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Miranda Warning
The mystery woman who called herself Miranda
and became a phone companion to the stars — allegedly striking up
friendships with the likes of Billy Joel, Warren Beatty, Quincy
Jones, Richard Gere, and Robert De Niro without ever actually
meeting most of them — will now be telling her side of the strange
story, which was outlined in last December's Vanity Fair. ''The
list of the very powerful men who befriended her is staggering,''
says Diane Reverand, publisher of the HarperCollins imprint Cliff
Street Books, who is paying Miranda — real name Whitney Walton — a
rumored $500,000 for the book. New Line Cinema has optioned Bryan
Burrough's article for De Niro's Tribeca Films production
company; according to a Tribeca spokesman, De Niro is also
interested in optioning Walton's book.
Out Like a Lambs
FBI profiler Candice DeLong, billed by her
publisher as ''a real-life Clarice Starling,'' will tell her story
in what her publisher also says will be the first book ever by a
female agent. Martha Levin, publisher of Hyperion, paid a rumored
$400,000 for the tentatively titled Special Agent: My Life on the
Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI. DeLong, who as head field
profiler in the San Francisco office, worked on the Unabomber and
Tylenol poisoning cases, has already achieved literary fame: She
was the model for the FBI-agent heroine in Ken Follett's novel
The Hammer of Eden. Her book, which she'll finish after retiring
in July — will be out in April 2001.
