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KISS HER GOODBYE is now the basis for the CBS television series pilot, ATF, starring Dylan Walsh, Michael Rapaport, Terry Kinney and Sandrine Holt.
ATF Agent Jack Donovan has two ambitions: take down cult leader Alex Gunderson after years of violent mayhem, and reconnect with his daughter Jessie, who has somehow managed to slip from his life. But, none of Jack’s experience as a stellar cop or an absent father has prepared him for the unthinkable way these two parts of his life are about to collide.
In a desperate act of revenge, Gunderson kidnaps Jessie and buries her alive. But just as Jack’s team is closing in, fate intervenes in the form of a bullet and the secret to Jessie’s location is lost. With only a few precious hours of oxygen to sustain her, and with not a single clue pointing in her direction, Jessie is sure to die—unless Jack can somehow find her.
But what Jack doesn’t realize is that he’s about to take a sharp turn into a world from which few of us return: the darkness of death itself.
“Get ready for one hell of a ride.”— New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper
“An adrenaline pumping thriller”—Midwest Book Review
“[A] provocative…breathtaking debut.” –Publishers Weekly
Behind the Scenes
This story has pretty much come full circle for me. Many years ago, I conceived Kiss Her Goodbye as a movie idea with plans to turn it into a screenplay. But when I pitched the story to a novelist/screenwriter friend of mine, Kathy Mackel, she suggested I write it as a novel. I resisted at first, but she convinced me to write a few pages and send them to her, and her response to those pages was a simple, “finish this book.” That was enough to spur me on and after writing in my spare time, I finally finished the book. About three months later it sold to St. Martin’s Press.
Flash forward four and a half years and Kiss Her Goodbye is now before the cameras as a pilot for a television series on CBS. I have no involvement in the pilot or the possible TV series — other than the book, which has been very faithfully adapted — but I think it’s only fitting that a story that was originally conceived for the screen has finally made it there. Now I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that the network likes the pilot enough to keep moving forward.
Listen to an excerpt: