Murder in the Magic City

Report from beautiful Birmingham, where they put on a mighty fine mystery conference -- Southern hospitality at its best from welcoming gin and tonics on Friday night to a down-home barbecue dinner on Saturday night. And in between, an all day session of panels with not one but TWO guest speakers!

A rattling good time was had by all!

THE AUTHORS

Front row: Terrell Griffin, Deborah Sharp, Vincent O'Neil, Elizabeth Zelvin, Mary Jane Maffini, Peggy Ehrhart
Middle:Deborah Crombie, Vicki Lane, Meredith Anthony, Maggie Toussaint, Peggy Webb, Carla Neggers
Back: Jennie Bentley, William Kent Kruger, Lawrence Light

and below, Cara Black who didn't get into the first group shot with everyone.

Cara's highly acclaimed, best-selling Aimee Leduc Investigation series -- set in the various parts of Paris and featuring a half-French, half-American detective -- definitely has me intrigued. A resident of San Francisco, poor Cara is forced to travel to Paris several times a year to do research. A tough job, as she says with a Gallic shrug, but somebody's got to do it. And it's tax-deductible.

Deborah Crombie (on my right in the top picture) is another whose story wrings my heart. A native Texan, Deborah is a longtime Anglophile whose Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid/ Sergeant Gemma James series (also highly acclaimed) is set in the UK. So Deborah gets to spend time in England twice a year in the name of research.

Why didn't I think of this? No, I had to set my series in my very house, on our very farm . . . could my daily life be a tax write-off? Maybe it's time for Elizabeth Goodweather to discover a pressing need to travel -- she could be making a study of the lavender growers of Provence, say, and . . . and historic herb gardens of England . . . yeah, that's the ticket!

Some more nice folks: Lawrence Light (pink tie) writes the Karen Glick series about Wall Street -- as he put it, about greedy b-----ds getting their comeuppance (should be right popular these days -- we can dream, can't we?) And he and his wife, Meredith Anthony have just co-authored LADYKILLER -- a dark thriller .

Vincent O'Neil (who moderated the WHEN/WHERE panel on setting with Cara Black and me) places his award-winning investigative series in the fictional North Florida town of Exile.

The WHAT panel, Jennie Bentley, Maggie Toussaint, Elizabeth Zelvin, and Mary Jane Maffini -- from home renovation to golf to alcohol treatment programs to professional organizers -- these ladies prove that mystery can be found everywhere.


And here, for those of you who might like to know more, are links to websites.

2009 Guests of Honor:
Deborah Crombie and William Kent Krueger

Also scheduled to appear:

Jennie Bentley
Cara Black
Peggy Ehrhart
H. Terrell Griffin
Vicki Lane
Lawrence Light and Meredith Anthony
Mary Jane Maffini
Carla Neggers
Vincent H. O'Neil
Deborah Sharp
Maggie Toussaint
Peggy Webb
Elizabeth Zelvin

Tomorrow the whole gang moves over to Wetumpka, Alabama for Murder on the Menu --- a luncheon with authors rotating from table to table in hopes of enticing their captive audiences into purchasing books. And then I head down to the Dothan area to visit my brother for a few days. I doubt that I'll be able to post as he (gasp) has no computer and no internet hookup.

I should be back on Wednesday with more odds and ends. (No, I still haven't heard from Herself.)

But I'll be having more to say about some of these folks as I read their novels -- so many books . . . such crowded shelves.