Doing the “Mask” Ball

The vintage Cadillac that ferried guests to tonight’s party

The ducat (as Dashiell Hammett might say) to the coolest party at Bouchercon on Friday night was hard to come by: you had to be affiliated in some manner with the late, great mystery-fiction podcast, Behind the Black Mask, which was produced by Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards.

As those two men remarked in their “Long Goodbye” grace note for the series last December:

In the last two years, we’ve had the chance to speak with many of the rising stars and established masters of English language crime fiction--American, English, Irish, and Scots. The guests on these twenty-eight episodes have earned a staggering number of fiction and film festival awards (too many to count, really, for the tally keeps
going up), and their literary reputations continue to grow.

Many of those same podcast guests were party guests at the Dorman Street Salon in Indianapolis, where this shindig was held--and where “Public Enemy #1,” John Dillinger, reportedly hung out as he cased the State Bank of Massachusetts Avenue in Indy for a $21,000 knockover on September 6, 1933.

But first people had to get to the Black Mask affair. And what better way to arrive than in a chauffeured 1938 Cadillac?

Once inside the saloon, you were likely to run into some pretty tough characters, such as author Gary Phillips and Busted Flush Press publisher David Thompson (shown above). Or even a demonic-looking Seth Harwood (left)--complete with beer-sign halo--and CrimeSpot editor Graham Powell.

I want to offer my personal thanks to Clute and Edwards for putting on a wonderful party--and an even more wondrous podcast. To enjoy additional photo coverage of the Black Mask event, check out the Flickr slideshow here.

(Photographs by Mark Coggins)