Jackson resident Warren Adler's new novel, Funny Boys, has been acquired by Overlook Press. The novel deals with the heyday of the Catskill Mountain resorts when it was the breeding ground of new comedians and the turf for gangsters from Murder Inc. and the Mafia. Many of the characters in the novel are based upon actual gangsters of that era-dubbed Murder Inc.-who killed for hire and represented the so-called Combination-an alliance between Jewish and Italian gangsters, a number of whom got the chair or were killed in the gang wars of that era.
The novel is scheduled for publication in spring 2008.
Warren Adler is the author of twenty-nine novels, among them The War of the Roses, which was made into a movie starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, and Random Hearts, which was made into a film starring Harrison Ford. Three of Mr. Adler’s short stories from his collection The Sunset Gang were adapted for a trilogy on PBS. Ten of his books have been sold or optioned to Hollywood. Adler recently completed a screenplay based on his novel Target
Churchill, written with collaborator James Humes, a Churchill expert. Kevin Conner will direct.
Adler's work is featured in the 2003 Wyoming Center for the Book anthology, Deep West: A Literary Tour of Wyoming, available through Pronghorn Press.
