Menendezmania

In case you were visiting another planet during the Menendez trial, or you watched the coverage on TV between slightly parted fingers, or you thought you didn’t care and now you do, your friendly neighborhood book publishers and TV producers are going to give you a second chance. And a third. At least.

Publishers are tripping over each other to get their books out, and in fact, two are already available: “Blood Brothers” (Onyx True Crime: $4.99) by Ron Soble and John Johnson, the L.A. Times reporters who covered the trial; and “Bad Blood” (St. Martin’s: $4.99) by Don Davis, author of “The Milwaukee Murders” and “The Nanny Murder Trial,” a freelance writer and former reporter for the San Diego Union. “Strange Sins” by Robert Rand (who wrote on the killings for the Miami Herald) is scheduled at Simon & Schuster for June publication. Dominick Dunne, who covered the trial for Vanity Fair, has lent his talents to a four-hour CBS miniseries to air in May; his agent Owen Laster at William Morris denied rumors that Dunne was negotiating a book contract with Crown.

A screenplay by Rand was optioned then dropped by NBC, while a Fox TV movie is planned based on the book by Soble and Johnson, to be called “Honor Thy Father and Mother” and aiming to “place the audience in the position of the jury.”

What is the appeal of a book so soon after the media blitz? “People will be interested to learn how this all ended up in a deadlocked jury,” Johnson said. “ ‘Blood Brothers’ is different from the newspaper and magazine coverage I did during the trial because I could include the conclusions I came to and the perspective I gained.”

The contract for “Blood Brothers” was signed back in 1990. The two writers faxed the last chapter to the publisher on Jan. 25--when the Lyle Menendez jury looked deadlocked--and the book was released on Feb. 7. “It was almost like dictating a news story on deadline,” Soble said. “In a way worse, because you can’t change a book.”

At St. Martin’s Press, which published two “instant books” at once--the other on Nancy Kerrigan--mass market publicity manager Jennifer Richards said: “It’s been really hectic around here.” While the contract for the Menendez book was signed last October, the last chapter was written a mere three weeks ago. With the cover and all previous chapters ready to go, production took just one week. “We’ve gotten it down to a science,” said Richards.