FROM OUR NATION’S CAPITAL

by Robert Lopresti

Happy Independence Day. Here are some thoughts from a mystery writer’s trip to a conference in Washington D.C.last week.

In the plane out I sat next to a ten year old who told me he had ADHD, and I believed him (he talked a lot). His mom sat one row up on the other side of the aisle in a comfy front row . . . She made no attempt to arrange to sit next to her son and I only saw her look back once on the four hour trip, when she pulled out five bucks for him to buy a snack box. Eventually the boy’s electronic gadget’s batteries died, leaving him with nothing to do. I asked if he had a book.

“I have one,” he said, “but I don’t usually read.” O-kay.

There goes the judge.

At the American Library Association conference I got to hear Royce Lamberth, former chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, which approves warrants for counterintelligence work. Coverage of his speech concentrated on his comments on the Bush administration (for example: here) but I was more interested in his narratives (curse of the fiction writer?). For example, he told us that four car-fulls of FBI agents arrived one day while he was mowing the lawn. His wife had to go upstairs since she was not cleared for Top Secret briefings, but his dog got to stay, because she didn’t talk. Lamberth added that an FBI agent offered to finish mowing the lawn but he turned it down. “Wouldn’t the Washington Post have loved that?” he mused.

Once one of the court’s judges approved a warrant based on what turned out to be a false affidavit. Attorney General Janet Reno assured the court that they were investigating whether the agent had made an honest mistake or deliberately lied. The judges unanimously replied that, either way, that agent was never allowed to appear before the court again. Which meant his career in counter-intelligence was over.

“That sent a message to the FBI,” he noted, with apparent satisfaction. Good storytelling.

The sellers.

Imagine thirty-five rows, each twice as long as an average supermarket aisle. Now imagine that on each side of the aisle are displays and people who want to sell you things. That’s the exhibits room at the library conference. Some are not much more than a card table with a few books; a few are two-story castles. (The people pushing electronic databases tend to show more expensive taste than those selling books.surprise, surprise.)

People are there, eager to talk to librarians about why they should purchase books , book-shaped jewelry, coffee mugs with their library logos, bookcases, computer systems, etc.

I stopped by the Sisters in Crime/Mystery Writers of America table to say hello. Didn’t know the writer staffing it.

Picked up a free copy of Elmore Leonard’s new novel. I was having dinner with relatives so I bundled up a big bag of posters, books, Frisbees, etc., for my six-year-old nephew before I had dinner with his family. He gave a highly positive review to the one present he got that night, Wings, Horns, and Claws: A Dinosaur Book of Epic Proportions.

Stop, Thief.

I was on a panel about map theft. Also present was Christopher Schmeisser, the prosecutor who convicted Forbes Smiley, the biggest map thief of this century. He pointed out that one of the problems with losing a map as opposed to, say, the Mona Lisa, is how do you prove that this three-hundred-year-old map is the one who had in your library, and not some other copy of that three-hundred-year-old map? What a mess.

A story with pepperoni.

My hotel was near Dupont Circle. As a librarian, author, and reader, I would like to recommend the Books-A-Million store there. Their brownies are excellent.

Sitting in a pizza parlor just off the circle I acquired an idea for a mystery story. Since I was in the capital city of a major nation, surrounded by power, intrigue, and scandal, naturally I came up with a story about blue collar people in a small town. The human mind is a strange beast.

Happy ending.

Waiting for a plane home I sat next to a woman who would occasionally sigh, gasp, and shudder. I looked over to see if she was all right. She was. I’d say she was about halfway through a suspense novel. Just getting to the good part.

Another Thread From The Web

In honor of library conferences, here is a trick if you want to know how many libraries own a copy of your book (or any book). Just go to Worldcat and check the catalogs of 10,000 libraries. Two caveats: not every library in the world is included. And a library that owns ten copies of the book will get one listing, same as a library that only has one. Enjoy.