Bouchercon Cleveland - Fri., Oct 5 (part two)

As always at any Bouchercon there are few panels dedicated to mysteries of the past. The entire concept of the convention has evolved over the years to sell new books and promote the authors who wrote them. That's to be expected, but it upsets me that so little space is saved for panels to talk of the authors of the past. If a book is out of print, it can't be sold at the convention. So why bother talking about it seems to be the attitude about the older books. Each year there tends to be a Holmes panel and one other writer whose work remains in print. Last year it was Christie. This year it was Rex Stout.

Back in the spring I made a valiant attempt to organize a ready-made panel that would discuss forgotten books and suggested it to the B-con committee to include this year. It was to be about reissuing forgotten books by neglected authors -- a melding of the past and the present and it would have included some very fascinating anecdotes about what it takes to get a long out of print book back into the hands of modern readers. Suffice it to say with only two bloggers and two writers mostly known for histories and biographical accounts of writers our panel did not make the cut. There was, however, a panel called "Bucket List - The Books You Have to Read Before You Die" moderated by Otto Penzler. More on that in a later post.

I attended the Rex Stout panel called "Wolfe at the Door" even though I'm not the biggest Nero Wolfe fan so I could get a better understanding of what I seem to be missing each time I read one of those books. To date the Stout book I have enjoyed the most is Alphabet Hicks, one of the few stand alone detective novels Stout wrote, and one that has fallen into the limbo of Out-of-Printdom. It's not considered one of his best books at all though I found it to be rather innovative in my review last year.

Moderated by James Lincoln Warren the panel was made up of mystery writers Jane Cleland and Dave Zeltserman; Linda Landrigan, editor at Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine; and a substitute member whose name I never caught in the swift introductions. We were spared from Warren's usual time consuming oral interpretative skills, but had to listen to him dominate the panel with his vainglorious lecturing about his past award winning novella in the Black Orchid Novella Award writing competition sponsored by the Wolfe Pack, a group that celebrates all things Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I would rather listen to panel members talk and have a moderator ask the questions. Sometimes you get a panel hog who interrupts or talks forever, but when you get a moderator who takes over and talks indulgently about himself it gets dull very fast for me.

Most of the panel was devoted to discussing why they like Stout as a writer, why Archie and Nero Wolfe have become such iconic characters for mystery and crime fiction writers, especially American writers, and of course a usual list of the best Nero Wolfe mysteries. There was a brief discussion by the stand-in panel member (for the life of me I cannot remember his name) who gave some trivia I never knew of Stout's reaction to Edward Arnold as Wolfe (disliked the choice), Lionel Stander as Archie (hate that choice) and how he vowed never to allow any Nero Wolfe books to be adapted for the screen after the botched movie versions of Fer-de-Lance (retitled Meet Nero Wolfe) and The League of Frightened Men.

The most interesting part of the panel was when I learned about the Julius Katz stories by Dave Zeltserman. I have been won over by the Zeltserman as a true original among the contemporary writers when I read The Caretaker of Lorne Field last year.  His Katz stories came about when he wanted to enter the Black Orchid Award contest the mission of which is to revive the craft of writing mystery novellas, a form that Stout seemed to have perfected. He wrote forty of them and they are among the best in the corpus (as the Wolfe Pack like to call Stout's body of work). Zelterserman's homage to Stout's detective is Julius Katz, "Boston's most brilliant, eccentric and possibly laziest detective," who is assisted by an artificial intelligence named Archie that resides in his tie clip and is the narrator of the stories.  I had heard of these before and Patrick of "At the Scene of the Crime" even reviewed the Shamus award winning novella and another short story. To hear the characters described by the author himself along with some of his own personal insights -- he described the duo, for example, as having an almost father/son relationship-- made them all the more enticing. They are available in eBook format, but of course I am not part of that revolution.  So I'm stuck hunting them down in the old EQMM magazines where they first appeared.

Still more on Bouchercon Cleveland is coming...

