Watch a Re-Enactment of a Scene from Fifteen Digits, a New Crime Novel by Nick Santora

Last week we published our review of Fifteen Digits, a crime novel by Nick Santora. And while we enjoyed it, we thought it lacked suspense, that there was too much foreshadowing of what was to come … and when it did come we weren't surprised in any way.

Part of this issue here is that Santora is a successful television and film writer, director and producer — Fifteen Digits is only his second novel — and he applied a screenwriter's eye to this book, a very literal step-by-step approach that leaves little to the imagination.

Check out the video below, a re-enactment of a scene from Fifteen Digits, written and directed by Santora. The dialog is, we believe (without actually confirming this), taken word-for-word from the book. The casting is spot on and it is a really effective scene setting up a major plot point in the book. But what's present in this video, and missing from the book, are the nuances in the way the characters relate to each other. Whereas the actors give dimensionality to the characters in the video, that same quality is largely absent in the book and compensated for by reminding the reader to pay attention to what was being said or happening right then and there because something really important was going to occur in the future.

This video makes it abundantly clear that Fifteen Digits is on its way to being filmed, either for television or theatrically. The storyline will make for a good movie. It should also have made for a better book.