There goes the bride: A Bouchercon 2009 chase scene

I'm preparing for my two panels at Bouchercon 2017 in Toronto. In the meantime, here's a post about an odd spectacle from Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis.

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(Photos courtesy of Anita Thompson)

Our small gang had set out for a late lunch and agent's party at Bouchercon when we met what appeared to be a body of vestal virgins delivering pizza.

"Have you seen a bride?" one of them asked me.

Alas, I had not.

I don't know if they ever found what they were looking for, but Bridesmaid #1 seemed determined to lead the satin-swathed entourage through every park and monument in downtown Indianapolis if she had to.

Later we saw a banquet setting up at the restaurant where we'd gone for the lunch/agent's shindig — a wedding reception, perhaps? — but no bridal party.

Sounds like a mystery to me.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Crimefest report, Part I

Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square,
London. Nelson was once a reporter,
but he decided he wanted to stop
working without, however,
giving up a paycheck. (All
photos by your humble blogkeeper.
Explanation for the newspaper
humor in the caption and the 
lede first paragraph available
 on request.)

Random thoughts and facts without having to worry about coherence. Not that it really matters, but here are some aperçus upon my return from Crimefest 2015, Bath, and London.

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Gunnar Staalesen

John Lawton spent just a day at Crimefest, but he offered the welcome news that another Frederick Troy novel is on the way, probably in 2017, and that his next novel, a sequel to the non-Troy Then We Take Berlin, will include a cameo appearance by Troy. The Troy books are the models of how to write fiction about recent history, and how to do so with humor, wit, and bite.

*

K.T. Medina

Kati Hiekkapelto

For some reason, I met more authors and other people new to me at this Crimefest than ever before, including folks with whom I had worked or corresponded for years without, however, meeting them in person. Grouped by the language families of which their native tongue is a member, beginning with Finno-Ugric, these included Kati Hiekkapelto, Alan Carter, Alex Shaw, Craig Sisterson, Karen Sullivan, Steve Cavanagh, Louise Phillips, Sheila Bugler, Craig Robertson, Alexandra Sokoloff, Ewa Sherman, Jackeeta MT Collins, Paul Gitsham,  Kate Lyall Grant, Anthony Quinn, Hans Olav Lahlum,  and at least one person, I believe from the north of England, whose name slips my mind at the moment, for which I apologize.  These meetings are what makes festivals so much fun.

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Peter Guttridge, Ali Karim

James Runcie's speech at the festival's gala dinner was funny, barbed, and tailored precisely to his audience. Runcie made a game of it, reading a series of sentences from either crime novels or books that had won the Man Booker Prize, then asking the audience to guess into which category each example fit. All I can say is that some of those Booker winners should never, ever show their faces in public again, at least not if using the names under which they write.

*

Ragnar Jonasson,
who was not one
of the two 
warring authors

The heated exchange at the bar between two authors who set their books in two countries in a state of conflict in the real world. Each hotly defended the country where he sets his novels, citing history recent and more remote.  War on a smaller scale was averted only when one of the authors tactfully retreated behind the line of conflict, leaving me to quiz the other on history going back a thousand years. Neither author is from the country where he sets his books, and I would guess their passion reflects the depth of their devotion to their subjects.

*

Ruth Dudley
Edwards

Robert Olen Butler

Separate political discussions with Ruth Dudley Edwards and Yrsa Sigurdardottir at the same hotel bar including bracing statements by each that I might not have expected from individuals of their political persuasions.

Barry Forshaw, Antonia Hodgson,
Simon Toyne, Peter Guttridge

Maj Sjöwall, Lee Child

Such surprises go a small way toward restoring my faith in humanity. It was also nice to see Yrsa win the festival's Petrona Award for best Scandinavian crime novel, for The Silence of the Sea. Yrsa has been pleasant company at many conventions, and Maxine Clarke, for whom the award is named, left the first comment ever at Detectives Beyond Borders.

Selfie outside the hotel where I expect
to return next year for my sixth Crimefest.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Crimefest and tonic

I can't quite remember the sequence of events, and I'm not sure I have all the names straight, but suffice it to say that the first day of Crimefest Bristol has restored my faith in the rationality of the human species. And that's pretty good for a crime convention's first day.

Kati Hiekkapelto, Ragnar Jonasson 

at Friday's debut authors panel.

More to follow after the pitifully meager amount of sleep that remains to me before tomorrow's panels.

Among the day's discoveries--possibly foremost among them--is that 160 ml. of tonic mixed with the gin is the perfect amount for an exquisite Hendrick's and tonic, a conclusion verified repeatedly beyond all possibility of statistical error.

Ali Karim

I have enjoyed being carried along in Ali Karim's wake, and have also had the pleasure of meeting Craig Sisterson in person, years after serving as a judge for him in New Zealand's Ngaio Marsh crime fiction awards.

I also met up with Western Australia's Alan Carter, and thanks to David Whish-Wilson for letting me know about him. Alan: I missed your panel this morning, but I bought Getting Warmer. Stop me if you see me, and I'll ask you to sign it.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Crimefest: History, wisdom, and the reek of fermented shark

 

Because it's almost time for Crimefest 2015, and because history is what I read most when I'm not reading crime, I thought I'd bring back a post about history from Crimefest 2010.   

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Andrew Taylor made trenchant observations during Crimefest 2010's historical-fiction panel, just as he had at last year's Crimefest.

"The 1950s," he said, "are a fascinating time because, I think, it was the end of history for most of us, an eternal present." But, he said, "It became clear to me it was a completely alien time," a world that would have been recognizable to someone who had been around in the 1930s.

Edward Marston, the panel's moderator, spoke of his childhood during the Second World War: "I saw no one between the ages of 18 and 40 because they had all been conscripted. I didn't see my father until I was 6. ... My grandfather lived with us. He'd fought in the First World War," and, Marston said, those who remained at home heard much about how "His war was better than our war."

Marston also made a remark that ought to make all crime readers and authors reflect on the world in which fictional detectives live and work: "Your sleuth must have social mobility."

Ruth Dudley Edwards spiced up the sex, violence and bad language panel with the observation that her Baroness 'Jack' Troutbeck, while willing to avail herself of a carnal romp with whatever sex is available, "would be just as motivated, really, by a good dinner." (My question about sex as a motivating factor in crime fiction, as a means rather than an end, won me a book bag for the session's best question. I won another later the same day, and no one was around to take it away from me.)

Elsewhere, Michael Ridpath, an author new to me who sets his recent novels in Iceland, said that country's financial crisis had forced some rewriting. "I had to change `In Iceland everything is expensive' to `In Iceland, everything is cheap,'" he said. Asked at a different session what she thought of Ridpath's choice of settings, Iceland's own Yrsa Sigurðardóttir said: "That's great. That's just excellent."

Yrsa also brought hákarl, or highly pungent fermented shark, an Icelandic specialty she was eager to share with fellow attendees, along with bracing Icelandic schnapps to wash it down. I enjoyed watching the faces of everyone who tried hákarl. You'll enjoy doing so, too. Says Wikipedia: Hákarl "is an acquired taste and many Icelanders never eat it."

I suspect that after Crimefest 2010, some Canadians, Americans, Englishmen and South Africans may join them.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Crimefest memories: Mike Hodges on how to make a classic movie for £7,000

Ted Lewis' great crime novel Get Carter (along with the rest of Lewis' work) is or soon will be back in print and easily available, thanks to those good people at Syndicate Books/Soho Press.  Five years ago, at Crimefest 2010 in Bristol, England, I had the chance to meet Mike Hodges, who directed the excellent and influential movie version of Get Carter. (This is one in an occasional series of blog posts about Crimefests past and present leading up to Crimefest 2015, which takes place May 14-17.)

