The Future

Turquoise Dragon's Paris setting, its strong American and Chinese characters (both male and female), its rising action and its climactic shootout on the Seine all contribute to making it a viable - and global - cinematic property.

Turquoise Dragon's relentless momentum will translate powerfully to the big screen, and its eye-catching settings span the globe: Paris is the main attractor, but key scenes are set on the shores of Lake Zurich in Switzerland, on the streets of Singapore and even in a village in South Vietnam in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War.

Equally visual is the climax to the story: a running gunbattle across the deck of an out-of-control cargo ship caught in the Seine's current and racing downriver toward impact with the Mirabeau Bridge. In the hands of the right director, the opportunities for personal drama and onscreen destruction in this action set-piece are nearly endless.

Everything that makes Turquoise Dragon attractive as a film is what will make it equally attractive to television as an original series. Additionally, this option offers a showrunner the opportunity to do much more with the nuanced interior lives of the story's ensemble cast of characters than can be done in a 2-hour film.

This is a story in which the "villain" does terrible things not for personal gain, but to protect the reputation of a loved one; a story in which a kidnapper and murderer is offered to the reader as an appealing antihero; a story in which, for the protagonist, the line between the living and the dead grows increasingly blurred. This is a story in which the burdens of the past are borne in the present. This is a story about fathers and daughters, about mothers and sons, and the duties and the debts that come due across generations.

Given the depth of Turquoise Dragon's core characters, and its position as the first book in a series revolving around these characters, the book seems a strong fit for any future media adaptation.