Writers Swap Solutions, Some Lethal

You could deduce that a group that charters field trips to the county morgue is slightly suspect. A recurring conversational topic is an effort to uncover the two common cooking ingredients that, when mixed together, make an untraceable poison.

A 75-year-old member of the organization trumpets that he’s been to 70 homicides--during the last year alone.

But, as the case would have it, things are not always what they seem. The group under surveillance turns out to be the Southern California chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, a national association of crime authors.

Comments on Objectives

“We’ll do anything to try to find new plot twists, to increase the accuracy of our product,” said Joyce Madison, newly elected president of the group, commenting on the purpose of some of its seemingly macabre activities.

The 235-member Sherman Oaks-based group is one of eight regional Mystery Writers chapters across the nation, second in size only to the one in New York with 600 members. The local chapter’s rolls boast several well-known mystery writers, including John Ball, Jonathon Kellerman and Robert Bloch, authors of “In the Heat of the Night,” “When the Bough Breaks” and “Psycho,” respectively.

The organization was founded in 1945 by Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner and other mystery writers.

Private detectives, chemists, psychics, hypnotists and ghost busters are only a sampling of the specialists who help writers script their murders.

In order for a murder to be convincing, each stabbing or strangulation has to be meticulously staged with careful attention paid to detail, Madison said.

“All of this is grist for our mill,” Madison said of the speakers who discourse on the fine art of killing. “You’ve got to know you can’t say a .22 ripped through someone. You need a magnum if you want to blow someone away.”

Recently, an expert on paranormal phenomena spoke to the group, presenting “factual evidence” about a woman supposedly raped by a randy ghost. At another meeting, a deputy coroner addressed the group on deaths that initially seemed to be murders or suicides but were later discovered to be accidental. The graphic slides the deputy coroner brought to illustrate his talk did not faze the writers, Madison said.

‘Jazzed On It’

“We get jazzed on it,” said Madison, a Van Nuys resident who has published 11 paperback mystery novels. “A number of us are quite bloodthirsty . . . and are fascinated by dead bodies hanging in various degrees of agony.”

The purpose of Mystery Writers, however, extends beyond the cultivation of realistic plot lines. It also seeks to elevate the sometimes sullied reputation of the mystery writer, said Ball, a former vice president of the regional chapter and author of 35 hard-cover mystery novels. The public maintains a misconception that crime fiction is second-class, pulp literature, he said.

“That notion is preposterous,” he said, citing 17 Nobel laureates and 37 Pulitzer Prize winners who have been mystery writers. “Of the so-called serious novels, there are just as many bad ones as there are bad ones in the mystery field.”

To enhance the recognition of mystery writers, the national group sponsors the annual Edgar Awards--named after that scariest of mystery writers, Edgar Allan Poe--for outstanding mystery works. Those in the mystery publishing business say the prize carries the same prestige as Oscars do for motion pictures.

“It’s influential,” said Kathy Daniel, managing editor of the New York-based magazine Armchair Detective. “Publishers sit up and take notice when a book is even nominated for an Edgar.”

The Southern California chapter presents a local version of the Edgars each July.

Some Just Beginning

Although most of the active members of the chapter have published dozens of novels, other affiliated members have yet to write a widely published work, Madison said. To aid the fledgling, struggling author, the chapter functions as a financial information source.

“We keep track of legitimate publishers and agents,” Ball said, “and some people who would victimize writers and ask exorbitant fees for services not rendered.”

To alert writers to hot or dried-up markets, each regional chapter prints a monthly newsletter. The current word: Woman’s World magazine pays about $400 for a story. Other remunerative outlets include Ellery Queen Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Magazine.

The local chapter’s newsletter is called the March of Crime. Among other chapters’ publications are Dead Lines, The Sleuth Sayer and The Semi-Private Eye.

The mystery publication business is booming across America, industry analysts report. Publisher’s Weekly recently said that the mystery has surpassed the romance novel as the nation’s most popular literary genre. In the past 10 years, several mystery-only bookstores have opened in major cities. The first on the West Coast, Scene of the Crime, is in Sherman Oaks.

2,000 Titles in Year

Last year, more than 2,000 crime novels were printed, said Otto Penzler, publisher of Mysterious Press of New York, one of several newly established all-mystery publishing houses. Seven years ago, he said, only 600 were printed. He said his company’s business tripled over the last three years.

“Out of 15 titles on the best-seller list, close to half will fall into the broad mystery/suspense framework,” said Kevin Moore, Anaheim Central Library manager and a mystery-story historian.

Why the market explosion? Moore hypothesizes that the public’s resurgent interest in mysteries is a response to the social shocks--the civil and women’s rights movements, Vietnam and Watergate--that jolted the country during the 1960s and 1970s.

“Mysteries provide a needed sense of security,” said Moore, who has lectured at UCLA on the topic. “The good guy wins and the bad guy gets punished. Law prevails.”

Moore said the rise of the mystery novel in America parallels a period in Great Britain, during the 1920s, when the country rebounded from a variety of traumas, including World War I and the degeneration of a well-established social class system. That era, known as the Golden Age of Mystery, witnessed the emergence of crime writers Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Called “cozies,” their novels often took place in protected country mansions.

Lucrative Market

Despite the increasing number of mystery books sold each year, the television and film industry is a more lucrative market for crime writers seeking to sell their works, said Jeff Melvoin, co-executive producer of “Hill Street Blues” and a member of the local Mystery Writers chapter. Nevertheless, very few members of the group write for TV and motion picture companies, he said.

“Only a fool doesn’t write for money,” Melvoin said. “In television, one hour of prime time is worth about $19,000. And a TV show needs to fill those 22 hours. There’s a huge demand in the business for writers with ideas.”

An author usually nets about $10,000 when he publishes a crime novel, Madison said.

But, members say they would continue penning denouements regardless of whether they can sell them.

“You can’t keep a novelist from writing novels,” Ball said. “Strand him on a desert island and he’ll write on palm leaves instead.”