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Seven thousand pounds. That's how much money Mike Hodges made for writing and directing Get Carter, the classic 1971 hit-man movie starring Michael Caine, and not a penny more.

Hodges made that surprising statement during Friday's pre-screening conversation with Maxim Jakubowski at Bristol's Arnolfini cultural center. He also said the many humorous touches in the otherwise bleak tale encouraged him in the making of his 1972 follow-up, Pulp: "I really thought I would like to hear laughter."

Hodges said after a panel discussion today that yes, there had been pressure from producers and other heavies to have Michael Caine's title character walk away at the end of Get Carter. But Hodges resisted, and Carter gets— but you'll have to watch the movie to see what happens.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Why you should be at Crimefest 2015

I always enjoy Crimefest in Bristol, England, not least for its stellar lineup of guest authors.  P.D. James appeared there. So have Bill James, Peter James, and Dan James. 

Maj Sjöwall

I met that affable superstar of Scottish crime writing, William McIlvanney, at Crimefest, and I heard Declan Hughes sing country and western to a fellow author at the hotel bar. (As a singer, Hughes is a damn good author and playwright.) It was Frederick Forsyth's entertaining and informative presentation at Crimefest 2012 that finally got me to read his classic Day of the Jackal.

Your humble blogkeeper
with the great Bill James,
author of the Harpur & Iles
novels, at Crimefest 2010

But this year's special guest is as special as any guest at any crime festival anywhere. Maj Sjöwall wrote the classic Martin Beck series of crime novels with Per Wahlöö, and she'll be at Crimfest 2015 to be interviewed by Lee Child and to present the Petrona Award for best Scandinavian crime novel.

Your humble blogkeeper (right) explains things
to William McIlvanney at Crimefest 2013

Sjöwall and Wahlöö blazed a number of crime fiction trails (or at least were there at the very start), among them those of social criticism, a multiplayer cast of detectives, and elevation of the investigator's personal life to importance comparable with that of the mysteries he or she investigates. Their ten Beck novels, from 1965's Roseanna to The Terrorists in 1975, were among the first to examine a society critically as well as tell a crime story, and authors to this day cite them as influences.  

The best photo ever of Ali Karim
(right), with Peter Guttridge at
Crimefest 2013. Photo by
your humble blogkeeper.

So this is big, a chance to hear and meet one of crime fiction's modern greats, and I'll be there, May 14-17 in Bristol. (The award  Maj Sjöwall will present is named for the blog maintained by the late Maxine Clarke, a longtime reviewer and supporter of crime fiction. She posted the first ever comment here at Detectives Beyond Borders, back in September 2006.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

NoirCon 2014 is almost here // Noir at the Bar comes back home

I'll be part of another con before Bouchercon, the fourth incarnation of the event that introduced me to the joys of the con, Philadelphia's own Noircon.

This year's event happens Oct. 30-Nov. 2, and it has a more international flavor than the versions in 2008, 2010, and 2012, including several authors who will be part of my Bouchercon panels two weeks later in Long Beach. Stuart Neville will be here. So will Paul Charles, who will join Stuart, Adrian McKinty, and Gerard Brennan on my Bouchercon "Belfast Noir" panel.  Sarah Weinman and Charles Kelly will be here, sharpening their oratorical skills for their appearances on my "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras" panel in Long Beach.

The gang from Soho Press is coming to Noircon to receive awards. The delegation will include author Fuminori Nakamura and Paul Oliver, whose current reissues of Ted "Get Carter" Lewis' novels are an event of high importance to noir readers. Trust me: You want to read these books.

I'll be doing my part by MC'ing a NoirCon edition of Noir at the Bar as N@theB returns to the city where I staged the very first ones in 2008.    The list of readers includes several of the original Noir at the Bar authors and moderators, so here's a special thank you to Duane Swierczynski, Jon McGoran (who set this event up), Dennis Tafoya, and Sarah Weinman. Welcome back.

