Horror Icon Christopher Lee turned 93 on May 27. And to celebrate the birthday of the screen legend, I offer you Christopher Lee’s Circle of Terror: a new pop culture game that could finally put a stake in the heart of Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Starting with Lee, you name an actor that played a role he also played. Then name an actor who shared a role with that actor. And so on, and so on, until the chain leads us right back to Christopher Lee. Let the games begin…

CHRISTOPHER LEE is best known for playing DRACULA, a role also played by…

FRANK LANGELLA, who also played…

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON in “Frost/Nixon.” Tricky Dick was also played by

ANTHONY HOPKINS, who also played the role of vampire hunter…

Dr. VAN HELSING, a role also played by the famous

LAURENCE OLIVIER, who also donned blackface to play Shakespeare’s

OTHELLO. The Tragic Moor was also played on film by…

ORSON WELLES, best known to radio fans as the voice of…

THE SHADOW. The cackling crime-fighter was played on film by…

ALEC BALDWIN. Though that reboot tanked, he launched a successful franchise as…

JACK RYAN in “The Hunt for Red October.” The two-fisted intelligence analyst was most recently played by…

CHRISTOPHER PINE, who also stars in the rebooted Star Trek movies as …

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK, a role of course originated by…

WILLIAM SHATNER, who starred in a short-lived TV series as…

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. And as odd casting as that sounds, equally odd for the role was Irish actor…

COLIN FARRELL, who also starred in the remake of “Fright Night” as

JERRY DANDRIDGE. The sexy vampire next door was played in the original by…

CHRIS SARANDON, who went from evil to good as…

JESUS in “The Day Christ Died.” The Messiah was also played by…

MAX VON SYDOW in “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Max was less nice as James Bond’s archenemy…

ERNST BLOFELD in “Never Say Never Again.” The super-villain has been portrayed by many other actors including…

CHARLES GRAY, who also played the older, smarter brother of Sherlock Holmes…

MYCROFT HOLMES in “The Seven-Percent Solution.” The part of Sherlock’s big brother was also played by none other than…

CHRISTOPHER LEE in “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.”
So there we have it: A perfect circle including 12 actors. Now it’s your turn. Pick any actor above as a starting point, create a Circle of Terror of your own and post it as a comment below.
Speaking of Lee’s portrayal of Mycroft Holmes, the actor has the rare distinction of having also portrayed Holmes himself, in “Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace” as well as Holmes’ most famous client Sir Henry in “Hound of the Baskervilles.” Sherlock Holmes fans around the world have been delighted to see the detective’s creator in a new thriller, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini in The Adventure of The Spook House.

The creator of Sherlock Holmes and the world’s greatest magician probe a paranormal mystery in new thriller.
Check out the book HERE.
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The tables turn on an identity thief in action-packed novel.
My newest novel The Identity Thief has just been released! I’ve conquered the horror and romance genres and this one is a thriller. Here’s a brief synopsis:
X is an identity thief extraordinaire who steals the identity of the worst possible person! He soon becomes a fugitive, hunted by every intelligence agency in the world. To survive, X must use his talent for deceit and his chameleon-like ability to adopt one persona after another, as his predicament becomes steadily more harrowing and the stakes mount. The international adventures of this sardonic and amoral anti-hero combine the irony of The Third Man with the fast-paced thrills of The Bourne Identity.
Telling a story in which the protagonist is a rat was challenging. An identity thief is not a glamorous sort of criminal like a jewel thief. We despise these guys. One of the keys, I found, was to make X charming and witty. I found inspiration in the performance of Orson Welles as the charismatic but crooked Harry Lime in The Third Man. (When the movie of this book comes out, I wouldn’t mind some zither music in the background).

Orson Welles as Harry Lime was irresistably charming in the film noir classic “The Third Man.”
Needless to say, I tore my hair out when a movie titled
The Identity Thief came out earlier this year – just as my book was going into the final stages of production. But what can you do? I don’t think anyone will confuse this thriller with the comedy starring Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman. And many people have probably forgotten about the flick by now. Last go around, my horror novel was set to be titled
Nature of the Beast when I learned that was the name of several novels, movies and songs. Reluctantly I changed it to
Hour of the Beast, which, with its hint of imminent danger turned out to be better.
You can order The Identity Thief at http://freedomshammer.com or at Amazon.com
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