Today I welcome a very special guest to the blog, author Peter Leonard. I’ve recently reviewed his new book, All He Saw Was The Girl, and Peter very kindly agreed to answer a few questions. So without further ado:

Peter, thank you for agreeing to come onto my electronic scrapbook and answer a few questions about your latest book All He Saw Was the Girl. I’ll cut straight to the chase:

I’ve reviewed two of your books now for Partners In Crime Tours; Voices of the Dead, and All He Saw Was the Girl. They are both quite different. Were they easy to write so differently, and do you have a favourite between them?

My favourite between the two books is probably Voices, it’s a better story. Neither book was easy to write, both required a lot of research, Voices requiring the most for obvious reasons.

You’ve set your books in many different locations. Did you research the locations first hand purposely for the books, or did you use some other method?

All He Saw was inspired by living in Rome as a student at Loyola University. The opening chapter is based on a true story. With nine days to go till the end of my year abroad, I went out with a group of friends, got quite inebriated, and stole a taxi. I was arrested and spent a week in Rebibbia prison before going to trial and being released. Attached is a piece I wrote about the experience for the Guardian.

Voices was inspired by three things: I had a serious relationship with a Jewish girl for several years, I visited Dachau concentration camp, and I read an article in the New York Times about a foreign diplomat who killed a college student while driving drunk. The diplomat got off on immunity.

In All He Saw Was the Girl, there are two storylines running; both contain a very specific male and female character that could be the ‘He’ and the ‘Girl’, did you have either in mind when you came up with the title or was it quite deliberate to have those two “characters” common to both stories?

The original title was: As The Romans Do, which I submitted, and my editor said, can you give us something with a little more attitude. So I thought of titles for a few days, and thought about the scene where McCabe is sitting at an outside café in Piazza del Popolo, and he sees the girl walking toward him like a scene in a movie: All He S aw Was The Girl.
Fortunately, my editor loved it.

When I read All He Saw Was the Girl, I kept thinking that there was a movie to be made from the book. Any plans in that direction, and if so who would you choose to play McCabe, Angela, Ray, Sharon and Joey?

A British company has made an offer for the film rights. I’ve accepted, and I’m waiting for the contract from my agent, Charles Buchan at the Wylie Agency.
I wonder if Ryan Gosling could play McCabe? For the beautiful Italian girl, a younger-looking India de Beaufort. I see Naomi Watts as Sharon, but dressed down. As for Joey, I see a new emerging Italian heavy-good opportunity for someone who wants to steal the show.

What are you working on at the moment, and when can we expect to see it on our bookshelves?

I’m working on a novel based on my time hanging out with Detroit Police Homicide a year ago. I’ve reprised O’Clair from my second novel, Trust Me, in the lead role.