The Biggest of the Best

by Robert Lopresti

Once again awards time has come around, and I am prepared to list the best short mystery stories of the year. This is my ninth annual wingding and either I am going soft or 2017 was a particularly good year for the field. You will find 18 stories listed below, up five from last year, and one ahead of my previous record. What can I say? May be this was just a year that needed distractions.

The big winners were Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, tied with five stories each. Akashic Press and Mystery Weekly Magazine each scored two.

Four of the authors were women; fifteen were men. Four authors are appearing for the second time on this august list. Two completed the hat trick. More remarkably, one author scored two on the list this year. The only other time that happened it was achieved by Brendan Dubois in 2012.

Six of the stories are funny (says me); four have fantasy elements. Only one is a historical. I think one could be described as fair play.

Enough chatter, let's go down to the red carpet.

Blakey, James. "Do Not Pass Go," in Mystery Weekly Magazine, September 2017.

The narrator has just arrived in a town and quickly discovers that the cops are corrupt, the wealthy run things to suit themselves, and the employers rip off the workers. Just like thousands of other crime stories.

But he gets a job at the Water Works where people get paid in brightly colored scrip. He doesn't earn enough to rent one of the identical houses on New York or Kentucky Avenues. He almost gets sent to jail for not paying the poor tax. And the Parker Brothers run everything. It's like they've got a – What's that word again?

Cohen, Jeff. "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Girl!" in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2017.

Elliot runs a movie theatre that shows nothing but comedies, most of them old. That may explain why Sharon, a doctor, divorced him years ago. Harder to explain is that she's about to have Elliot's baby. Like today.

Elliot rushes her to the hospital and promptly bumbles into a supply closet where a man in scrubs seems to be in the act of killing a woman in scrubs with a knife. Awkward. Cohen writes funny.

Coward, Mat. "What Could Possibly Go Boing?" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2017.

Meet the staff of Fake Dog Dirt Etc, a rather low-end novelty shop. One of them just killed their boss, almost accidentally.

They hope to keep the dump open for a few more paychecks, if they can hide the body. And find the boss's hidden money. And avoid the cops. Did I mention the blackmailer?

Deaver, Jeffery. "Hard to Get," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2017.

Deaver is making his second appearance in my annual best of list. And by the way, something very unusual happened here: the Edgar judges and I agree on this one. It is a very surprising thing when one of my favorites gets nominated.

Lessing is an analyst for the CIA; a desk jockey. When an agent dies while preparing for a vital mission, Lessing is the only person with the knowledge to fill the gap.

So all of a sudden he is in a small town in Poland trying to attract the attention of the deputy to the Russian spymaster who is running a ring of seditionists in the United States. But he has to attract the man subtly. If he is too obvious they will know it's a trap. Play hard to get, he is told...

Deaver, Jeffery. "A Significant Find," in Alive in Shape and Color, edited by Lawrence Block, Pegasus Books, 2017.

And here is Deaver again, with his second appearance in my Best of 2017. Greedy, greedy.

Roger and Della are having a crisis of conscience. They are a married couple, both moderately successful mid-career archaeologists, and they are in France for a conference. Why the crisis? Well, let's put it this way. Suppose Professor A gets a clue to a career-changing discovery but doesn't realize how to use it. If he tells Professors B and C about it and they are more clever at interpreting the puzzle, are B and C required to share the credit with A? An ethical dilemma indeed. Worse dilemmas will follow.

Gates, David Edgerley. "Cabin Fever," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2017.

This is the third appearance in this space by my fellow SleuthSayer David Edgerly Gates.

Montana deputy Hector Moody.is having a bad day. His truck breaks down in the mountains miles from anywhere. No phone reception. A thunderstorm approaching fast. And oh yes, unknown to him, two prisoners have escaped from prison and they have already killed to stay free...

Harlow, Jennifer. "The Bubble," in Atlanta Noir, edited by Tayari Jones, Akashic Press, 2017.

Maddie, a teenager in Peachtree City, is sick to death of her privileged life among snobs, absentee parents, and the self-medicated. She decides to commit murder, just for excitement and power, and, let's face it, because she is evil.

