Meetings

The Middle Tennessee Chapter meets monthly, except for October when the Southern Festival of Books is held in downtown Nashville. Until 2006, the December meeting was devoted to a Christmas Party. Since everyone seemed overburdened with parties during the holidays, we switched to a Post Holiday Blues Party on the meeting date in January.

The meetings are held at 6:00 p.m. in the private room at Bronte Bistro, downstairs at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in the Mall at Green Hills on Hillsboro Pike. Those who like can stay for dinner after the meeting. We are currently alternating between the Bronte Bistro at the bookstore and Ruby Tuesday's across the parking lot.

We provide a variety of speakers, including both local and visiting mystery authors, law enforcement personnel such as homicide detectives and crime scene investigators, and others of interest to the mystery community. In the summer we will have a discussion of a popular mystery, led by member Lynette Ingram.

Here is our starting lineup for 2008:

January 8, Post Holiday Blues Party at Callhoun's Restaurant on White Bridge Road.

February 12, Betty Webb, Scottsdale, AZ author of the Lena Jones Desert Mysteries. Her fifth book in the series, Desert Cut, will be out just in time for the meeting. Betty spoke to our chapter in 2003 about her second book, Desert Wives, which created quite a stir with its depiction of polygamist enclaves along the Arizona/Utah border.

March 11, River Jordan, author of The Messenger of Magnolia Street. Besides writing and speaking around the country, this Nashvillian produces Backstory with River Jordan each Saturday on WRFN, 98.9FM.

April 8, Phyllis Gobbell, co-author of An Unfinished Canvas, the true story of Janet and Perry March, a murder mystery that captivated Nashville for a decade. Phyllis is a past president of The Tennessee Writers Alliance.

May 13, Dewey Lambdin, longtime chapter member and author of the Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures series. His 14th book in the series, Troubled Waters, was published in February.

June 10, Homicide Detective David Achord, who works in Metro's South Precinct. He served as J.T. Ellison's police expert in writing All the Pretty Girls, her debut book about Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson.

July 8, Book Discussion led by Lynette Ingram. We'll be discussing this year's Edgar Award Winner for Best First Novel by an American Author, In the Woods by Tana French.

August 12, book publicist Maryglenn McCombs.

September 9, Timothy Hallinan, whose new book, The Fourth Watcher, is the second in a series about travel writer Poke Rafferty, now a resident of Bangkok.

October (no meeting—Southern Festival of Books is October 10-12)

November 11, JT Ellison, whose second book in the Taylor Jackson series, 14, will be out in September.

December 9, TBA