Entertainment

‘Victim’ impact

It took HLN star Nancy Grace a decade to write her first novel — and three more years to bring it to the small screen.

Tonight marks the premiere of “The Eleventh Victim,” Lifetime’s movie based on Grace’s 2009 novel and starring Jennie Garth and LA Lakers forward Metta World Peace (the man formerly known as Ron Artest).

Like the novel upon which it’s based, “The Eleventh Victim” incorporates parts of Grace’s real-life biography — including Garth’s role as an Assistant DA in Atlanta — and even includes a cameo by the author.

“That book took me 10 years to write,” says Grace, who’s also one of the movie’s executive producers. “When I left Atlanta as a prosecutor and moved up to New York in 1997 to start [Court TV’s] ‘Cochran & Grace’ with Johnnie Cochran I was so lonely. I didn’t know a soul.

“My first friend [in the city] was a guy in a wheelchair who sat near my apartment and got money. I’d stand there at the bus stop and talk to him.

“I was really missing the courtroom and I worked on the book every night,” she says, “and finally finished it after the twins [Lucy and John David] were born.”

“The Eleventh Victim,” which hit the best sellers list after its publication, tracks Assistant DA Hailey Dean (Garth), who — after being physically attacked in court by Clinton Burrell (Colin Cunningham), the serial killer she’s prosecuting — moves to New York to start a career as a therapist.

But after some of her clients are murdered — with the killer using the same MO as Burrell — Hailey uses her wits to track the killer down, aided by her friend, Det. Garlan Fincher (Metta World Peace).

“It starts with the spirit of the book but some of the details were changed so it could be adapted to TV,” says Grace, adding that she used an amalgam of the people and cases she worked in Atlanta while formulating the plot.

“I took bits and pieces of different cases, prosecutors and judges that I’ve worked with and put them together in composite characters — with a healthy dose of imagination,” she says.

“I was so knocked out by Jennie Garth, who was in the middle of that terrible split [from ex Peter Facinelli] while we were shooting. She could not have been more professional, sweet and gorgeous.”

Grace, who’s also written the novel “Death on the D-List” (also featuring the Hailey Dean character) says she’s in the midst of penning two more books, “Murder in the Courthouse” and “Death on the Dance Floor” — the latter no doubt inspired by her run last fall on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” where she first became friendly with co-contestant Metta World Peace.

(Metta was eliminated in Week One; Grace lasted eight weeks on the show and finished fifth with dance partner Tristan MacManus.)

“I’ll just tell you this much — it opens with a dead body,” she says of “Death on the Dance Floor.”

“The Eleventh Victim” airs tonight at 8.