also on board as an executive producer. Colleen McGuinness is writing the adaptation and executive producing as well. If that name rings a bell, it should: her writing credits include '30 Rock' (NBC), 'Ramy' (Hulu), 'Forever' (Amazon), 'Friends from College' (Netflix), and 'Life & Beth' (Hulu). That is a pretty versatile comedy-to-drama pipeline, which could be interesting given how tone-sensitive this story is.
What the story is
The book runs on two timelines. In 1977, the small town of Claire Lake, Oregon, is rattled by the Lady Killer Murders: two men shot with the same gun, each crime scene marked by a weird note. The prime suspect is Beth Greer, a wealthy, eccentric 23-year-old spotted fleeing one of the killings. She is acquitted and retreats into her family mansion, becoming that local legend everyone whispers about.
Jump to Oregon in 2017. Shea Collins works as a receptionist by day, and by night she runs a true-crime site called 'The Book of Cold Cases'—a project fueled by the attempted abduction she survived as a kid. By chance, Shea meets Beth and shoots her shot: would Beth talk about the case? To Shea's surprise, Beth agrees. They start meeting at the mansion. Shea is never fully at ease there—objects seem to shift when she looks away, and she keeps catching what looks like a girl outside the window. Beth is sharp and disarmingly charming, so the draw to get the truth is strong. But as they get closer, Shea cannot shake the feeling that something is off. Is she befriending a manipulative killer, or is the real danger baked into that house and the history around it? The setup has plenty of potential for elegantly creepy thrills.
The author connection
A neat wrinkle here: before going full-time as a novelist, St. James spent about 20 years working behind the scenes in television. So she knows the medium from the inside and is now circling back with an EP credit. Her first novel was the 2012 paranormal mystery romance 'The Haunting of Maddy Clare,' and she has been steadily building a fan base with moody, hybrid mysteries ever since.
- The Haunting of Maddy Clare (2012)
- An Inquiry into Love and Death
- Silence for the Dead
- The Other Side of Midnight
- Lost Among the Living
- The Broken Girls
- The Sun Down Motel
- Murder Road
- The Book of Cold Cases
No word yet on casting or where the series will land, but the team and the premise line up nicely. Are you into a true-crime-meets-haunted-mansion vibe, or does this one feel like too many goosebumps for your weeknights?