Her reluctant partner in crime is Emma, who is not as smart, not as pretty, and desperately in love with Maddie. Is Maddie willing to use her sexuality to manipulate Emma into crime? Oh, yes.

Hayes, Peter W.J."The Black Hand," in Malice Domestic: Murder Most Historical, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly, Simmons.

Brothers Jake and David fought over a girl named Bridgid and Jake left Pittsburgh for logging work in the midwest. David became a very successful mobster, until his body shows up in a river.

The story begins with Jake coming home to try to discover how his brother died and who is responsible. The first thing he learns is that Bridgid was murdered a few weeks before, and a lot of people think David killed her.

Is there a connection between the deaths? Can Jake stay alive long enough to find out?

Knopf, Chris. "Crossing Harry," in New Haven Noir, edited by Amy Bloom, Akashic Press, 2017.

Our nameless protagonist is a homeless person. One day he encounters a very strange man at Union Station whom no one notices except the homeless man and Harry. No one can see Harry except our narrator, because he's from another dimension. But Harry isn't the problem. It's the elegantly dressed man with a canvas bag full of–

Lawton, R.T. "Black Friday," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2017.

This is the second appearance here by R.T. Lawton. My fellow SleuthSayer sent me this story for a critique before sending it to AHMM. I assure you the first version I read would have made this list, even if I never got my grubby hands on it.

Luckless burglar (and series character) Yarnell visits a pawn shop on the day after Thanksgiving to retrieve his wife's pawned wedding ring. Unfortunately there is a robbery going on, with a very nervous thief holding a gun. Eventually Yarnell's crafty partner Beaumont shows up, and finds a hilarious way of settling the issue.

Petrin, Jas. R. "Money Maker," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2017.

Petrin's protagonist is an aging loanshark in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In this story Skig has done an unnamed favor for a couple of Maine crooks and they send him the agreed upon fee. Unfortunately, half of it turns out to be counterfeit so Skig sets out to figure out who along the line of shipment shorted him. Bad things happen: Under the chairs a sight the media might describe as "distressing to some viewers."

Rozan, S. J. "e-Golem," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September-October 2017.

This is the second appearance here by my old pal S.J. Rozan. Judah Loew runs a used bookstore on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Most similar stores have been killed by the Internet but Loew's specialties - including Judaica and mythology - have kept him holding on. Not much longer, alas.

But then a newly arrived book claims to offer a spell for creating a golem , the clay humunculus that a medieval rabbi, also named Judah Loew, built out of dust to save the Jews of Warsaw. Ah, but the dust in a bookstore is special dust...

Slaughter, Karin and Michael Koryta, "Short Story," in Matchup, edited by Lee Child, Simon and Schuster, 2017.

This is Koryta's second apearance on my best of the year list.

It's 1993 and Jeffrey Tolliver, is a young Birmingham cop. He is in a small town in Georgia on a long weekend that has gone terribly wrong. Before the tale has gotten fairly started he finds himself standing in a hotel parking lot in front of a busload of missionaries and…

"Holy crap,mister. You're in your underwear."
"Running shorts," he said, resisting the urge to cover himself. "Training for a marathon."
"With just one shoe?"
"Half marathon."

Tippee, Robert, "Underground Above Ground," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2017.

The nameless narrator is a young man who has mastered the art of disappearing. He dresses in black, with a stocking cap that hides his face. And as the story begins, it is after ten PM and he is sitting in the darkness near a city tennis court, watching a young man and his beautiful girlfriend as they volley, flirt, and discuss Facebook.

It's clear that there are bad things in our narrator's past, although it is not clear at first whether they were done to him, by him, or both. The last paragraph just slayed me.

Todd, Marilyn. "Slay Belles," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. January/ February 2017.

Sisters Hannah and Lynn have deep roots in British organized crime. They also have a year-round-Christmas store, The North Pole, which cleans up dirty money from various family businesses. But the sisters have a special sideline. The store has Santa's Mailbox where kids can ask the fat man for help. And while Hannah and Lynn can't promise the latest video game or a pony, if the request is desperate they may offer a special solution…

Vardeman, David. "The Last Evil," in Mystery Weekly Magazine, November 2017.

