Jane Stanton Hitchcock

Hitchcock wrote a screenplay (under the name Jane C. Stanton) for the 1974 film Our Time, directed by Peter Hyams.[10] The film was set in 1955 at an all-girls boarding school in Massachusetts and dealt with the issue of abortion in a privileged setting.[11][12] In 1977, Paramount released First Love, a film written by Hitchcock who shared credit with David Freeman, and was directed by Joan Darling.[13][14][15]

In 1981, The American Place Theatre produced Hitchcock's play Grace under the direction of Peter Thompson. The Off-Broadway play was Hitchcock's "first professional New York City production."[16] In 1983, another play by Hitchcock, a farce entitled Bhutan, was staged at the South Street Theater in Manhattan.[17]

Hitchcock's theatrical adaptation titled The Custom of the Country, based on Edith Wharton's novel by the same name, was staged by Shakespeare & Company at The Mount, Wharton's former home in Lenox, Massachusetts.[18] In September 1985, the play was staged by the Second Stage Theatre under the direction of Daniel Gerroll.[19][20]

In 1990, Hitchcock's Vanilla, a play directed by Harold Pinter, was staged at London's Lyric Theatre.[1][2][21]

Vowing not to rely on the "aid of actors and a director," Hitchcock changed mediums from plays to novels. In 1992, she published her first novel Trick of the Eye which was received with what William Norwich, of The New York Times, described as positive reviews.[1] In 1992, the book was nominated in the "Best First Novel" category for the Hammett Prize,[22] as well as the Edgar Award.[4][23] The murder mystery novel is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist Faith Crowell, an artist "who specializes in trompe l'oeil art" and is employed as a decorator to the rich. Crowell is hired to redecorate a ballroom originally designed for the coming-out party of her patron's daughter, who was murdered a few years after the debutante ball.[1][2] The book was adapted into a television film aired by CBS on October 23, 1994.[24]

Hitchcock published The Witches' Hammer in 1994.[25] Her third novel Social Crimes was released in 2002.[1] Social Crimes was the first of a two-book series introducing Jo Slater, a New York socialite who commits murder. According to Norwich, many readers of the same social circle, of which Hitchcock is also a member, had delighted in speculating that the character was in fact based on them.[1] In The New York Times Book Review about Social Crimes, Sarah Haight remarked that "Hitchcock depicts the glamour and fickleness of the Slaters' upper-crust life with the witty weariness of a seasoned observer."[26]

In June 2005, Hitchcock published the sequel to Social Crimes which was titled One Dangerous Lady.[27] The author and journalist Dominick Dunne, a friend of Hitchcock's who received an early copy, writes in the April 2005 issue of Vanity Fair that he was amused by the resemblance he himself bears to the description of the murder victim in the novel, who is "bludgeoned to death."[28]

At the end of June 2009, Hitchcock published Mortal Friends, a novel set in Washington D.C. As part of the promotions for the book, she was interviewed by Bob Schieffer on the CBS News show Washington Unplugged.[29][30] Joanne Kaufman in The Wall Street Journal describes Mortal Friends as a "briskly entertaining".[31]

In 2017, Hitchcock announced that she is working on her sixth novel, Bluff, which is connected to her new found passion for poker.[3] She is an avid poker player[32] and competes in the World Poker Tour[3][33] and the World Series of Poker.[34][35][36] Bluff was released by Poisoned Pen in April 2019.[37] The novel was the winner of the 2019 Hammett Prize awarded by the International Association of Crime Writers.[38]