ABOVE SUSPICION

Journalist and New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey's riveting, brilliantly reported true crime thriller, an account of the only FBI agent to ever confess to murder, soon to be a major motion picture by director Phillip Noyce, starring Emilia Clarke, from Game of Thrones and Jack Huston, who plays the lead in the new soon-to-be-released version of Ben Hur.

Alice Martell:
I'm delighted to send you the manuscript for ABOVE SUSPICION, journalist and New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey's riveting, brilliantly reported true crime thriller, an account of the only FBI agent to ever confess to murder, soon to be a major motion picture.

It's just been announced that Phillip Noyce, the noted director of such acclaimed and popular movies as Dead Calm, Patriot Games, The Bone Collector, The Quiet American and Catch a Fire, will start filming a screen adaptation next month. Two hot young actors will star: Emilia Clarke, from Game of Thrones (she also portrayed “Sarah Connor” in Terminator: Genisys) and Jack Huston, who plays the lead in the new version of Ben Hur, set for a summer 2016 release. The distribution rights will be sold at Cannes, which opens next week. Here is a link to the item in The Hollywood Reporter (also attached)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-emilia-clarke-jack-huston-890096

Since the movie news, there is a great deal of interest building, here and internationally, in re-issuing this fascinating book. Originally published in 1993 by Simon & Schuster, all rights are reverted. I just sold audio rights to Penguin Random Audio in a pre-empt.

ABOVE SUSPICION is the chilling and tragic true story of Mark Putnam, a newly married, FBI poster boy for rectitude and duty, assigned in 1987 to a corrupt, crime-ridden Appalachian mountain town in eastern Kentucky, where lawlessness has been a way of life for generations. Mark, who had dreamed of becoming an FBI agent since childhood, sets to establishing a network of paid informants, which comes to include Susan Smith, a poor coal miner's daughter and con artist who has been involved with the drug trade and prostitution. Susan becomes his star informant and develops an obsessive fatal attraction for Mark that, after many rebuffs, finally leads to an illicit affair. She sees in him her means of escape from a dead end town; Mark's wife innocently sees her as an ally. But the relationship is a ticket to disaster for all three, culminating in a decent man's sudden moment of madness that sends their lives careening into irredeemable catastrophe. The scandal shook the foundations of the the U.S.'s top law enforcement agency, ending in the first ever conviction of an FBI agent for homicide. This is a story of near Shakespearean tragedy, a chronicle of fear, impulse, desire and remorse, a window into the dark inner workings of the human heart.

Newsday said of ABOVE SUSPICION: “This is a harrowing book, a taut and compelling true-life tale of duty and hypocrisy, of power and exploitation, of physical death and the death of dreams. unflinching, it should take its place on the dark shelf of the best American dystopias. ” Kirkus said: “Bristling with vivid characters, knuckle-biting revelations, and psychological wallop: a true-crime standout.”

The FBI agent and his wife cooperated fully with the research for this book. An updated epilogue will be included in a new edition.

Joe Sharkey worked as a columnist for the New York Times Business Section for almost 20 years. Before that, he was Assistant National Editor for the Wall Street Journal, the City Editor for the Albany Times-Union, and a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the author of three other non-fiction books: Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy, an investigation of the psychiatric industry; Death Sentence, an account of the notorious family annihilator John List; Deadly Greed, covering the sensational Boston case of wife killer Charles Stuart; and a novel, Lady Gold, co-written with former NYC Police Detective Angela Amato.