The House of Books in Kent, Connecticut has a treat in store for mystery lovers this Saturday, Nov. 13, as two Litchfield County locals sit down for a chat about the ins and outs of their genre.

Author Gregory Galloway, whose previous works include The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand and the Alex Award-winning As Simple As Snow, has a new novel out: Just Thieves, which author Richard Price describes as “a sucker punch noir that is also a powerful and haunting allegory of work, debt, and power.” He’ll be talking with Otto Penzler, creator of American Mystery Classics, founder of the Mysterious Press, Mysterious Press.com, and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop, enthralling the mystery-minded since 1979.

“I didn’t read mysteries as a kid,” says Penzler. “I was a sportswriter till the age of 30. But once I finished up my English degree at the University of Michigan, I wanted to keep reading, but I didn’t want to keep hurting my head with the likes of Proust and Joyce.”

Penzler soon discovered Raymond Chandler, whose works served as launching pad for a lifelong love and crusade. “I hated the fact that mysteries were treated like second-class citizens, banished to the back of the bus,” he says. “I wanted to change that, and in fact it has changed, though I’m hardly the only person responsible. But half of the New York Times best-seller list is mystery, crime and suspense these days, even if they only give the genre one little column every other week.”

Expect it to be given full honors at Saturday’s event. Galloway, whose launch party for As Simple as Snow took place at the Mysterious Bookshop in 2006, is excited at the prospect of a talk with Penzler, saying Penzler’s anthologies have been invaluable resources for his own creative process.

“He’s the man,” says Galloway. “I’m excited to get to sit down with him and talk about the genre, uncover some of what he knows. And it’s really cool that we’re both local.” Galloway is a native of Cornwall. Penzler has lived in Kent for three decades, having built himself a dream home there that took a dozen years to complete and features a turret, a gargoyle and a library that holds 60,000 volumes.

Galloway says his new work is his darkest yet. “It features more adult problems than my earlier works — my first two were dark, but probably not noir. A Russian writer who’d spent time in the Gulag said that Americans tend to romanticize criminals because most haven’t known them; that’s arguable. But I find something fascinating about creating characters you might not want in your life but enjoy knowing within the story — it’s a great lens for exploring the ambiguity of right and wrong, good and evil.”

Just Thieves is the tale of Rick and Frank, two recovering addicts who engage in what Galloway describes as “bespoke thievery. The germ of it came to me with two guys sitting in a car talking about what things have value and worth, what’s replaceable and what’s not. I started thinking, what if these two guys are waiting to rob a house? And they’re not doing it on their own behalf; it’s a custom order. I started to imagine their whole universe.”

Penzler, meanwhile, has published three fresh anthologies in the last two months: The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries, Golden Age Mystery Stories, and The Mysterious Bookshop Presents: Best Mystery Stories of the Year. Talk about prolific.

“Not out of the ordinary,” he says. “I’ve worked 72-hour weeks for the last 40 years. It’s what I do, but unfortunately it’s cost me all three of my wives — I’m married to a store, a publishing company and a literary genre. Really, I have a blessed life.”

The chat will be the last event for House of Books at its temporary digs at 4 North Main Street in Kent. Stay tuned for news of a triumphant reopening of its permanent home at 10 North Main after a two-year renovation. It’s happening this Saturday, Nov. 13 from 6 til 7 p.m.; RSVP to attend in person, or register here to livestream via Zoom.

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