NoirCon 2008 was my first convention, my first chance to meet authors and others in the profession. It's where I met Ken Bruen and Christa Faust and Scott Phillips and Sarah Weinman and Reed Farrel Coleman and Ed Pettit and Charles Ardai and Megan Abbott and more, and not just met them, but hung out with them and talked with them. The experience was so much fun that I signed up for that year's Bouchercon almost immediately, and the rest is history. 

NoirCon: Because Not Everything Great That Started in Philadelphia Was Run By Guys Who Have Their Faces on Money.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

A post about McGilloway, McMaster, and me

I have nothing to say today, so I'm going to write a newspaper column. You know the kind I mean: the ones the columnist calls "Not that it really matters but..." or "Sudden thoughts and second thoughts," unless he abandons all pretense and simply reproduces great chunks of previous columns. Here's my version of what I'd do if I were a columnist rather than merely what a reporter of pedestrian literary talent once termed "editorial support":

1) The first three words of Brian McGilloway's The Nameless Dead, available in paperback from the folks at Pan (the entire novel, not just the first three words), are a pretty damn good first three words that would make a fine title: "The cadaver dog ... " That makes me want to keep reading.

2) As a follow-up to Thomas E. Ricks' The Generals, I'm reading H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. McMaster, a career military man and a scholar, shows a nice reporter's eye for detail in this vignette of the rivalry between Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Curtis LeMay, in 1963:

"LeMay’s bushy eyebrows, sagging jowls, and jutting jaw advertised an irascible personality. Aware of Taylor’s aversion to tobacco smoke, he hung his ever-present long dark cigar out of the left side of his mouth and intentionally puffed the thick smoke in Taylor’s direction."

3) Dana King has posted the second in his series of Bouchercon interviews, this one with me in my capacity as a moderator of panels. I've been moderating for five years now, and Dana's questions gave me the chance to think about interesting aspects of this most enjoyable pastime. I am especially pleased at his declaration that I am "among the Bouchercon moderators whose panels are worth attending even if you don’t think you have an interest in the topic." That's the highest compliment a moderator can receive. Thanks!

Dana's interview with those superb panel organizers Judy Bobalik and Jon Jordan appeared last week, and further interviews with authors, organizers, and readers, all talking about what goes into a successful crime-fiction convention, will appear weekly through December.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

A Bouchercon moderator at work, plus why Johnny Shaw is righteous

For anyone who wonders what a Bouchercon panel moderator looks like in action, that's me at right, calmly steering my "Goodnight, My Angel: Hard-Boiled, Noir, and the Reader's Love Affair With Both" panel at Bouchercon 2013 in Albany two weeks ago (seems like years ago already. I'm just about ready for Bouchercon 2014.)

The gentleman to my right is Jonathan "Bad Juju" Woods, who was part of the panel. The photo is courtesy of Rita McCauley, whose husband, Terrence, was also a panel member. Thanks, Rita.

*

I've just finished reading Johnny Shaw's Big Maria, and I admit I teared up a bit at Shaw's resolution of his three screw-up protagonists' fates. The old-fashioned virtues of faith, determination, loyalty, and staying true to one's friends and family and self are much manipulated and abused by governments, corporations, the media, and a thousand people we all meet every day to the point that's easy to mock them or to grow cynical. But irony is easy. Shaw gets a reader believing in this stuff even as that reader laughs.

Furthermore, I suspect Shaw does this deliberately. Here's a bit from near the book's end, XXX substituted for a character's name to avoid a spoiler:

"The same pit that (XXX) had imagined as his grave had become just that. Some might have found it funny, but the irony would have pissed (XXX) off. Irony is only amusing when it happens to someone else. Death isn't funny to the dead."

