Malice is a conference for traditional mystery writers and
their fans. Think Agatha Christie and
cozies, but it’s a big tent. We had
Laura Lippman and Harlan Coban, so many styles are represented.
The big fun the first day was “Malice Go Round”—speed dating
with authors. We sat at about 20 round
tables and every five minutes two authors moved to the next table and had two
minutes each to “pitch” their books.
What an experience; what a strange world. There were the “Orchard mysteries” (One Bad
Apple, Rotten to the Core), Museum mysteries, Irish mysteries, “Book Club”
mysteries—every month some member of the book club finds a body, Cheese shop
mysteries (To Brie or not to Brie, Lost and Fondue), Cookbook mysteries—several
authors include recipe cards, Yarn shop mysteries (Last Wool and Testament) ,
and so on. Many amateur sleuths had
pets. Some of the cats solved the crimes—“he’s
like Sam Spade with hairballs.” Some of
the dogs dug up the corpses. The authors
were quick to point out that there was murder, but no pets were harmed.
Some of these ideas sounded pretty goofy to me. But all the pitches were in earnest.
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