Weird How These Things Happen

If you didn’t make it to SleuthFest in Miami this weekend, don’t worry about it: Stacy Alesi has a wrap-up of the festivities at her BookBitchBlog. My favorite part is her recollection of an anecdote told by SleuthFest guest of honor René Balcer, an Edgar Award-winning screenwriter-producer with the Law & Order franchise:

He talked about the TV shows, and showed a couple of clips of some favorite scenes. He talked about how they often use news headlines as story ideas, then told a great story about how one of their stories became news. Balcer was looking for a location near a [New York] river where a body could wash up. He found a spot that had lots of flotsam and figured that would work. The next day he brought the crew down to film, but the producer didn’t seem to think it would work. He complained that the tide was too strong and it curved wrong, but as they approached the area to film, they had to stop. There were a couple of police cars and an ambulance at the location--you guessed it--a body had floated up to the spot Balcer had selected.

Read Alesi’s full account here.