London based director/producer Phil Hawkins has unveiled details of his new slate, which includes an adaptation of “Wire In The Blood” writer Val McDermid’s Killing the Shadows.

Following his third feature Being Sold, which won best film and best actor awards at the London Independent Film Festival, Hawkins is now developing a number of new projects including an adaptation of Val McDermid’s best selling novel “Killing The Shadows,” about a serial killer who preys on crime writers, blurring fact and fiction.

Hawkins has acquired the rights to the book, which he hopes to turn into a £8,-9m feature, or a TV drama. It has been adapted by Aiden Magrath. Check out a lengthy synopsis below. “A killer is on the loose, blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey – the writers of crime novels who have turned psychological profilers into the heroes of the nineties. But this killer is like no other. His bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom surrounding the motives and mechanics of how serial killers operate. And for one woman, the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death.

Professor Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who uses computer technology to help police forces track serial offenders. She used to help the Met, but vowed never to work for them again after they went against her advice and badly screwed up an investigation as a consequence. Still smarting from the experience, she’s working a case in Toledo when her lover, thriller writer Kit Martin, tells her a fellow crime novelist has been murdered. It’s not her case, but Fiona can’t help taking an interest. Which is just as well, because before too long the killer strikes again. And again. And Fiona is caught up in a race against time, not only to save a life, but to bring herself redemption, both personal and professional.“