It was announced back in the summer of 2005 that New Line Cinema had hired author Mark Burnell to write a screenplay based on his 1999 novel The Rhythm Section. The Rhythm Section was the first of a planed series of six books (four have been published to date) featuring the character Stephanie Patrick who has been described as a female Jason Bourne. Internet rumours at the time had suggested Bourne co-star Franka Potente for the lead role. As we are nearly four years on and there have been no further announcements it doesn’t look like the film will be made anytime soon so it is probably a good time to look back at the book.
Following the death of her family in a plane crash the heroine Stephanie Patrick is on the edge, she has developed a drug and drink problem and is working as a Soho prostitute. Her descent into self destruction is halted by a journalist who has discovered the crash that killed her family was caused by a bomb. What follows is a story of Stephanie’s search for the truth, for retribution and more than anything to find herself. This is a story about identity. She soon realises that she has moved too far from the person she was before the tragedy to ever be that person again, she could never be the person she would have been if it had never happened so she has to invent herself. This isn’t easy when she has so many aliases and plays so many different parts. She starts as Lisa, the “chemical blonde” prostitute but also becomes: Marina Gaudenzi, a Swiss businesswoman, Susan Branch, an American student Elizabeth Shepherd, an English management consultant and the most compelling alias the deadly and brutal Petra Reuter, German anarchist, mercenary and terrorist. As Stephanie gets involved with a mysterious government agency she becomes more embroiled in a terrorist plot that has frightening similarities to the September 11th terrorist attacks (the book was published two years before the attacks).
The book is out of print but there are usually cheep second hand copies available from Amazon.
Chameleon.
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[…] film, unfortunately the first effort has not seen the light of day as of yet. As I mentioned in a blog back in April Mark Burnell was hired in 2005 to write a screenplay based on his 1999 novel The Rhythm Section. […]
[…] the book. Back in 2005 New Line Cinema hired Burnell to write a screenplay of his book according to this blog post. Eon purchased the rights to another of Burnell’s novels back in 2009, but nothing ever came […]