A Visit to the Mullzinis

I'm visiting my daughter, Angela, and her husband, Tom, in sunny Sonoma, California.  Today, Art Scott and Bruce Taylor came over from Livermore and Napa, respectively, and kidnapped me.  Sort of.  They said they had a big surprise for me, but they wouldn't say what it was.  They just bundled me into Bruce's Honda CRV and took off for and undisclosed location somewhere in California.  The surprise was a visit to the home of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, two great writers whom it was a pleasure to see.  But the real purpose of the visit was the guided tour of the finest collection of crime fiction west of the Mississippi: hardbacks, paperbacks, and pulps included.  I've never seen such great stuff all in one place.  There's no need for me to enumerate things.  If you can think of a key crime fiction title, it was there.  In jacket and signed.  Okay, maybe not all of them, but wow.  Just wow.  And the pulps were amazing.  The paperbacks, too.   At least I own a couple of the paperbacks.  Maybe one or two of the hardbacks.  None of the pulps.  It was tough not to writhe in envy, but I managed it.  Bill, generous to a fault, even gave me a couple of his dupes.  Art and Bruce gave me even more books.  I have small pile of near mint Laser books and some other great crime paperbacks to take home with me.  This was better than the Kayo haul  And when we came back to Sonoma, Tom grilled some New York strip steaks, and Angela had mashed potatoes and salad and butter cake ready to go.  All in all, a great day.