Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem
(05/05/2009) Montauk Highway is jammed. Hummers like rottweilers outflank and outmaneuver sputtering Mini Coopers, which pant against the black asphalt like spent Chihuahuas under an unforgiving tequila
 Glenn Jussen
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sun. In the limo purring next to my clattering ’82 Volvo sedan, a fashion maven with a slash of red lipstick giggles into her cellphone. Her smile fades when she sees me staring.
“Where you going, pretty lady?” I want to ask. But don’t. The answer is as clear as the pity leaking from her eyes. She’s heading to Mayhem! the BookHampton Mystery Festival. We’ll meet again.
There will be events at stores in East Hampton, Amagansett, Sag Harbor, and Southampton. According to Charline Spektor, an owner of BookHampton and the mastermind behind the festival, dubbed “the who’s who of whodunits,” Mayhem is a dose of “thrills, chills, and the opportunity to defrost” after a long winter of bad news piling up like toxic assets at A.I.G.
Starting with a mystery trivia quiz on Friday, May 15, and continuing on May 16 and May 17 with conversations, panels, and readings by 40 mystery writers, the festival will also screen “The Maltese Falcon” at the Amagansett Square branch on the 16th.
Ms. Spektor said it is time “to chill residents to help them warm up” with “an outstanding gathering of some of the greatest mystery and thriller writers, including thrill master Lee Child, former district attorney and best-selling author Linda Fairstein, and former writer-director of ‘Law and Order’ Lorenzo Carcaterra . . . and Long Island’s own brilliant mystery writer and social satirist Susan Isaacs.”
A panel discussion in Southampton on May 16 at 2 p.m., on “Books That Make Mystery Lovers Love Mysteries,” will be moderated by Chris Grabenstein and feature Michael Beil, Marco Conelli, and Vincent Lardo (a k a Lawrence Sanders), who wrote “The Hamptons Affair,” a bristling whodunit about the haves and have-nots from south of the highway, and “The Hamptons Connection,” in which greed and power on the East End make Wall Streeters seem like kindergartners on recess.
 Sigrid Estrada
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In Amagansett, same date and time, participants can step right over the crime scene tape to go to “When Women Got the Gun: The First Mystery Writers,” from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers, which will be discussed by S.J. Rozan, Megan Abbott, and Alafair Burke.
Also in Amagansett, at 7 p.m., “Talking About Noir: Why We Love Hammett, Cain, and Chandler” will be the topic of the night with Reed Coleman and Don Dahler, who will rev up the tension in a talk to accompany the screening of “The Maltese Falcon.”
“Among the undying conventions of detective fiction is the one that requires every retired cop to have a case that still haunts him,” a review in The New York Times said, but Mr. Coleman, who wrote his first novel while delivering fuel oil on the South Fork, “blows the dust off that cliché.”
For those readers in the mood to get “Zapped,” “Decked,” “Iced,” “Twanged,” “Fleeced,” etc., there will be two opportunities to hear Carol Higgins Clark read. Her latest installment in her Regan Reilly mysteries, “Cursed,” was published last month. The daughter and sometime collaborator with her mystery-writing-diva mother, Mary Higgins Clark, will be in Southampton on May 17 at 11 a.m. and in East Hampton at 2 p.m. that day.
Any sleuth worth his or her salt can find a list of the participating writers and a full schedule of the free events at bookhampton.com.