The Heirs of Anthony Boucher Marvin Lachman

The Nineteen-Seventies
paperbacks, was ejected from a bookstore in Buffalo, where he was booking with
George Kelley, by a less-than-rational owner. Graeme Flanagan of Australia went
booking in the only second-hand bookstore in Port Moresby, Papua, New Guinea.
Many members put considerable effort into their magazines Some write book
reviews and articles. Scott (and others) include photographs taken at Bouchercons.
Former member Dave Lewis did considerable research in writing about Frederick
Nebel. I have written parodies and in an attempt at humor, I wrote “If I Were Official
Editor,” imagining the platform on which each member would run against Scott for
that position. Obviously what I was writing was fantasy, since during my twenty-five
years of membership no one has been willing to seek the office and do the work that
he does.
DAPA-EMers are interested in their history. For several years, Jeff Smith wrote
“50 Mailings Ago,” describing each mailing since the first. In May 1989, picking up
with the 30th mailing, I began a column that I first called “A Touch of the Past,” then
“Down Memory Lane,” but renamed with its present title, “Remembrances of Mailings
Past,” in July 1990.
Members have generally been American, though several lived in Canada, another
in Australia, and two in England. Every region of the United States has been represented
at one time or another. Backgrounds vary, with librarians, teachers, and
government workers predominating. There have also been lawyers, policemen, a
fireman, and a pharmacist. With 125 people having been members in the past or at
present, space does not permit me to describe each, but some stand out and define
DAPA-EM.
When Ellen Nehr died in 1995, she was called the “heart and soul of DAPA-EM.”
One year she came to Bouchercon wearing a t-shirt proclaiming her “DAPA-EM
Den Mother.” She enjoyed Bouchercons and DAPA-EM room parties so much that
she complained loudly if World Series games were played on television, calling them
distractions from the yearly conventions she so anticipated.
Ellen had been an officer in the US Air Force, and few were surprised to learn
that, considering her strong opinions and personality. For dinner during the 1980
Bouchercon, thirty-one people, members of DAPA-EM, their spouses and friends,
went to a restaurant where Nehr announced to the waiters, after everyone had been
seated, “Separate checks.” Yet, despite her hard-boiled exterior (which masked a soul
of great generosity), she insisted on calling herself “a typical American housewife,”
and her reading tastes ran to the coziest of mysteries.
Ellen felt strongly about the authors she disliked, especially Robert B. Parker, creator
of Spenser. She read one of his books only because she lost a bet. When I started
my book on regional mysteries, she wrote me, “If you promise to leave Parker out of
your New England listing, I promise to answer both the letters of complaint you get
when the book is published.” I decided Parker’s Boston mysteries were too important
to take advantage of her offer.
While Nehr disliked hardboiled crime fiction, she felt equally strongly about
other types, opining, “You will never convince me that Sherlock Holmes is either
readable or viewable.” She recommended that people not read an Edgar-winning
biography of S. S. Van Dine because he was “a nasty man.” Yet, she loved scholarship
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