Mrs. Box believes that suffering is good for the soul. She also believes in doing "a lot of good in the world. But there was another tinier but just as important point, and that was to get the leap on people. In her own life she felt a lack of people leaping out at her. In the past forty days and forty nights, not one soul, nothing, had given her a good jolt. Mr. Box certainly had not."

Which is why she keeps a live tarantula in her purse, and pulls it out to shock people. As a good deed.

Wiley, Michael, "Making It," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September-October 2017.

When Skylar Ricks carjacked Gerald Johannson's Ford Taurus on a February morning in Chicago, climbing into the passenger seat at the corner of Granville and Clark, his hand wrapped neatly around a .44 Smith & Wesson, an unlighted Marlboro between his lips, Gerald said, "Oh, now you're in trouble."

Well, that took an unexpected turn, didn't it? As the story goes on we will learn the reason for Skylar's rash act and a good deal about the personality of Gerald. He is an older man, missing his late lover, and remarkably imperturbable. Even when being carjacked.

Train songs, Train story

Shirt courtesy of Joann Lopresti Scanlon

I am thrilled to bits to have the cover story in the January/February issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  I also have a piece up on Trace Evidence, the AHMM  blog site, about the Orphan Train movement, which is the fact  behind my fiction. Today I want to discuss how I found out about it.

It goes back to the 1970s, when my future wife and I attended our first-ever folk  festival.  This was in Middletown, New Jersey and it had more than  a dozen performers, none of whom we had ever heard of.  (Honestly, I think the only folksingers we could have named back then were Dylan, Baez, Seeger, and Guthrie - Arlo, not Woody).

At one point Marlene Levine, the MC, said, "We had this man  here a few years ago and we think we've recovered enough to have him back.  Here he is, a legend in  his own mind, U. Utah Phillips, the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest!"

Out came an old man (ha, younger than I am now) with a gray ponytail under a cowboy hat.  When he left the stage twenty minutes later my wife and I were committed lifelong folkies.

Utah Phillips was a singer-songwriter, raconteur  and performer. He shared a body with Bruce Phillips, who was a veteran, a pacifist, an anarchist, a Wobblie, and a railroad nut.

One day, a decade after I first heard him, Phillips was touring in the midwest.  He came back to his hotel and saw a sign that read ORPHAN TRAIN REUNION.  Considering what I told you about him, you should realize that Bruce could no more walk past that sign than he could have flapped his arms and flown past it.

Of course he went in and asked "What's an Orphan Train and why a Reunion?"  The answer led him to writing one of his best songs.  I can't find a recording on Youtube of Utah performing it but there are several good covers and here is one.  (Hi, Jim Portillo!)

That song introduced me to the Orphan Train.  It led me to read a couple of books on the subject and that inspired me to write a song of my own.  Mine is based on the true story of the Woodruffe family of Trenton, Missouri.  I rearranged some of the facts but the main events really happened to Phyllis Weir, later Phyllis Woodruffe.

But after writing that song I still wanted to say more about the Orphan Train.  So being the kind of writer I am I asked: Is there a way to write a crime story about this phenomenon?  The result is "Train Tracks."  I hope you like it.

Bizarre Bizarre

One of the dangers of the library biz is that you are constantly surrounded by attractive nuisances, by which I mean those flat things with lots of pages between their covers.  In a word, books.  You stroll on your merry way, glance at a shelf, and uh oh, there's something that will fill your lunch hours for weeks to come.

For instance, I recently noticed a biography of John Randolph, or as he preferred to style himself, Randolph of Roanoke.  I had heard of him before as a master of the instant insult, a sort of Winston Churchill for the Federalist period.  For example, here are his comments on a couple of politicians he didn't love:

John Randolph

"Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks."

 "Never were abilities so much below mediocrity so well rewarded; no, not when Caligula's horse was made consul."

