Deals and Debuts

• It looks as though Duane Swierczynski wasn’t pulling our legs after all. The Los Angeles Times reports today that captivating actress Michelle Monaghan, who recently appeared (if not often enough) in Gone Baby Gone and fills out a merry widow like nobody else in the new movie Made of Honor, has optioned the film rights to Swierczynski’s 2006 novel, The Blonde. It’s exactly the casting arrangement Swierczynski had in mind. Good for him.

• In a lead-in to this weekend’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, L.A. author-journalist Denise Hamilton talks briefly (and I mean, briefly) about her upcoming historical standalone novel, The Last Embrace. It’s a subject she addressed at greater length in The Rap Sheet some while back.

• More than a year has passed now since we mentioned that Mary McCormack--who previously turned our heads with her appearances on Murder One and The West Wing--was working on a new USA Network series, in which she’d play “a U.S. Marshall for the Federal Witness Protection Program [who] must balance her work life with a dysfunctional family.” It seems that series, which was going to be called Mary Sunshine, has now reverted back to its original title, In Plain Sight, and is being readied for an earlier-than-expected premiere on June 1. I haven’t always been a fan of USA’s comedy-drama crime series, but In Plain Sight looks promising, if only because of the participation of McCormack and Lesley Ann Warren, who will play her “vexing mother” on the show.

• Irish writer Declan Burke is all excited about the coming American release of his novel The Big O, one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2007. And he should be excited. It’s got a bang up cover, that’s for sure.

• Oh, and happy birthday to Sue Grafton (T Is for Trespass), who turns 68 years old today.