Minnesota Crime Wave

On Thursday, November 10th, I attended a touring of a new local mystery anthology consisting of contributions from thirteen Minnesota mystery authors. Entitled Silence of the Loons: Thirteen Tales of Mystery by Minnesota's Premier Crime Writers, this anthology was comprised of an idea to showcase the talent of local mystery writers by having each selected author contribute a short story. Silence of the Loons originated from an idea by members of the Minnesota Crime Wave, a local literary mystery movement. In the back of the book, eight clues linked to each story are given, and each author was to incorporate at least four of these clues in their own work. The idea was to link each story together with the clues yet rely on the authors to include them in their own original ways.
The presentation had all thirteen authors read a “teaser” section of their short contributions. In the vein of mystery writing, each author ended their presentations with a cliffhanger. This eventually did get irritating, yet respect for the writers couldn’t be denied; it seemed as if they were pulling off marketing scheme techniques soundly. Why would cliffhangers work? Is it because they are always and expected sacrament in the mystery genre? Possibly, but I see the cliffhangers as authentic, traditional marketing schemes in the name of literature. Regardless of achieving my respect, there were still moments when the cliffhanger approach seemed too ambiguous for the audience.
For instance, when writer Lorie Lake went to present some of her text taken form
her inclusion, “Take Me Out”, she failed to give the audience an idea about what her
story was actually about. Lake may have only been presenting for two minutes after she
got off the stage. This made it difficult to get a comprehensive idea of her story, and she even admitted that she “cheated the audience” by doing this. Lake was only excusable in the fact that she remained honest. None of the authors were pretentious or self-righteous (character traits I’ve observed in many local ‘nobody’ writers), yet sometimes an author would give unnecessary praise to one of their influences during their short presentations, which had me wishing that they were more self-righteous.
An example of this was seen when Helen Hart gave a small presentation on her short tale, “Norwegian Noir”. She was presented as a writer in Lesbian Mystery. This introduction got me immediately curious in the relatively specific genre of Lesbian Mystery, yet her story for Silence of the Loons turned out to be a light, silly departure from her ‘lesbian’ field of choice. “Norwegian Noir” was a comic mystery involving many references to Garrison Kiellor (doesn’t anyone get tired of hearing about him?) topped off with a friendly dedication to the legend by Hart during her presentation. It’s always polite to hear credited praise, but more times than most it is unnecessary. Still, it is unfair to judge a writer by their personal, public character rather than their fictional, literary characters, so I can’t hold their public personas against them.
What I can admit is that each brief presentation was obviously intended to give the sojourner an early taste-test of Silence of the Loons. Since I usually don’t read anything in the mystery genre, the presentation gave me more of an idea about the literary style it requires. Most of the sections read by each author were tantalizing and entertaining; and I got the impression that this was all the authors intended to achieve. If
you would like more information on Silence of the Loons or the Minnesota Crime Wave,
you can visit the website at www.minnesotacrimewave.org.