I picked up the book looking for more such wit.  Instead I stumbled into one of the strangest true stories I have ever encountered.  If you wrote this up as a gothic novel your editor would say, sheesh, tone it down.  No one's gonna believe it.

Once I got interested I went looking for a book specifically on the topic and found Cynthia A. Kierner's Scandal at Bizarre, which is the main source of what you will read below.

This is a bizarre story in more ways than one, because most of the characters lived in a house called Bizarre.

 Start with this: The Randolphs were one of the oldest families in Virginia, and like many of the aristocrats after the Revolutionary War, were sunk deep in debt.  John's big brother Richard, head of the clan, was married to his second cousin, Judith Randolph.  (That was her maiden name.  The plantations of Virginia were stinky with Randolphs.)

Living at Bizarre with the newlyweds were John and also Judith's sister Nancy.

On October 1, 1792, Richard, Judith, and Nancy spent the night at the home of some friends, Mary and Randolph (!) Harrison.   During the night Nancy began screaming in pain.  Mary went to check on her and found-- Well, what you expect?  That Nancy's sister Judith was looking after her?  No, it was her brother-in-law Richard.

In the morning the Harrisons found blood on the stairs.  Later that day the family slaves reported finding a dead newborn on the plantation.  The Harrisons, oddly enough, did not check up on that story.  (Perhaps they had  a very good - or very bad - reason for that, as we shall discover.)

Patrick Henry

It seems clear that unmarried Nancy had either had a miscarriage, or an abortion (a few weeks earlier Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha,  married to yet another Randolph, had  provided Nancy with a medicinal herb which supposedly could be used as an abortifacient), or else she gave birth.  The vital question was: had there been a live birth and if so, how did the child die?  Was this infanticide?

The scandal rocked Virginia and most people assumed that Richard was the father, which made it a case of incest.  (Not because they were second cousins but because they were brother and sister-in-law).  Richard finally demanded to be put on trial in an effort to clear his name.

Nancy, by the way, was willing to admit to a stillbirth  and to claim that Richard and John's other brother Theo, who had died months before, was the father.  But that didn't really help Richard: as head of the family he lost honor if he had permitted such things to happen under his roof.  He wanted a court to exonerate them both.

John Marshall

And the trial is where it gets even more interesting.  (Richard's lawyers were the aging but legendary orator Patrick Henry and future Chief Justice John Marshall.)  There were no witnesses who could testify that they had seen a dead baby.  Remember how the hosts chose not to go look?  The slaves had seen it, of course, but slaves could not testify.  (Interesting fact: later Richard turned against slavery, and freed his own slaves.)

A Not Guilty plea was delivered but the Randolphs remained under a cloud of disgrace.  Judith never forgave her sister and after Richard died years later she relegated Nancy to duties that were normally done by slaves.

Not surprisingly Nancy left her beloved Virginia and went north, where her fortunes changed dramatically when she met Governeur Morris.   Morris was quite a character in his own right.  He was a successful businessman and diplomat and one of the major writers of the U.S. Constitution.

Morris apparently told Nancy he was looking for a housekeeper for his home in what is now the Bronx. It seems apparent he had other plans for her as well.

Governeur Morris

Nancy arrived at Morrisania in April 1809 and apparently fit right in.  On Christmas day, to the astonishment of Governeur's assembled relatives, the lifelong bachelor took her as a bride.

The relatives were  not thrilled.  A kind interpretation would be that they were afraid this young poor woman of dubious reputation was taking advantage of their beloved kinsman who was, after all, a doddering old codger of fifty-seven.  A less generous explanation was that they had been expecting to inherit his considerable wealth and saw Nancy as an obstacle.  Which indeed she was, especially after giving birth to Governeur, Jr. three years later.

One niece, acting as what we would now call a concern troll wrote to her dear uncle worrying about what the world would think of his marriage.  He replied: "If the world were to live with my wife, I should certainly have consulted its taste; but as that happens not to be the case, I thought I might, without offending others, endeavor to suit myself."  What's the early nineteenth century term for "drop the mic?"

