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Somebody Should Make a Movie Outta This! : FICTION : THE GRID,
By Philip Kerr (Warner Books: $21.95; 451 pp.)  June 02,
1996|Paul Dean | Paul Dean is a staff writer for the Times' Life
& Style section  'Frankly," a recent interviewer heard from
Philip Kerr, law graduate, six-book veteran, 40-year-old
Scotsman and admitted fan of Michael Crichton's way of writing
scenes instead of chapters, "anything that gives a book a chance
of being bought by a movie company is a good idea."  He should
know.  "The Grid," Kerr's new thriller about a psychopathic
computer, has been bought for $1 million by Polygram, the parent
of Gramercy ("Four Weddings and a Funeral") Pictures. Paramount
is developing "Philosophical Investigations," an early Kerr work
of London overtaken by sci-fi villains. The same studio has paid
$1.2 million for Kerr's unpublished "Five Year Plan," the
anatomy of a yacht-jacking with Tom Cruise as its handsome
heavy. All Kerr has to do is wri