Robert Ferrigno

Tri-Star Pictures has purchased the screen rights to Robert Ferrigno's first novel, "The Horse Latitudes," for an undisclosed sum. The former newspaper feature writer's mystery novel, which is set in Long Beach and Orange County, will be producer Michael Shamberg's first project for Tri-Star. According to a story on Shamberg in Daily Variety this week, the producer of "A Fish Called Wanda" became interested in Ferrigno's book after reading an early rave review.

The jacket blurb for "The Horse Latitudes" by Robert Ferrigno, a newspaper feature writer, tells us that the book "brilliantly subsumes the conventions of noir literature." And from the beginning, it's true, there's no mistaking the mood indigo of Danny DiMedici, a retired dope dealer who pines for his ex-wife, Lauren Keil: "There were nights when Danny missed Lauren so bad that he wanted to take a fat man and throw him through a plate-glass window."

Robert Ferrigno vividly recalls the late nights nearly four years ago when he would retreat to Alamitos Bay in Long Beach. His wife, Jody, was bedridden, suffering complications during her pregnancy with their son, Jake. As a way of coping with his "incredible feeling of helplessness," Ferrigno would slip out of their warm Belmont Shore apartment after she was asleep and swim in the cold, dark bay.

Former Orange County newspaper writer Robert Ferrigno, whose incomplete first novel earned him a heady $150,000 advance when it sold to William Morrow & Co./Avon last November, says he was "thrilled" when a book-sized, bound copy of his uncorrected manuscript arrived at his Long Beach home recently. "I never realized how good a plain wrapper could look," he said with a laugh.