My Bouchercon 2015 panels: Norbert Davis' hard-boiled slapstick

Last year's questions from the audience at my Bouchercon panel on "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras" included one about Norbert Davis. I hope the questioner plans to attend Bouchercon 2015 in Raleigh, N.C., next month, because this year's version of the panel will include Kevin Burton Smith, the man behind the invaluable Thrilling Detective Web Site, talking about Davis.  The panel, its title slightly inflated to "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, and Macdonald," happens Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015, at 2:30 p.m. Sarah Weinman, Jordan Foster, and Laura Lippman will join Kevin, each discussing a favorite crime writer from out of the past. 

While you rush out to register for Bouchercon, if you have not signed up already, here's a post from the past about Davis, who was known for his comic crime stories, but could get tough when he wanted to. 

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 Norbert Davis wrote novels with a dog as co-protagonist. He wrote stories set largely in a restaurant, and he created characters named Bail Bond Dodd and J.P. Jones (the J.P. stands for "Just Plain." That's the man's name — Just Plain Jones.) Yet despite those slapstick touches, and plots, dialogue and action to match, the stories work as hard-boiled tales. Little touches in some of the stories may even reflect the grimness of the Great Depression; Davis published his first stories in the early 1930s.

Here's the opening sentence of "Something for the Sweeper":

"Jones limped slowly along, his rubbers making an irregular squeak-squish sound on the wet cement of the sidewalk."

Is that slapstick (squish-squish), or is it gritty urban realism? In Davis, it's both. When you get to the end of this tale of murder and deception, you'll find the story has come full circle.

Read more about Davis at the Thrilling Detective Web site.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Bouchercon 2014 Day -1: Guess Who came up!

(All photos by Peter Rozovsky. The fellow below with his face distorted
by the glass is Hector DeJean, ace publicist for Minotaur Books.)

The day before Bouchercon 2014 begins, I saw people I hadn't seen in days and weeks, and tomorrow I expect to see at least one I haven't seen in years.  Everyone is excited to see their friends but too tired from travel to party too raucously this first night, so we generally conduct ourselves in a responsible manner.

In case we're looking for something to do 
after the convention, I suppose.

Had a minor screw-up on a food of order at the hotel bar, but received a Hendrick's and tonic on the house as compensation. Bouchercon is always what separates the weekend bartenders from the pros. Here's to you, ladies and gents. I'll buy you a drink Sunday night.

Music came up in a bar chat with homies John McFetridge and Kevin Burton "Thrilling Detective Web Site" Smith, in particular the Guess Who--appropriate for the Long Beach waterfront, which is full of colo(u)red lights.

Long Beach Airport

© Peter Rozovsky 2014  

My Bouchercon panels: "I met Gloria at a fly-by-night school in Long Beach"

This post's title is taken from The Double Take, by Roy Huggins, a great creator and co-creator of television series (Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive, The Rockford Files) who, according to Max Allan Collins, might have become one of the giants of crime writing had he not gone Hollywood.

Collins knows his Huggins, and he'll talk about Huggins as part of a panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2014 in the very same Long Beach where Norma Shannon met "Gloria" in The Double Take.

Roy Huggins

The panel is called Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras, and it happens at 3 p.m, Friday, Nov. 14.

In the meantime, read the Thrilling Detective Web Site on Huggins,  Stephen J. Cannell's memories of Huggins and a summing up of Huggins' television career from the Museum of Broadcast Communications, complete with an impressive list of credits.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014