Albert gives us an overview of Saturday at Deadly Ink. Questions posed in the Comments section are welcomed.
Deadly Ink is primarily for mystery fans and writers. The conference offers no agent/editor appointments. At other conferences I always take the oppportunity to pitch an agent, but I have to admit that the Deadly Ink way is relaxing and enjoyable.
This year writers predominated. I reconnected with some friends, including Cheryl Solimini, Rosemary Harris, and Jeff Markowitz, and took in the Saturday panels and speakers. Most of the topics related to writing–creating villains, writing dialog, using New Jersey settings–but in the afternoon came three nuts-and-bolts presentations of the type that I prefer.
NYPD Lt. Bernard Whalen spoke about police procedures ca. 1940. One example he gave was a bomb that killed two detectives from the Forgery and Bomb Squad, so named because most bombs of the time were dummies, and the personnel spent most of their time investigating the extortion notes that came with the duds. The squad had absolutely no equipment for dealing with real bombs. The killer was never caught or identified.
Dr. Thomas A. Blumenfeld led us through a real autopsy, as opposed to the CSI Miami kind.
Finally, John Reisinger spoke about three unsolved murders from the early 20th century: the Hollywood directory William Desmond Taylor, the Florida real estate developer D.P. Davis, and the Bahamas businessman Sir Harry Oakes.
I was unable to stay for the Sunday presentations.
BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION ALERT: My story Religion appears in the Deadly Ink 2009 Short Story Collection, issued by the conference.