I'm not entirely sentimental about this book, though. Among the many things to like are Shaw's subordination. His supporting characters are just as memorable and wacky as its three protagonists, but Shaw knows when to pull them back and let the main characters take center stage. He brings those subsidiary characters part way toward resolving obstacles he had put in their way, but he avoids the monotony-inducing trap of resolving their problems as thoroughly as he does the main characters'.  Shaw has chops, and he also knows how to build a story.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Props for Laukkanen, plus an aside on Bouchercon book bags

I've finished my first piece of post-Bouchercon reading, and it was good.

Owen Laukkanen's second novel, Criminal Enterprise, has me wanting to read his first, The Professionals, and his third, due out next year. Criminal Enterprise does some familiar crime-fiction tricks well, and it rings refreshing changes on others. It manages the considerable feat of keeping all its subplots interesting, and its twists are surprising but plausible.

I had heard of Laukkanen, but it was Eric Beetner's Noir at the Bar-style open readings at Bouchercon that got me reading him, and he's my top discovery of Bouchercon 2103 so far.

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Don 't laugh, but the Bouchercon book bag, given to each attendee and containing programs, award ballots, and books, was pretty cool this year. After six years of attending conventions, I'll never need to buy a shopping, beach, or laundry bag again. But this year's model was shaped like a miniature duffel bag or an enlarged version of those old-time flight bags that airlines used to give passengers. It's perfect for carrying a computer, one's lunch, and a few books.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Noir poetry from Les Edgerton at Bouchercon

Les Edgerton

Of all the parade of writers who read from their work at Bouchercon 2013's author's choice sessions, Les Edgerton was the only one who read a poem.  His choice was the shortest of any author's and, for me, hit the hardest, with a verbal punch to the gut that noir stories ought to have.

With kind permission from the author and from Blue Moon Literary and Art Review, where the piece first appeared, here is "My Father and Robert Frost":

   One day I found a volume of poetry by Robert Frost in the prison library at Pendleton and checked it out.
   Back in my cell, I read: Home is the place where, when you want to go there, they have to take you in.
   When I made parole, I called my mom to tell her my good news. I found out that my dad had never read Robert Frost.
   At least not that poem. 

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Bouchercon 2013: This was their finest panel; Perry on TV; Gerritsen on the fiddle

View from my Bouchercon hotel at night

I admit I was proud of the line with which I ended the short but informative introduction to my "World War II and Offspring" panel at Bouchercon 2013:

"And so, if Bouchercon and its panels last a thousand years, men will still look back and say, `This was their finest fifty-five minutes.'"

Anne Perry, Tess Gerritsen at guests-of-honor panel,
B'con 2013. Photos by your humble blog keeper.

I also liked what Anne Perry said when talk at Sunday's guests-of-honor panel turned to television. "When you watch TV," she said, "you get an endless array of gestures and faces."

I have not read Perry, but if I do, I'll look for signs of the concentration on expressions and gestures that television can provide. With all the talk about this being a golden age of television (The Wire, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad all got at least one mention at Bouchercon), and with all the talk of season-long story arcs and the doth-protest-too-much proclamations that, by God, this, that, or the other greatest television show ever is just like a novel, it was refreshing to be reminded that television is a visual medium. I like the way Perry's mind works.

Tess Gerritsen, pictured above with Perry, said during the same panel that she likes to play the Irish fiddle and sit in at traditional music sessions both at home and on visits to Ireland. Slainte, Tess.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

A nice scene from Bouchercon 2013

Authors Cara Black and J. Robert Janes
Photo by your humble blog keeper.

Owen Laukkanen and the Finno-Canadian crime fiction explosion: The first five pages

I've begun remedying an unfortunate dearth of Finno-Canadian crime writers in my reading background, and if Owen Laukkanen's second novel, Criminal Enterprise, is any guide, Finno-Canadian crime writing could be the next big thing.

I say that after having read just five pages, and even if the rest of the book falls short, that beginning proves conclusively that the man has chops.  The first chapter is a bank robbery carried out with crisp precision that ought to delight fans of Richard Stark's Parker novels, but its climax shows that Laukkanen can write fear. I don't mean cheap titillation, I mean the kind of fear that induces pity for the victim without the slightest hint of dirty voyeuristic titillation. Laukkanen is a little like Allan Guthrie that way.