Some of Nancy's in-laws plotted against her (led, inevitably, by a crooked lawyer) and found a champion in no less than John Randolph.  Remember him?  It was his biography that got me into this whole mess.

Randolph of Roanoke wrote an 8-page letter supposedly addressed to Nancy but actually sent to her husband.  He warmed up by accusing her of infanticide, then suggested that she had poisoned Richard to death.  He claimed that she had slept around in Virginia, and even had an affair with a slave.  (This was apparently based on the fact that she had addressed a written work order to one with the words "Dear Billy Ellis."  Surely showing good manners to a slave revealed unbridled lust!) And when she went north, he said, she had been a prostitute.   Of course he was hinting that the Morris's son was illegitimate, a charge which if believed would boost the futures of  the spiteful shirt-tail relatives.

Morris apparently held on to the letter for several months before showing it to Nancy.  Now, I must admit I have become a fan of this guy.  For one thing he was the child of slaveowners but adamantly against that peculiar institution.  Secondly, he was a notorious ladies' man in his youth, but clearly wasn't the type who held women to a different standard than himself. So, my theory has to be a favorable one: I think he kept the hate note hidden until he suspected (correctly) that Randolph was spreading copies around.

Nancy did not suffer in silence.  Her cousin, the insult master, was about to have his timepiece sanitized, by which I mean she cleaned his clock.  Two can play at the nasty letters game.

The only known portrait of Nancy Randolph Morris

She wrote her own 7,000 word letter and circulated at least twenty copies.  Since Randolph had called her alleged slave lover "Othello" Nancy replied that by whispering lies in her husband's ear Randolph was playing "honest Iago."  Switching plays, she said his letter was "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Then Nancy  pointed out that he had provided no evidence for his charges and then demonstrated that his own actions contradicted his assertions: If she was so horrible why would John allow his sickly nephew to be under her care for months at a time?  She also said that when she was young he had pursued her romantically but had been rebuffed because of his "mean selfishness" and "wretched appearance." She called his recent behavior "unmanly," which had to sting since he was widely rumored to be impotent.  She even mocked his pompous preferred title, putting "John Randolph of Roanoke" in scare quotes whenever she used it.

These letters appeared while Randolph  was running for Congress and were no help to his political career.  At that point he retired from the Nancy-libeling business.

Governeur Morris died not much later.  In his will he ignored his ambitious relatives and left most of his estate to his young son, whose paternity he clearly never doubted.  He left Nancy an allowance to live on with the caveat that if she remarried the allowance  would be --

Increased.  You didn't expect that, did you?  Morris explained that if she remarried she might have more expenses so he wanted to provide for that possibility. I think he was hoping she would find a new husband.  As I said, I like this guy.

But Nancy never remarried.  She raised their son and arranged for the publication of  her late husband's letters, which demonstrated the domestic bliss they had found together.  As it turned out the strongest testimony about Nancy's fidelity was her son, for the boy looked more like his father every year.

Young Governeur became a successful businessman and when his mother died he built a church in her honor.  And so ends the bizarre story of the residents of Bizarre, back in the days when politics was clean and southerners were chivalrous. Or something.

Some Short Story Collections by Great Living Mystery Writers

by Robert Lopresti

Last week I wrote about Bouchercon and said that this time I would provide my favorite quotations from the con.  But here it is holiday shopping season.  So this seemed more appropriate.

I mentioned being on a panel at Bouchercon called "Reader Recommends."  I went there determined to be the champion of short stories.  I even prepared a list of recommendations.  To make the list a book had to be a) a collection (not an anthology), b) by a living author, c) currently in print, and d) contain a story I consider wonderful. 

Apologies to those not included.  I had to stop at two pages.

Some Short Story Collections by Great Living Mystery Writers

The mystery field started with short stories and some of the best work is still being done there.  Here are some single-author collections by current leaders in the field.

Block, Lawrence.  Enough Rope.  The MWA Grand Master can write funny, noir, hardboiled, whatever he sets his mind to.  Try “Hot Eyes, Cold Eyes” and follow the twists.

