Detectives Beyond Borders

Friday, September 23, 2016

Bouchercon 2016, Part II: One book, lots of pictures

French Quarter, New Orleans. Photos by Peter Rozovsky
for Detectives Beyond Borders.

I rarely find time to read at Bouchercon because I'm too busy doing other things, and that was about five times truer for New Orleans than it was for the previous eight cities where I'd attended the annual world mystery and crime fiction convention.

Photo not by
Peter Rozovsky

The first acquisition that I've dipped into is Harold Q. Masur's novel Bury Me Deep, published in 1947 (despite Google's assertion that it first appeared in 1924). I bought this one on the advice of J. Kingston Pierce, part of a coterie of wise men who know a lot more about vintage paperbacks than I do and who were frequently hovering around the old paperbacks at Mystery Mike's table in the Bouchercon book room. (The other members of the triumvirate were Bill Crider and Rick Ollerman. Only the best can tell me how to spend my money.)

A baby alligator and its admirers in the bayou country.

Masur builds his story to a tight, efficient climax in the early chapters, something like how David Swinson does in his fine novel The Second Girl. Done well, that sort of thing knocks me off-balance in the best possible way and leaves me eager to find out what happens next--not that the stories degenerate into a string of cliffhangers, either. I think of it as a narrative apéritif that whets the appetite for the story to come. Or maybe it's more like an operatic overture, offering clues to the themes that will follow. Whatever your preferred metaphor, Masur pulls it off.

Nanci Kalanta, known on
Facebook as Mountain Jane
Laurel. I'm a gentleman, and
when a lady says, "Do me in
black and white," I smile
and oblige.

The pre-, post-, and para-Bouchercon activities were the most unusual and entertaining I'd enjoyed, and for whatever reason, it seemed that a larger group of folks from various circles of my friends and acquaintances than ever before mingled and intersected in a giant Venn diagram of gin, powdered sugar, and po'boys. What a city!