Elena Smith kicks off 2026 in style with her third interview of an SMFS member, and she's got a real all-star this time out. Josh Pachter is a recipient of the Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in Short Mystery Fiction, and has received or been nominated for more awards than can easily be listed. He's published scores of fantastic stories, and translated dozens more from a variety of languages. He's also edited a number of terrific anthologies, and anybody who's had the pleasure of meeting him knows that he's a great conversationalist with a plethora of amazing tales from the history of our genre and his own globe-trotting adventures. Take it away, Elena!
Your first story was published by EQMM when you were a
teenager. Was it the first one you submitted, or had you been trying for a
while?
“E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name” was written when I was
sixteen, but I’d turned seventeen by the time EQMM published it in their
December 1968 issue. As far as I can remember, it was the first time I’d ever
written a piece of fiction. I’d previously contributed a poem to a fanzine
published by the Soupy Sales fan club. (It was called “The Midnight Ride of
Soupy Sales,” and it began, “Listen, my children, no cries, no wails, / And
I’ll tell you the story of Soupy Sales.” And, yes, I still have a copy of the
fanzine on my bookshelves. I was about twelve or thirteen when it came
out….)
Which mystery authors were your early influences? What was
it that engaged you in their work?
Ellery Queen, of course. Rex Stout, Agatha Christie. I
think what engaged me more than the crimes, more than the mysteries, were the
characters, those idiosyncratic, intelligent people who were able to use their
minds to make sense out of confusion. One short story that was uniquely
influential was Richard Deming’s “Open File,” a police procedural in which the
cops failed to solve the case they were investigating. I read it in an
EQMM reprint anthology in 1967 and thought that enough clues had been presented
to make the identity of the guilty party obvious. So at the age of fifteen I
wrote a new ending and sent it off to the magazine. A couple of weeks later, I
received a two-page handwritten response from editor Frederic Dannay, who was
also half of the “Ellery Queen” writing team, suggesting that I try writing a
complete story of my own. I did, and that was “E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name,”
and Mr. Dannay bought it.
How long have you been a member of SMFS?
A little more than six years.
How did you learn about SMFS?
I think it was probably either Rob Lopresti or Michael
Bracken who suggested I join.
Are there other professional organizations you’d recommend
joining?
SMFS is the first professional organization I recommend
people interested in crime fiction join, even if they’re not themselves
writers. I think it provides more day-by-day value than any of the other
organizations I belong to … and unlike most of the others, which charge annual
dues, SMFS is free! I’m also a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of
America, and International Thriller Writers (also free). The SMFS list serve
provides market news, cautionary notes about iffy publishers, and especially camaraderie
every single day, and I don’t get nearly as much of that anywhere else. And of
course I like the idea of being able to participate actively in the nomination
and voting and (occasionally, when my time permits) judging parts of the
Derringer process. Then there’s the f2f lunch every spring at the Malice
Domestic conference, which is always attended by fifteen or so members and
always a good time.
I have read several of your short stories – “Monkey
Business,” “The Great Filling Station Holdup,” and “Only the Good Die Young,”
from the anthologies of the same names. I’ve noticed your skill with dialects.
In “Monkey Business,” it’s intellectual; in “The Great Filling Station Holdup,”
it’s southern twang, and “Only the Good Die Young” hat-tips classic detective
noir. Do you write your stories then go back and apply the dialect, or do your
characters speak to you as you create?
I’ve always been good with languages and accents. When I’m
writing characters with distinctive voices, I just write their dialogue the way
it seems to me it ought to sound. Then I
read my stories aloud before I submit them, and if bits of dialogue don’t sound
right, I fix them.
How do you know so many dialects? Is it because you have
lived in different places, or is it from binge-watching TV?
Well, I don’t really watch a lot of television, but I lived
in Europe and the Middle East for more than a decade, teaching on US military
bases. All that time spent in other parts of the world has helped me develop an
ear for other ways of speaking. I’m glad to know that you think I do it well.
Thanks!
You have edited eight anthologies of crime stories inspired
by songs written by well-known singer/songwriters and rock groups. Have some
been more successful than others? If so, what do you attribute that to?
How do you define “success”? How I define it is: “Would the
question ‘Have people read the book and enjoyed it?’ be answered with a ‘Yes’?”
And by that definition, all eight of the books have been equally successful. I
recognize, though, that other people have other definitions of success, and by those
definitions, sure, some of the books have been more successful than others. The
Joni Mitchell and Jimmy Buffett books have — so far —
sold the most copies, but perhaps that’s not surprising, since they were the
first two to be published and have therefore been out in the world the
longest.
The Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Beatles, and Grateful Dead
volumes were all finalists for the Best Anthology Anthony Award that’s given
out at Bouchercon every year, and the Dead one was a finalist for 2025’s
first-ever Best Anthology Derringer. Stacy Woodson’s take on “River” from the
Joni book and Michael Bracken’s on “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” from the Billy Joel
one won Derringers, and Dru Ann Love and Kristopher Zgorski’s “Ticket to Ride”
from the Beatles anthology won the Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards. James
D.F. Hannah’s “No Man’s Land” from the Billy Joel book was reprinted in The
Best American Mystery and Suspense, and David Avallone’s “The Golden Road
(To Unlimited Devotion)” from the Dead one was reprinted in Best Mystery
Stories of the Year. The Stephen Sondheim book had a standing-room-only
launch event featuring ten of the twenty contributors at the Drama Book Shop in
New York and was recently streamed as an episode of the DBS’s Drama Book
Show podcast.
All of these are examples of measures of success. To what
do I attribute the fact that certain books achieved some of them while others
didn’t? I wish I knew. If I understood what comprised that secret sauce, I
would apply it to all of my projects!
Were you the first person to do this? If so, what gave you
the idea?
No. To the best of my knowledge, Joe Clifford got there
first, with anthologies inspired by the songs of Bruce Springsteen in 2014 and
Johnny Cash in 2017. In 2019, I wrote a story inspired by Joni Mitchell’s “The
Beat of Black Wings” and couldn’t find an appropriate market for it. I happened
to stumble across Clifford’s books right around then and thought, I know
what I’ll do! I’ll edit a book of stories inspired by Joni songs, and then I
can buy my story from myself! Not only did that work out, but it turned
out to be fun, so I decided to do more of them, inspired by the songs of other
lyricists I admire … plus an anthology inspired by the films of the Marx
Brothers.
I was fortunate to find publishers who were interested in
taking on the books, and the books have been fortunate to find readers who’ve
been interested in reading them. Unfortunately, the publisher who
released the Joni, Billy Joel, and Marx Brothers books was bought out by a
company that didn’t want to support short-form fiction, and the company that
did the Buffett, Simon, Beatles, and Dead books shut down with no warning two
weeks before it was supposed to release a similar volume of stories inspired by
Lyle Lovett songs. The good news is that Open Road Integrated Media re-released
the Joni anthology in January 2025 and will be putting out the Lyle book and
re-releasing the Beatles and Dead books in 2026, then in 2027 doing new
editions of the Buffett and Simon books (with new stories inspired by songs
from the albums Jimmy and Paul released after those books’ original
publications), while Level Best will be re-releasing the Marx and Billy Joel
books (each with a new story that wasn’t in the original edition).
When you read for pleasure, do you have a favorite mystery/
crime genre?
Not really. I have favorite authors, mostly people I’ve
been reading for a long time (Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, John D. MacDonald), plus
some who younger readers would call old-timers but who to me are “newer”
writers (James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Lawrence Block). I will gladly read
everyone who seems interesting to me — men, women, nonbinary, straight,
LGBTQIA+, Caucasian, POC, American, international — but I acknowledge that,
when I look at that short list of favorites, all six of them are straight white
American men. I feel as if I ought to apologize for that, but I’m not sure what
exactly I’d be apologizing for. For liking what I like?
When you write, do you have a favorite mystery/ crime
genre?
My stuff used to be all over the map, but recently I’ve
been concentrating on two series, each of them in a subgenre that’s relatively new
to me. My Helmut Erhard stories are about a private eye who, despite his German
name, is a Texan, born and bred, and my Dr. Guislain stories are historicals,
set in Ghent (Belgium) in the mid-Nineteenth Century. There are fourteen Helmut
stories so far, with more to come, but the Dr. Guislain stories are a
miniseries — for a reason that is revealed in the fifth and final story.
Are there any mystery/crime genres that you have not yet
written in? Which ones? Do you plan to try them out some day?
Hmm. I’ve done a traditional whodunit novel (Dutch
Threat, Genius Book Publishing), a children’s/YA mystery (First Week
Free at the Roomy Toilet, Level Best Books), a mystery/horror crossover
(“Pisan Zapra,” AHMM, November 2016), pastiches (my Puzzle Club miniseries), and
parodies (of Ellery Queen, Ed McBain, and Edward D. Hoch). I have not
done a science-fiction mystery, so perhaps I’ll give that a shot at some point.
Who would you recommend that I interview next? (Feel free
to name more than one person)
Since your previous interviews were men, how about going
with a woman next? I recommend Barb Goffman, who has been a finalist for major
crime-fiction awards umpty-eleven times, won more of them than I can count, and
received the SMFS’s Golden Derringer in 2024.
Or, taking my logic two steps further, since your first
three interviews were with straight white men, how about interviewing a queer
Black woman next? In that case, I vote for Cheryl Head, who in addition to her
many accomplishments as a writer is also co-chair of the organizing committee
for the 2027 Bouchercon, which will be held in Washington, D.C.