Chapter Two begins with a brilliant, subtle bit of trickery on Laukkanen's part that plays on crime readers' genre expectations and will very likely resonate through the book. I can't reveal it here, so you'll have to read the book yourself. But do so soon. My patience won't last forever.

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Laukkanen is one of the writers I met at the just-concluded Bouchercon 2013. There's more to Bouchercon than gin. Meeting, discovering, and mingling with new writers is really what it's all about.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Rizzoli and aisles

Boon companions Roger Ellory and Ali Karim
at the Pearl Street Diner, Albany

"They had happy lives, but the time comes to eat them."

Waitress of honor,
annual festive post-
Bouchercon dinner;
Albany, 2013

Tess Gerritsen said that at Sunday's guest-of-honor panel at Bouchercon 2013. She was talking about chickens, the organically raised ones she helps slaughter at her son's farm.

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For those who thought I couldn't do it, I was up for breakfast before 8 a.m. five consecutive days at Bouchercon. The experience was invigorating. I'll have to try it again next year.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013


Scott Montgomery of Mystery People

Bouchercon Day 3: McFetridge and Lansdale; Laukkanen, King, and Anonymous-9

After Bouchercon

From the perspective of 6:20 p.m., Saturday's 8 o'clock breakfast with the people who put together Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine seems a disorientingly distant memory, so it's time for a revitalizing nap before dinner. (This is Bouchercon; everybody takes naps at Bouchercon.)

*

Ah, that's better.

*

Saturday's panel on villains included this from Joe R. Lansdale:

"You're pulling something out of yourself. ... You're trying to bring humanity to the villain."

and

"You shouldn't try to write people as villains to begin with.  You should write stories that unfold in a certain way."

And this from DBB friend John McFetridge, who said his villains:

"See themselves as breaking laws, but they see the laws as kind of temporary."

North flank of Empire State Plaza, whose conference
center is the home of Bouchercon 2013.

That was more than just a laugh line. McFetridge told of seeing university buildings named for Canadian brewers who made their money shipping beer into the United States during Prohibition, even altering the shapes of the bottles to make smuggling easier. The drug smugglers in his books, he said, fully expect one day to see the BC Bud School of Finance.

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I bought novels by Owen Laukkanen and Anonymous-9 after hearing them read during Bouchercon's author's choice sessions, which concluded with Dana King's passionate and eloquent defense of Raymond Chandler's championing of conduct not merely heroic but honorable. King is a fine crime writer. He'd also make a good university lecturer, and I was proud to have had him as a member of my noir and hard-boiled panel earlier in the convention.

Ali Karim, Roger Ellory, and your humble blogkeeper.
(Photo by Ursula)

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Bouchercon Day Two: Zines, scenes, and cannoli

Shaky photo by lunatic who claims to believe in
alien landings, or convention headquarters for
Bouchercon 2013? You decide. (Photos by your
humble blog keeper.)

Damn, I enjoy moderating Bouchercon panels. Today's session (noir and hard-boiled, with authors Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Dana King, Terrence McCauley, and Jonathan Woods) met all the criteria for a good panel: The laugh lines worked, the panelists were articulate, entertaining, and surprising, I learned things from them, and we ran out of time before I ran out of questions.

This panel was a bit different from previous sessions for which I'd served as moderator, since all five authors have published fiction in the e- and print zines and anthologies that have come to serve as today's Dime Detectives and Black Masks.  That meant that in addition to questions about each author's work, the panel included group discussion of publications such as Thuglit, Atomic Noir, Big Pulp, and Out of the Gutter, what such publications have meant to the authors' careers, and what they can mean to readers who seek crime fiction a bit out of the mainstream. Look for these writers, find out where their work appears, and investigate further.

Shamus Awards dinner: I left the gun,
but I took a picture of the cannoli.

