Riddle of the Bouchercon Is No Enigma : Writers of Mysteries Convene in Baltimore

The 500 mystery fans from all over the United States who filled the meeting rooms, bought hundreds of books and talked until the early hours of the morning for three days were no surprise to Anaheim librarian Kevin Moore, attending her fourth Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention.

“Mystery has just exploded,” she said, adding that the genre accounts for one of every two fiction books circulated in the Anaheim libraries and suggesting that it is the same for most other libraries across the country.

Need for Mysteries

Moore, who publishes a mystery newsletter for library patrons and helps friend Kathleen Johnson run a Riverside mail-order mystery bookstore, Crime After Crime, said the mystery story, long a literary staple, has become even more popular because it is answering a need Americans have for order and predictability in the ‘80s.

“We lost Vietnam, our society changed. In the ‘60s and ‘70s it was anything goes, but now we’re swinging back to a more conservative society, people want an ordered society. Mysteries offer that order; things come out right in the end. It’s a puzzle, but a solvable puzzle.”

And besides that, she said with a laugh, “They’re so much fun!”

Bouchercon, named after the late New York Times mystery critic Anthony Boucher, and now in its 17th year, is the big event of the mystery calendar. Unlike science fiction and romance genres, mystery fiction hasn’t spawned numerous regional conventions (or cons in the fan vernacular). There’s only Bouchercon each fall in a different major city and the Edgar awards given every spring by the Mystery Writers of America of New York.

Bouchercon is unusual in the literary genre conventions because it is almost equal parts writers, book sellers, publishing representatives and readers. It doesn’t cater to aspiring writers or hold up several superstars for fan idolatry but rather celebrates the mystery story with continuous showing of films, overlapping panels with topics such as “Under an English Heaven: The British Crime Novel” and “The Damsel or Are Women Writers Treated as Second-Class Citizens?” and focusing on lesser-known writers who have a following but haven’t achieved the visibility of a Robert B. Parker or Donald Westlake.

‘A Dream Come True’

For mystery fans like Hal Rice, 50, of Rockford, Ill., the Bouchercon is a dream come true. A mystery addict who reads “everything . . . all of it,” Rice attended his first Bouchercon 12 years ago and was amazed.

“I couldn’t believe there were all these other crazies like me,” he said.

As the meeting place of mystery leaders and followers, Bouchercon is also the arena where many of the issues of the genre are discussed, debated and sometimes dismissed. The continuing debate, the one nobody wants to solve is the merits of the traditional Christie-type mystery called “the cozy” versus the tough-guy “hard-boiled” story in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

A more serious debate that has surfaced in the last few years is the status of female writers in the field. While defenders of the status quo point out that women have always been major figures in the mystery field, rattling off the names of Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margaret Millar, female writers quickly counter that in its 17 years Bouchercon has only once chosen a woman as the guest of honor (Helen McCloy in 1981) and men dominate the Edgar Awards, the mystery version of an Oscar.

Women Win Honors

The Anthonys, given in Baltimore for the first time, may have gone a long way to redress that issue however, with female writers winning in three out of the four categories. Sue Grafton of Santa Barbara, whose critically acclaimed novel, “ ‘B’ Is for Burglar” won an Anthony as best novel and a Shamus Award from the Private-Eye Writers of America for best hard-back novel, was not about to indulge in any aw-shucks modesty after her wins.

“That’s one reason I write hard- boiled,” she said of her novels that feature gutsy female detective Kinsey Millhone. “I really enjoy competing with the men--playing hard ball with them.”

But even the serious debates are full of light and sunshine at Bouchercon where the people who think constantly about murder, mayhem and crime tend to be outgoing, friendly and funny.

Phyllis White of Berkeley was thoroughly pleased with the crowd. White has only missed one Bouchercon, an enterprise that she regards with some sense of propriety since it is named for her late husband, Anthony Boucher.

“This is what he wanted,” she said, surveying the chatty crowd at the Friday night opening meeting. “He liked mystery people so much.”