The Disorganized Organization

Features “I also wonder about how Hong Kong is perceived by those who do not live here or those who imagine it in passing. We can see ourselves, or so we think, but how are we seen?” – “Hong Kong Table Talks,” by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho Read Tammy Lai-Ming Ho’s introduction to the Hong Kong cover feature starting on page 52. top Mong Kok bottom Smartphone Culture Photos: Eddie Tay WORLDLIT.ORG 9 TOP PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS The Disorganized Organization The International Association of Crime Writers after Three Decades by J. Madison Davis CRIME & MYSTERY C IRCUMSTANCES WERE QUITE different in 1986 when the International Association of Crime Writers was founded. Ronald Reagan was the US president. Spain and Portugal had just joined the European Economic Community. On the positive side of the ledger, dictators Ferdinand Marcos and “Baby Doc” Duvalier were booted from their palaces that year. On the negative, the Challenger space shuttle and the Chernobyl nuclear disasters both occurred. Global tensions ran high, not the least of which were fears that hardliners might seize control of the Soviet Union, reversing Gorbachev’s reforms, and finally turn the Cold War hot. There are conflicting accounts of the founding of the International Association of Crime Writers, but the usual story is that a group of writers, mostly Latin American, were invited to a hotel in Havana and included Jiří Procházka of Czechoslovakia, Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Rafael Ramírez Heredia of Mexico, Daniel Chavarría of Uruguay, Julian Semyonov of the USSR, and Alberto Molina and Rodolfo Pérez of Cuba. Roger Simon and William Bayer of the United States were also soon involved. The organization’s early objective was to increase communication among crime writers of all nations, but particularly across the Iron Curtain as it weakened. Fueled initially by the indefatigable Taibo’s photos, clockwise from top: Members of AIEP in front of Ernest Hemingway’s house in 1994. AIEP dinner in Reykjavík. Group photo in Unna, Germany. 10 WLT SPRING 2019 enthusiasm (which in turn was fueled by an endless parade of Coca-Colas and cigarettes), the group grew to an estimated thousand members. Taibo is still making news this year as the controversially appointed head of Mexico’s state press, the FCE (Fondo de Cultura Económica). Generally called AIEP (“aye-ep”) from the Spanish acronym of Asociacón Internacional de Escritores Policíacos, the association held meetings in many locations over the years in cities such as Amsterdam; Daun, Germany; Berlin; Vienna; Gijón, Spain; Reykjav ík; Frontenac, France; Antwerp; Havana; Varna, Bulgaria; Prague; Toronto; Oxford; and even Oklahoma City. Although the meeting was often associated with, for convenience’ sake, fan meetings or book fairs, with panels open to the public, most of the meetings were intended for the writers to share information about the art and publishing of crime writing. Some countries without a culture of crime writing joined to seek guidance in developing their art. Others intended to promote the translation of their native works into the American and British markets. Meetings held in the “Eastern bloc” were often sponsored by the writers’ unions, and the impossibility of controlling writers’ normal unruliness was viewed with more than a little wariness. Eastern writers were sometimes accompanied by a “watcher.” There was a meeting in Prague in which the attendees were aware that one of the Czech delegates was in danger of arrest if the organization passed a motion supporting free speech, which the government took a dim view of. In the US (and I understand in the UK), occasionally AIEP was attacked for being “a bunch of Commies,” to quote an eminent American publisher. “Anarchists” might have been more appropriate, as the argument about how organized the group should be continues to this day. A constitution was finally composed in 1995, and I remember how proudly Canadian author Eric Wright described his struggle to have AIEP adopt Robert’s Rules of Order. It was probably easier for Hannibal to cross the Alps, but like Hannibal, Eric accomplished the impossible. When the Cold War ended, AIEP continued as an organization for the purpose of promoting crime writing as art

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