Finding the Look for ‘Latitudes’ : Author and filmmakers scout possible O.C. locations to shoot movie version of the thriller.

Robert Ferrigno took a long cruise along the Orange County coastline Tuesday, but it wasn’t an ordinary afternoon drive.

The Long Beach author of the best-selling romantic thriller “The Horse Latitudes” was scouting movie locations with producer Michael Shamberg and Australian screenwriter Anthony Schaeffer.

Ferrigno, a former newspaper feature writer, sold the movie rights to his 1990 first novel for an undisclosed sum last spring to Tri-Star Pictures. The book is set in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach and along the Orange County coast.

“We were driving in Michael Shamberg’s Mercedes, listening to opera on the sound system,” Ferrigno said Wednesday. “It was a ‘Fantasy Island’ kind of thing for me. I drive a Honda with 100,000 miles on it.”

Among their stops was Lido Isle, where Lauren, Ferrigno’s female protagonist, lives in one of those big, glassed-in multimillion-dollar houses. The opulent setting, Ferrigno said, prompted Schaeffer to remark: “This is a perfect spot for a killing.”

Ferrigno and company also stopped in Sunset Beach, the oil fields in Huntington Beach, the bluffs near the Date Shack on Pacific Coast Highway north of Laguna and the Newport Beach Police Department, “which we all thought looked more like a yacht club than a police station, which is perfect--that’s the way it’s described in the book.”

Ferrigno said Shamberg, who produced “A Fish Called Wanda,” was impressed with the Orange County locales.

Schaeffer, whose credits include “Sleuth” and “Death on the Nile,” is the second screenwriter hired to turn “The Horse Latitudes” into a movie. Ferrigno said Tri-Star Pictures already “has gone through one screenplay and one rewrite, and now they’re going to take an entirely different approach.”

Schaeffer’s approach, he said, “is to actually stick closer to the book and to keep a hot oil wrestler named Amber as a pivotal character. She’s one of my favorite characters. There’s a very erotic scene on Sunset Beach where Danny (his lead character) waxes her legs for her.”

Ferrigno, who is serving as a consultant on the script, said Schaeffer expects to have his version done “in a couple of months, and the hope is we can start production next year.”

Ferrigno’s location scouting trip coincides with the recent release of the paperback version of “The Horse Latitudes.”

The book is not only Avon’s lead title for May, but it has been given a whopping 500,000 first printing.

Avon is publishing the book with two separate cover color schemes and is providing bookstores and other outlets with free-standing display racks.

“It’s so different from a hardback approach,” said Ferrigno, adding with a laugh, “It’s now in every airport, drugstore and supermarket.”

Avon is even sending Ferrigno on a West Coast promotional tour for the paperback, which will take him to San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. He’ll also be promoting the book in Florida and possibly Chicago, where, Ferrigno said, the hardback version rose to the No. 4 spot on the Chicago Tribune’s bestseller list.

“The Horse Latitudes” also made three national bestseller lists last year--Ingram, B. Dalton and Brentano’s--in addition to lists in San Francisco and Seattle.

To date, “The Horse Latitudes” has been bought in 11 foreign countries.

Ferrigno said he’s about halfway through writing his next book, which should be in bookstores by the spring or summer of ’92.

The as-yet-untitled book will be set primarily in the Seal Beach area.

“It’s like the first one, a romantic thriller,” said Ferrigno, adding, “I’m always terrible at this part--to compress your book--but it’s sort of a classic noir thing where a basically good guy is sucked into very dangerous waters because of love and friendship.”