VILLAINS MOST VILE A panel of mystery authors talks about how to write villains that are terrifying yet credible. Philip Margolin ventures into Grisham territory with The Associate, his novel involving a young Portland lawyer who's entangled in a case involving an ethically suspect pharmaceutical company. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jess Walter recently took a "stab" at fiction; his Over Tumbled Graves concerns a Spokane serial killer and his would-be captors. English writer Peter Robinson returns with another Alan Banks novel, Aftermath; this time the detective chief inspector of the Yorkshire Police is tracking a psycho who's slaughtering attractive young girls. Moderated by Robert Ferrigno, the local novelist behind the just-released Flinch. Maclean Stage, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
MURDER IN SMALL TOWN X: THE POLITICS OF COMMUNITY CALAMITY Four authors detail what happens when death infiltrates small-town society. Set in 1965 on a tiny island in the South Pacific, Andrew Sean Greer's The Path of Minor Planets shows how lives change course when a young boy dies in a meteor shower. In The Haunting of Hood Canal, Jack Cady's first novel since his retirement from Pacific Lutheran University, a river attacks its neighboring Puget Sound town after the corpse of a murdered child molester is dumped in its waters. Old Man Lawton has mysteriously disappeared in Michael Collins' The Keepers of the Truth, which takes place in a nameless rust belt town steeped in economic decline. Things are even more amiss in the nonfictional The Cooper's Wife Is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary, co-written by Joan Hoff (who appears today) and Marian Yeates. This unsettling work recalls the 1895 trial, torture, and murder by her own family of an Irish woman thought to be under the spell of fairies. Stafford Stage, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
SUZANNE BERNEL
Kip Fulbeck
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CHOKE HOLD: CHUCK PALAHNIUK Like Fight Club's Tyler Durden, the protagonist of Portland author Palahniuk's new novel, Choke, is a man's man nursing a wounded ego. Reacting to his inconsequentiality, sex addict and medical school dropout Victor Mancini puffs himself up to Christlike proportions by making people need his help. He gags on his food in public places to enable ordinary diners to become heroes, and he argues against euthanasia for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother because, "Even if it means keeping her crippled, I want to be someone's constant savior." While parts of Choke's plot lack plausibility, the novel's characters could use a touch of compassion. Almost everyone's a fuckup on the Palahniukian plane of existence, from the theme park's K-taking stable boy to the Japanese sun bear at the zoo that "tossed its little mess on the rocks." Readers who were fond of Tyler's rant against his Swedish furniture in Fight Club will be pleased to find similar diatribes throughout Choke. Palahniuk's a master of the impassioned microessay, and Victor a wry expert on everything from American consumerism to the female ear. Choke may be hard to swallow, but at least we can feel it trying to go down. Hugo Stage, 3-4 p.m.
BEHIND THE BLEEP: COPYRIGHT, CENSORSHIP, AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS Two controversial figures talk about what happens when creativity clashes with the First Amendment. Starring Scarlett O'Hara's mixed-race sister, Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone offers a pointed parody of Margaret Mitchell's 1937 tome, Gone With the Wind. Upon hearing of Randall's writing project—which, thankfully, recently made its way into print—Mitchell's estate blew its own wind about copyright infringement. As director of the Free Expression Policy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship, Marjorie Hines is familiar with what riles people into stopping the presses. In Not in Front of the Children, she traces the history and philosophy of the "harm-to-minors" argument, from the persecution of Plato to George Carlin's "seven dirty words" to the Communications Decency Act. Carver Stage, 4:15-5:15 p.m.
