THAT SAN FRANCISCO TREAT

by Rob Lopresti

Robert and Terri Lopresti at Tarantino’s, talking to the Lawtons. Charles Todd is at right, sitting at the next table and talking to Janet Hutchings and Robert Levinson. Photo by Steve Steinbock

I have had a chance to recover from my trip to Bouchercon, dig through my notes, and bury the incriminating documents. So here are my thoughts about the highlights.

First and foremost, I enjoyed meeting some old friends for the first time, including co-bloggers Melodie and Angela, but also Robert Levinson and long-time e-buddy R. T. Lawton, both of whose work I admire greatly.

Kiti and R.T. Lawton, Jill Amadio (our moderator) at Tarantino’s. Photo by Steve Steinbock

At the Shamus banquet I sat between two Shamus nominees, Gary Phillips and Russel D. McLean. The conversation was not boring.

Two great CB-related events, both organized by our fearless leader, James: the short story panel (now available on audio right here on this page) and dinner at Tarantino’s (not available on audio, which is good. Thirty people talking at once would be confusing.)

But here are some panelish thingies that caught my ear.

Cigars and politics

One treat was hearing Lee Goldberg interview Bill Link who, with his longtime partner the late Dick Levinson, created Columbo, Mannix, Murder She Wrote, etc. Not surprisingly most of the talk was about Columbo and one of my favorite questions was: what exactly did Peter Falk contribute to the character? After all, the cigar, the raincoat, and the “one more thing . . . ” were all there in the stage play, long before he played the part. So, what did he contribute exactly?

“The sloppiness,” said Link.

I should make it clear he was not denigrating Falk’s importance to the show. He knows it was a match made in TV heaven.

There was a fascinating panel about politics that turned on one issue which had been raised by Barry Eisler: why is it that only right-wing media figures are fans of thrillers? Glenn Beck loves ’em — and as panelist Gayle Lynds noted, even has liberal writers like her on his show — but Keith Olbermann, and Jon Stewart, not so much.

All the panelists were self-declared liberals, so their comments had, shall we say, a certain viewpoint. When they asked if their were any conservatives in the audience who would like to question or comment. The only hand that went up was Our Melodie. Brave woman, that.

I have seen the future

A panel of editors and agents talked optimistically about the future of the publishing business. They thought the worst was over and predicted that authors, agents, and publishers would find a place in the brave new world of e-books — which, by next year, might be 10% of the market.

I got a little cranky and asked about the one element of the publishing equation that no one had mentioned: bookstores. Two of the panelists than praised the importance of bookstores and made some very general, and to my ear not very convincing, words about their future. Depressing.

On a related topic, there was a fascinating panel on e-books. Boyd Morrison was there, and he is known as the poster child for this format, because his first novel The Ark, is selling four thousand copies a month electronically, and now the paper rights have been picked up by Simon and Shuster. Another member of that panel, Lee Goldberg, flat out said that the independent bookstore is going the way of the dodo, and lamented the fact. Not what I want to hear, but at least he had thought about it.

Location, location, etc.

One of the weirder moments for me was a panel on east coast versus west coast. F. Paul Wilson began by stating that in mysteries the east coast means New York and the west coast means L.A. And, in fact, those were the only places represented by the panelists. There was grumbling from the audience and I heard one woman say later that if she had been near a door she would have walked out.

It got a little weirder because some of the panelists went on to make jokes about Staten Island – apparently not all of New York City qualifies. This led a member of the audience — panelist Walter Mosley introduced her but I didn’t catch the name — to say she taught English at a college in Staten Island. She said she couldn’t get her students to write anything positive about the place they live, because they never hear anything positive about it, only the kind of jokes we were hearing today.

Panelist S. J. Rozan apologized for being the first one to kid about S. I. and offered to come speak to the woman’s class. S. J. is a great writer, but she is first and foremost a mensch.

Bringing the funny

The last panel I saw was on humorous writing. That was where I heard the amazing Sue Ann Jaffarian who writes three books a year. I’ll repeat that for the hard of reading. Three publishable funny novels a year. My keyboard aches just thinking about it.

But the guy on the panel who impressed me most was Lenny Kleinfeld, an older playwright who just put out his first novel, Shooters and Chasers. That’s a great title, but the reason I want to read the book is something else Kleinfeld said: “Everything goes back to Saint Hammett and Saint Chandler.”

Amen. Until next year, brothers and sisters, keep the faith.