Dubois, Brendan.  The Hidden.  Award-winner Dubois is one of the most popular authors in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.  In this collection, “The Final Ballot” is a brilliant tale about a blue-collar woman seeking justice, or at least vengeance, when her daughter is attacked by the son of a presidential candidate.

Estleman, Loren D.  Detroit is Our Beat.  Estleman is best known for his books about private eye Amos Walker, but try these stories about the Four Horsemen, the only racket squad cops left in Detroit after everyone else has gone off to fight the Nazis.  Try “Death Without Parole,” about a cop killer who walks free on a technicality, but not for long.

Forsyth, Frederick.  No Comebacks.  Known for his thriller novels, Forsyth   explores different worlds in the short form.  “Privilege” is a brilliant legal David-and-Goliath story.

Floyd, John M. Dreamland. Floyd is one of the most-published mystery authors in the short story realm.  Try “Hunters,” which starts out like a standard hitman tale, and takes a surprising direction.

Grafton, Sue.  Kinsey and Me. You know her novels but Grafton is one of the best living authors of PI short stories.  “A Poison That Leaves Not Trace” should convince you.

Hockensmith, Steve. Dear Mr. Holmes.  Hockensmith’s “Holmes on the Range” series is about two cowboy brothers, Old Red who is a brilliant but illiterate detective, and Big Red, his very funny Watson.

Lawton, R.T. 9 Historical Mysteries.  Lawton has five different series running in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  “False Keys” is the first story about a young pickpocket-in-training in the Paris of Louis the Fourteenth.

Lovesey, Peter.  The Sedgemoor Strangler and Other Stories. Master of the historical whodunit, Lovesey has several books of shorts.  This one is highlighted by “The Usual Table,” which keeps its secrets to the very end.

Muller, Marcia. The McCone Files.  Sharon McCone was more or less the first modern female PI character.  But quality, not just primacy, got Muller the Grand Master and Eye Awards.  “The Final Resting Place” won the Shamus Award for best PI story.

Powell, James.  A Dirge for Clowntown. Canadian Powell has an imagination like a machine gun, firing crazy ideas in all directions.  The first three stories, for example, are about Inspector Bozo, protecting the mean streets of Clowntown where residents are killed by being smacked in the face with poisoned pies, and an invasion by mimes is a major threat.

Pronzini, Bill. Small Felonies.  The MWA gave him the Grand Master Award.  The Private Eye Writers gave him the Eye Award for lifetime achievement.  And here he gives you fifty short mysteries.  Try “Incident in a Neighborhood Tavern,” starring his most famous character, the “Nameless” detective.

Rozan, S.J..  A Tale About A Tiger. Rozan has won prizes in both the long and short form.  Enjoy “Hoops,” featuring her NY private eye Bill Smith, which was nominated for an Edgar.

 

Rusch, Kristine Kathryn.  The Early Conundrums.  Rusch writes wonderful  mystery shorts.  Also novels.  Also science fiction.  The stories in this book are about unlikely partners: Spade, an obese software millionaire, and Paladin, a beautiful young private eye.  Together they keep science fiction conferences safe and solvent, while negotiating their own prickly antisocial relationship.

Warren, James Lincoln.  The 1% Solution. Award-winning author Warren is best known for tales of Alan Treviscoe, an 18^th century insurance investigator, but his imagination travels broadly.  Each of the four novellas in this book is inspired by a great writer in our field.  “Shikari,” for example, is the best Sherlock Holmes story you will ever read that does not include Sherlock Holmes.

This list was compiled by award-winning mystery writer Robert Lopresti, who is far too modest to include his own Shanks on Crime.  roblopresti.com

Bouchercon Babbling

Carolyn Tillery, Janet Randolph, Charles Salzberg, Sarah Byrne, Himself, Aubrey Hamilton

by Robert Lopresti

Counting on my fingers here: I think Toronto last month was my seventh Bouchercon.  (The first was New York, back in 1983, a much smaller affair.)

I want to tell you about the highlights but I am mostly thinking ahead.  If you have not gone in recent years and might go in the future, bookmark this page for future reference.

