Smallscreen News

Patricia Cornwell's fiction brought to Lifetime, Andie MacDowell to star

By April MacIntyre Mar 21, 2010, 18:44 GMT

Rainey Qualley and Andie MacDowell - - New York City, NY, USA © Janet Mayer / PR Photos

Fans of the Kay Scarpetta crime series and the author, Patricia Cornwell, can look forward to her other works being dramatized and brought to the smallscreen by Lifetime networks.

The work of #1 New York Times bestselling author, Patricia Cornwell, will make its on-screen debut when Andie MacDowell and Daniel Sunjata star in the Lifetime Original Movies At Risk and The Front. 

Cornwell's At Risk airs Saturday, April 10, 2010, at 9:00 pm (ET/PT) -- and The Front airs Saturday, April 17, 2010, also at 9:00 pm (ET/PT).

This will mark the first time that Cornwell's suspense and forensic insight have been adapted for either film or television.

Andie MacDowell is cast as Monique Lamont, the brazen and ambitious Boston District Attorney who will let nothing stand between her and the Governor’s Mansion.

Daniel Sunjata is Win Garano, the charismatic and determined State Investigator whose success Lamont hopes to use to propel her to the top.  They are joined by Ashley Williams, Annabeth Gish and Diahann Carroll as they use the best of forensic science to investigate cold cases -- and discover that the crimes of the past are not easy to separate from the crimes of today. 

Premise: AT RISK

At Risk introduces Win Garano (Sunjata), the rising star of the Massachusetts State Police, when D.A. Monique “Money” Lamont (MacDowell) sends him to Tennessee to investigate a murder that took place more than 20 years before.  The calculating Monique thinks she has found the perfect mystery to showcase her new crime initiative and Win has no choice but to follow her lead.  With the help of his colleague Sykes (Gish), Win follows the evidence as it leads him to a killer in Knoxville, and then all the way back to Boston and a crime that hits much closer to home.

Premise: THE FRONT

The sequel to At Risk, Monique Lamont (MacDowell) and Win Garano (Sunjata) reunite to investigate Boston’s most famous criminal.  Attempting to generate much needed publicity for her flagging political aspirations, Monique orders Win to re-open the investigation of the brutal, decades-old murder of a young blind woman named Janie Brolin. 

Janie’s boyfriend was the main suspect in the original investigation, but Monique has another suspect in mind – the Boston Strangler.  Win must work closely with a no-nonsense and combative female detective named “Stump” (Williams) to unpeel layer upon layer of the 40-year-old crime.  Win and Stump’s relationship evolves as they uncover the truth about Janie’s death and track down a psychopath who is leaving their witnesses and colleagues dead in his wake.  

Author Patricia Cornwell’s books have been translated into 36 languages in more than 50 countries across the globe. In 2008, her novel Book of the Dead won the Galaxy British Book Awards’ Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year – marking the first time ever for an American to win the prestigious award.