Monthly Meeting

Book for Discussion:  “The Alto Wore Tweed” by Mark Schweitzer

(No. 1 in the Liturgical Mystery series) Hayden Konig is the police chief in the small Appalachian town of St. Germaine, North Carolina. His part-time job, however, is serving as the choir director and organist at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, but he’s also determined to write the next great hard-boiled mystery novel a la Raymond Chandler—a liturgical mystery novel with no real plot, but enough bad prose to make the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest look like the Oxford University Press spring catalog. Chief Konig is also lucky enough to be independently wealthy, which is why he decides that his lack of talent in the writing department can easily be remedied, or at least greatly enhanced, by the purchase of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 Underwood typewriter. He is sadly mistaken, but the results are uproarious! Even as Hayden works on his opus, he must deal with other, more pressing, problems—a new priest at St. Barnabas, a Christmas feud between the Rotarians and the Kiwanians and, more importantly, a dead body in the choir loft. It’s a good thing that Hayden keeps a loaded Glock under the organ bench!

Guest Speaker: Wally Lind, Senior Crime Scene Analyst with the Bloomington MN Police Department (retired), and founder of the ‘Crimescenewriter’ list at Yahoo, where writers can get their forensics questions answered by experts in the field.

Wally Lind Bio

Wally Lind retired after a few decades as a Senior Crime Scene Analyst with the Bloomington MN Police Department.  Finding “retirement” not the best fit, in 2003 he began a forensics discussion group for writers on Yahoo.Posted description:  “A forum for asking and answering crime scene investigation, applied forensics, and police procedure questions for fiction or non-fiction writers. Writers are invited to ask and crime scene investigators, forensic scientists, and medical practioners are invited to answer. Of course, experienced writers are invited to help the newer ones and each other.”

That group has grown to include 790 members including:  several experts (besides Wally) in crime scene analysis, several members of law enforcement, a host of writers wanting to get the information right, many published authors, and some lurkers who have that big murder mystery still in their heads.Most of Wally’s writing has to do with answering questions for other writers, but he’s been included on the acknowledgements pages of a number of books.

Check out the files section at the group site for tidbits and motherlodes of info! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crimescenewriter/