Melodie Campbell, Some American

Of course, one of the great treats at these events is running into old friends, people you only know from email or social media, or people you have admired but never had the chance to say so.  You will see some pictures  here of me with my fellow SleuthSayers, some of whom I met for the first time.

Naturally it's a joy to be on a panel.  I was on "Readers Recommends," and frankly I didn't think anyone would attend, considering the competition.  But we had close to seventy people in the audience.  The picture on the top of this page shows our little group.  For some reason we all look like our best friend died and didn't leave us a cent, but we were all having a good time.  Moderator Carolyn Tillery did a fine job.

The funniest event I saw was the Liar's Panel. Five authors each tell stories about something that happened in their own lives.  Contestants have to guess which stories are true.  Luckily I was not a contestant because I was wrong on seven out of ten stories.  As you can imagine, some of these were hilarious.  Reese Hirsch's story about vampires was true?  And the only lie in Danny Gardner's story was the murderer getting caught.  Quite an hour.

Another don't-miss event is Speed Dating.  You get a free breakfast, sit down at a table, and every six minutes two authors plop down next to you to tell you why you should buy their books.  It's hectic and fun (and having been on both sides I can tell you, it's more enjoyable to listen than to be one of the authors prattling at full speed).

The highlight of the Speed Dating for me was when Twist Phelan and Zoe Quick arrived together.  They are both FB friends of mine but we had never met in person.  We had a six-minute mutual admiration society, and then they hurried on.

Barb Goffman, What's-His-Name

After my panel I went to the dealer's room to sign books, except I hadn't brought any.  The bother of getting them past the border and then back home (and we were not flying straight home either), combined with the difficulty of finding a vendor willing to take them on consignment just didn't seem worth it.  This decision appeared to be confirmed when I saw Danny Gardner carrying an armful of his own books and complaining that the customs people had inspected each one like they were bricks of cocaine.  Nonetheless I wound up signing books: four different anthologies.

Michael Bracken, Art Taylor, Unidentified

Another favorite event is the Librarian's Tea.  We bookpushers and our loved ones get free tea and cookies, some free books, and a talk from famous authors that tends to lean heavily toward how wonderful libraries are.  (Hey, you have to know your audience.)  Now as it happens, Hank Phillippi Ryan was at our table.  My wife doesn't read a lot of mysteries so I had to explain "You're sitting with royalty."

It turned out Hank was moderating the panel.  That didn't go so well, but it wasn't her fault.  About fifteen minutes after it started a fire alarm went off.  In that fancy hotel the alarm sounded like someone whacking a xylophone every few seconds.  Then a voice on the PA announced that an alarm had been pulled in the parking garage.  Someone was investigating and the fire department was on its way.

Melissa Yi, Robert Me

As near as I could tell everyone stayed.  (Librarians are tough.)  Soldiering on, Hank asked, through the alarms and repeated announcements, how the panelists would incorporate this sort of scene into one of their books?  The clear winner was Linwood Barclay who said the victim would be whoever was ringing that damned bell.

Eventually the PA announced that the fire department had declared everything was okay.  Then they announced it again.  Then they announced they were resetting the alarm.  (Why would we care?)  Then they announced that again.  We still didn't care.

There was a special event honoring Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, with Art Taylor interviewing editor Janet Hutchings, followed by a long line of authors talking about how EQMM had touched their lives and careers.  Quite moving.  There are few American magazines that have survived as long as this one and the stunning thing that in 75 years there have only been three editors.

On the SleuthSayers front, Art Taylor won the Macavity Award for best short story and the late great B.K. Stevens won the Anthony Award for best novella.

The Macavity Award for Best Nonfiction went to Margaret Kinsman for her book Sara Paretsky: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction.  However, the author wasn't present so the award was accepted by Sara Paretsky!  Yes, the subject of the book accepted the award.  When was the last time that happened?

Next time I will include my favorite quotations from Bouchercon.  Here's a sample: 

"In Scotland we have an unarmed police force.  Well, no firearms.  Just batons and sarcasm." - Caro Ramsay