If you don’t recognize both the headlining names, you haven’t been reading Patricia Cornwell. The extremely popular, death-themed books that make up the Kay Scarpetta series (which totals a staggering 17 novels over a span of 20 years) could finally be coming to the big screen after numerous attempts to make it happen. The actress who’s making it all possible? Possibly, the last one you would ever expect to play the doctor-lawyer-heroine that is Kay Scarpetta: Angelina Jolie.

The statuesque actress does not at all fit Cornwell’s description of Scarpetta, who is a petite ash-blonde. A medical examiner, Kay is a workaholic, oft-unattached female who uses her death investigation skills to track dangerous serial killers. Commonly, Scarpetta herself becomes a target for the very killers she’s determined to catch. The books originally debuted in pre-CSI ages when crime scene and death investigation felt fresh again (memories of Quincey, ME had long since faded).

Jolie’s interest has breathed new life into the flick, which has been an on-again, off-again project since the books were first published. The movie will not be based upon a specific Cornwell novel. Instead, it will feature a younger Dr. Scarpetta in the years before she becomes the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia - though, oddly, the film will be set in the present day instead of the 1980s (which would fit the chronological order of the books).

Cornwell will not be writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of her most successful fiction character - an unknown screenwriter named Kerry Williamson will. “In the books, she’s [Kay Scarpetta] further along as a character, at the height of her career. In the screenplay, we bring her back to a time before that, when she’s just charting her course, and trying to break the glass ceiling.”

The movie has been in the making since 1990, when the film rights were purchased for only $10,000. At that time, Cornwell tried to get Jodie Foster (who does fit the physical description of the doctor) to take on the role. According to the author, Foster “didn’t think it was a good idea because of Silence of the Lambs.” Too much death in one career can be a bummer.

“It was all hush-hush,” Patricia Cornwell says of her meetings with Angelina Jolie, which occurred while the actress was filming Salt. “I think meeting the head of the KGB might have been easier.”