Novels that became films chronicled

The latest genre of choice for crime-fiction authority Otto Penzler is the short story — those that have inspired the best crime films.

Weighing in at more than 3 pounds and occupying 1,200 pages is “The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films.” It’s one of more than a dozen books edited by Penzler, who is a publisher of crime fiction as well as the proprietor of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop, the oldest specialty mystery bookstore in the world.

Other “big books” that Penzler has edited include “The Big Book of Female Detectives,” “The Big Book of Rogues and Villains” and “The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.”

Here, he turns to short stories — not novels adapted into films such as “The Maltese Falcon” or “The Godfather.” The short stories that he has selected are by the likes of Agatha

• “The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films” (Penguin Random House, 1,200 pages, $28.95, published Oct. 22), edited by Otto Penzler

Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Daphne du Maurier, Ian Fleming, Dashiell Hammett, Joyce Carol Oates, Edgar Allan Poe and many more.

There are 61 short stories reprinted along with Penzler’s discussions of the stories and their various film, television or stage adaptations.

Such a book is for browsing rather than a straight read-through, but such browsing delivers rewards.

Agatha Christie’s

“The Witness for the Prosecution” — which became Billy Wilder’s terrific film starring Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich — was published in 1925 under the title “Traitor’s Hands.”

Christie saw the film, Penzler writes, and said it was the only one based on her work that she liked, although years later she said that she also approved of 1974’s “Murder on the Orient Express.” However, when she adapted her story for the stage, Christie changed the ending.

One of the greatest American films, “On the Waterfront,” was derived from the short story “Murder on the Waterfront,” written by Budd Schulberg before he turned it into a novel and the screenplay for the film.

For the original story, Schulberg drew heavily from a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative stories about union corruption published in the New York Sun. He based many of his characters — including the longshoreman played by Marlon Brando and the priest played by Karl Malden — on real people. “Murder on the Waterfront” is as touching and beautifully written as the 1954 film.

Among the other stories included in this volume are Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?” which was made into “Smooth Talk” (1985), starring Laura Dern; Ian Fleming’s “From a View to a Kill,” which became a 1985 James Bond movie starring Roger Moore; Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” film (1932) and “The Real Bad Friend,” the short story that author Robert Bloch expanded into his creepy novel “Psycho,” which Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins had their way with in the equally creepy 1960 film.

If there’s a moral to this hefty book, it’s that criminal behavior, especially murders, can inspire concise stories that grow into bigscreen homicides.

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