This evening at the Shamus Awards dinner, I met Holly West, whose debut novel is to appear early next year. And that is the occasion for a tip of the hat to Susan Elia MacNeal, a member of my Thursday war panel whom I also met for the first time at this convention. Bouchercon is not all work, you know, and meeting new authors and talking about favorite books is always one of the highlights. West sets her writing in seventeenth-century England, and I was pleased to recommend to her Ronan Bennett's superb Havoc, in its Third Year.

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Detectives Beyond Borders is seven years old today!

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Bouchercon Day One

Bouchercon HQ is part of a complex whose aspect is
part sci-fi. part Kim Il-Sung's mausoleum. But it bumps
up at its State Street edge against architecture from an
earlier Albany. Photos by your humble blogkeeper.

1) My first panel at Bcon 2013 went exceedingly well, and I will post details in the coming days as I consult my notes and catch up on lost slumber. Suffice it to say that we could easily have gone for two hours rather than one (one of the panelists said we could have done three). That was my "World War II and Sons" panel (with James R. Benn, J. Robert Janes, John Lawton, Martin Limón, and Susan Elia MacNeal), whose title I changed to "World War II and its Offspring," though not entirely for the reasons you might think.

2) A William Morrow panel on that company's new digital-first line of crime fiction helped me make some sense out of digital publishing. I don't think I heard anything I had not heard before, but it was the first time I had heard it all in one place. People are starting to talk less about e-publishing's potential to liberate the world or destroy it, and more about how to use it to publish good books.

3) Had a gin with Ali Karim and then had another. And for those who fondly remember the Hendrick's and Tonic Crime Convention Cost of Living Index™, a Hendrick's and tonic at the hotel bar in Albany costs $8.50, which means Albany scores a refreshingly low 59.7 on the HT3CLI™.

4) Friday at 10:20, I moderate "Goodnight, My Angel: Hard-Boiled, Noir, and the Reader's Love Affair With Both," with Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Dana King, Terrence McCauley, and Jonathan Woods. so it's time to sleep the little sleep.

Bouchercon's combination book room/signing room/relaxation room.
If you, like me, had recently watched The Parallax View, you, like me,
would have glanced up at the ceiling, half expecting to hear the crack
of a rifle shot and see Warren Beatty's slumped form dead in the rafters.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Five Bouchercons in pictures and words, plus what I'll do at a sixth

Wandering bridesmaids;
Indianapolis 2009

Oh, sure, you probably think Bouchercon is fun. But I have three 7:30 a.m. breakfast appointments at Bouchercon 2013 in Albany, N.Y., which begins Thursday, and odds are I'll make at least one of them.

Your humble blog keeper
with morose Icelandic
crime writer Arnaldur
Indriðason; Baltimore
2008

While I'm darning my socks and laying out my Sunday best, here are some photos from my five previous Bouchercons, courtesy of Anita Thompson, Ali Karim, and your humble blog keeper.

Your humble blog keeper
with ebullient American
crime writer Christa
Faust; Cleveland 2012



Ali Karim and Jon Jordan,
annual festive post-Bcon
dinner; Indianapolis 2009

This year I'll moderate two panels. On Thursday at 4 p.m., it's "World War II and Sons," with authors James R. Benn, J. Robert Janes, John Lawton, Martin Limón, and Susan Elia MacNeal in a discussion of crime fiction set in wartime and its run-up and aftermath.

Fellow attendees on way to
annual festive post-Bcon
dinner; St. Louis 2011

On Friday at 10:20 a.m., it's Goodnight, My Angel: Hard-Boiled, Noir, and the Reader's Love Affair With Both," with Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Dana King, Terrence McCauley, and Jonathan Woods. Sign up, drop in, and come ask some probing questions.

Here's the complete Bouchercon 2013 schedule. If I don't see you there, I'll see you here, with some pictures and posts.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013
 

After Bouchercon, San Francisco 2010