Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Summer Fun and Dismemberment

Summer Fun and Dismemberment! Boston’s crime writing community is a varied and productive group and those who write about murder and mayhem always have a warped sense of humor. Tonight the New England Chapter of Mystery Writer’s of America are having their wrap up party for the year with good food and company and a program by Lee Loffland who will show how detectives work to solve a very gruesome crime with very little to go on.

Isn’t it interesting to note that the writers always manage to scarf down the comestibles no matter how gruesome the subject matter of the evening’s speaker?

Not the kind of conversation that you would overhear at the Duchesse de Guermantes receptions. No matter how hard Proust tries, these occasions are dull. Or maybe it’s the five hundred pages of description of these receptions and dinner parties that begin to grate of one. Oriane and Palamede are not exactly the F. Scott Fitzgeralds. I think some of the subtleties of social distinction and caste fly right over my head.

Not so with the mystery writers whose congeniality doesn’t include a whit of snobbery.

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