During a San Diego Comic-Con roundtable event, writer Michael Connelly and actor Jack Quaid dove into the thriller Audible Original: The Safe Man.
Connelly, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, has reimagined his 2012 short story The Safe Man as a thrilling audio drama that combines elements of detective fiction, heist thrillers, and supernatural mysteries.
Starring Jack Quaid and Titus Welliver, the story centers around Brian Holloway (Quaid), a safecracker who unwittingly unleashes something sinister while working for horror author Paul Robinette (Welliver).
Set in the tropics of Florida, the series explores themes of fate and the supernatural, making it a must-listen for fans of suspense and mystery.
Bringing The Safe Man to Life With Audible
Promoting the new Audible Original at San Diego Comic-Con, Connelly, who was heavily involved in expanding the short story into this new format, told The Direct he found the process both challenging and rewarding.
One clear opportunity Connelly mentioned was being able to "take it into kind of a level of hopeful, deeper resonance, where it gets into these ideas of faith" which couldn't be told in The Safe Man short story:
"We knew we wanted to have about eight to 10 episodes, and there was just open strings to that short story that I knew I could take to a further point and take it into kind of a level of hopeful, deeper resonance, where it gets into these ideas of faith, where you can change faith, where we go out of the existential stuff that's not in the short story, but it definitely keeps a writer plugged in when you can start asking those kind of questions in the story."
He also emphasized the unique nature of audio storytelling, mentioning the "robbery" of past TV series he's worked on, where the absence of visual elements allows listeners to engage their imagination more deeply:
"It's a little bit of robbery, you know, you take the imagination away from your listener or your reader when you have something visual. And so I kind of really enjoyed this, knowing that you got to write it in a certain way that, you know, there'll be little things that would open windows of imagination and that your listener can run with it from there. And that's it's a really fulfilling thing if you know it's if you know it's worth."
Quaid, who voices the lead character, shared his excitement about the immersive experience of recording The Safe Man.
The actor, who also voices the Man of Steel in My Adventures With Superman, described his energetic style of voice-acting.
For The Safe Man, Quaid recounted how this innovative approach added authenticity to the action-packed sequences, "I was just screaming and running through the line:"
"What they did was they put, like a lav mic on me, portable mic, and they just set me loose in the hallways as I was just screaming and running through the lines, like the hallways of the studio, which I thought was so cool."
He praised the production team's efforts, noting, "It sounds authentically like the characters in the moment," and expressed his hope that more projects would adopt this dynamic recording style in the future:
"I just thought it was so cool that it sounds authentically like the characters in the moment. I think the team did such a great job with how they chose to record this. It was so cool. And I hope more things do it, because I really like doing it."
The Safe Man is now available for purchase and download on the Audible app.