Bouchercon Cleveland - Fri., Oct 5 (part one)

I arrived a bit late to the first panel "Old Friends, New Friends" so I have no idea why Chris Grabenstein was not present. I attended this panel not because I am so much an avid fan of the series characters,  the topic of the panel, but I wanted to see and hear Jen Forbus whose blog, Jen's Book Thoughts, has done so much for the genre and its writers and readers. It was one of the first mystery blogs I read before I become completely devoted to out of print books. Also, two panel members -- Parnell Hall, Mary Jane Maffini (at left) -- are favorites of mine and I had never heard them talk about their work at previous conventions I've attended. Topics covered included eBooks helping readers obtain an author's back list more easily these days, the role of libraries and bookstores in helping talk up the series, and whether or not the writers present could actually work on two different series character books at the same time. A fun question from the audience:  "Who do you envision playing your series character in a movie or on TV?" There were the usual jokes about the Tom Cruise/Jack Reacher when Jeff Cohen said his character is 5'5" and Cruise was very welcome to play the part any day. Maffini mentioned a few Canadian actresses she was sure no one would know. I didn't recognize the name and I can't even remember it now having not had the smarts to write it down. Parnell Hall said he'd like to play Stanley Hastings himself and if not he'd take on the Puzzle Lady as well.

"Mystery & the Movies" -- Unlike last year's panel in which several writers discussed their favorite crime related movies this year's movie panel was about writer experiences with their own books being adapted to the screen. On hand to discuss the were Charlaine Harris, Robin Cook (one of the Guests of Honor), Chelsea Cain, Joseph Finder and Derek Haas, a last minute addition who is both a novelist and screenwriter, and most recently co-creator the new TV show Chicago Fire. Topics included all sorts of anecdotes about the hassles of dealing with Hollywood, the differences between writing novels and screenplays, whether the writers have ever or would ever want to adapt their own work, and -- once again drawing on the Tom Cruise/Jack Reacher business -- the importance of casting actors who match the character's physical description.

Haas had a great description of the difference between script writing and novel writing. When working on TV he'll get notes form his producers asking him to take out entire scenes or add a dog for the main character to make him more likable.  But when he gets a note from editor it's more along the lines of a polite email asking, "Do you think you could use a semi-colon here?"

I also liked Robin Cook's anecdote about learning that Michael Douglas would play a lead in the film version of his book Coma. He had just appeared on a talk show in Philadelphia with Mike Douglas and confused the two. He told the producer "Don't you think he's a bit old...and corpulent for a young doctor who has to do a lot of action scenes?"

We learned that Chelsea Cain whose series about Gretchen Lowell, a female serial killer and the police detective she once tortured then set free, is in the process of becoming a TV series for F/X.& She has absolutely no desire to write for TV or the movies. She wants to be in charge of her characters and knows that writers in Hollywood tend to be at the mercy of producers and directors. "I want to be able to control my own little universe," she told the audience. Another interesting bit form Cain was the revelation of a previous screen life for her debut novel. Heartsick apparently almost became a TV movie for another network at the hands producer Freddy DeMann. He showed her a portion of the script and she hated it. She said it was drippy and like "a deep, deep cable movie, like one of those Torey Spelling things." Then she revealed to the audience that all the dialogue was hers. They had used her exact words but when the dialogue had been removed from the book and set down on the page without her usual sardonic prose it sounded trite and lifeless.

Haas was the voice of Hollywood, so to speak, and gave a good insider's take on the way the collaborative work of TV and movies can be both good and bad. With Chicago Fire he says he finally got the kind of producer most writers dream of in Dick Wolf who respects and honors the writer's script. After giving a short speech to the cast about sticking to the script as written and restraining themselves from any kind of ad libbing, Haas said he would have actors come up to him and ask, "You have the line as 'I'm going to go home now.' Can I say 'I'm gonna go home now' ?"

There were several very funny stories from Finder and Harris as well.  Harris told a long story about how her personal assistant was refused entry to a meeting she was going to have with people of the True Blood production team. Not only refused entry to the meeting but the building! She was told her assistant could wait in the car in the parking garage. That was fixed but with a ridiculous amount of seemingly needless negotiation. Finder talked about so many things and did so eloquently and wittily, but I'll highlight his story about his cameo part in a TV movie of one of his books. He was given the role of an assistant D.A. and was told to not reveal to anyone that he was the author of the book. But after listening to an actor explain to him, a mere bit player, what the movie was all about (and Finder admits the actor knew the story and the themes very well) he couldn't hold back. So he leaned into told the actor and in a low discreet voice said, "I wrote the book."  Immediately the actor shouted out to the entire set: "Hey Morgan [Freeman]! Hey, guys!  This guy wrote the book!"

Next post I'll wrap up Friday's events with the third panel I attended on Nero Wolfe (many notes taken at that one), my first visit to the book room and my talks with two of the dealers there.