John Grisham's The Partner to be Adapted for Film

John Lee Hancock (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Blind Side) will direct his own adaptation of John Grisham's 1997 legal thriller The Partner for New Regency.

The Partner is the eighth book written by Grisham, with all seven of the novels that preceded it — A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, and The Runaway Jury — having been adapted for film.

The book is centered on a man named Danilo Silva, a man living a quiet life, alone, on a shady street in Brazil. A simple life in a modest home, certainly not one of luxury. Certainly no evidence of the fortune they thought he had stolen. He was much thinner and his face had been altered. He spoke a different language, and spoke it very well.

But Danilo had a past with many chapters. Four years earlier he had been Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a prominent Biloxi law firm. He had a pretty wife, a new daughter, and a bright future. Then one cold winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car and died a horrible death. When he was buried his casket held nothing more than his ashes.

From a short distance away, Patrick watched his own burial. Then he fled. Six weeks later, a fortune was stolen from his ex-law firm's offshore account. And Patrick fled some more.

But they found him.

(Related article: Deadline.com.)