I hadn’t been to Malice Domestic since 2018, but as soon as I walked through the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, and turned the corner into the corridor leading to the conference center, the setting was instantly familiar.

There were the conference rooms with chairs in rows facing long tables on platforms—all ready for panelists to take their places and talk about poison or older sleuths or furry friends or any one of a number of mystery-related topics. There was the escalator, leading down to the lower level with the hospitality lounge and the booksellers’ room. And of course there were the attendees, women mostly, eagerly awaiting the mixture of fun and fandom that is the Malice Domestic mystery conference.

Malice Domestic is held yearly on the last weekend in April. It’s a conference for devotees of the traditional mystery, that classic style that focuses more on a puzzling plot and unique characters than on mayhem and gore.

The traditional mystery is, as the Malice Domestic organizers have said in a nod to the traditional mystery’s British origins, “not everyone’s cup of tea.” But as Malice Domestic attendance, in the hundreds, demonstrates, devotees are plentiful.

Malice, to use the frequently employed shorthand term, is primarily a fan conference. Both writers and readers attend, but the focus is on readers connecting with their favorite writers rather than on writers congregating to learn more about the craft of writing and meet agents and editors.

Besides the many many panels that give mystery readers a chance to hear mystery writers opine on mystery topics, the conference offers other delights.

There are celebrity guests—among them this year was Ann Cleves, the author of the Vera mysteries that have now been dramatized in one of those marvelous BBC productions.

There is the Saturday-evening banquet at which the Agatha awards—for categories including best contemporary novel, best historical novel, and best short story—are announced and the winners presented with the trophy—a teapot. The awards are called the Agathas in homage to Agatha Christie, of course.

There are plenty of opportunities for attendees to buy books and have them signed by their authors. Malice Domestic is such a book-buying extravaganza for some attendees that the conference offers shipping services.

My panel assignment was Scene of the Crime: Setting as Character, moderated by the very capable Andrea Johnson. After the panel, we adjourned to the booksellers’ room where we signed copies of our books, and then I took part in another book-signing event, organized by Kensington Press.

Each Kensington author in attendance was provided with a whole carton of her (we were mostly “her”) latest release, and we gave them away and signed them for all comers until the carton was empty. It was rather like Halloween trick-or-treat except with books rather than candy.

This year’s Malice Domestic was the 35th—and tremendous thanks and congratulations go to the people, all volunteers, who make it happen. I missed the conference in 2019 because I had just broken my wrist (no great harm done but very annoying).

The conference was held virtually in 2020 and 2021 because of Covid, and in 2022 a lot of people, including me, were still wary of large gatherings and stayed away. So this year was a wonderful return to normalcy, which happily coincided with that significant 35th anniversary.

So, yes, the setting was the same—but I hardly knew anyone there! When I first started attending Malice, I wasn’t yet a published writer but I had a large, mostly online, group of friends who were also unpublished writers.

Through the Sisters in Crime listserv, I had connected with a subgroup that called itself the Guppies—for “Great Unpublished.” The Guppies always turned out for Malice Domestic and it was huge fun to hobnob in person with my online Guppy friends.

Many of the Guppies are no longer Guppies, but are now published—and so busy with their writing that they no longer attend Malice Domestic. Other Guppies, sadly, have given up on their quest to become published and they also no longer attend the conference.

So I missed seeing a lot of familiar faces and catching up with old friends. But this year I had another conference companion instead. For the first time in all my years of attending Malice Domestic, my husband came along—in fact he heroically drove the whole five hours to Bethesda, in a pouring rainstorm, from our house in northern New Jersey.

He’s a longstanding mystery fan, and almost all our screen-watching at home is devoted to mysteries—but he has another passion as well. As it happened, the Pittsburgh Pirates were playing the Washington Nationals at National Park just a short Metro ride from the conference hotel.

Magically, the rain we’d driven through cleared during the night. He spent Saturday afternoon watching the Pirates beat the Nats and had his own version of a wonderful time.

Everyone who wants to attend Malice Domestic is welcome, and planning is already underway for 2024. Just visit the website at www.malicedomestic.org