"WE CAME TO GRIPS WITH MANY OF THESE CHANGES AND SETTLED INTO A NEW REALITY": PRIVATE DICKS AND DISCO BALLS EDITOR MICHAEL BRACKEN

Private Dicks and Disco Balls is a wonderful and fun anthology with detective tales that take place in the seventies. Tales touch on the gender politics of the time, disco, Star Wars, and other things associated with the decade. I asked editor Michael Bracken about the project.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: You did the Groovy Gumshoes anthologies with sixties-set writings. Did you notice any general shared differences from stories set in the seventies from that decade?

MIchael Bracken: From a practical standpoint, one of the differences between the two sixties private eye anthologies (Groovy Gumshoes and More Groovy Gumshoes) and the seventies private eye anthology (Private Dicks and Disco Balls) was that Groovy Gumshoes was open-call and Private Dicks was invitation-only.

Because Groovy Gumshoes was open-call, I had no idea what to expect from potential contributors, and I wound up with more good stories than I could fit into a single volume. I asked several contributors if I could hold stories for a potential follow-up and, months later, the publisher greenlit More Groovy Gumshoes. (That turned out to be fortuitous for Stacy Woodson, whose story “One Night in 1965” from More Groovy Gumshoes has been nominated for a Macavity Award and a Thriller Award and been selected for inclusion in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year.)

On the other hand, Private Dicks and Disco Balls was invitation-only, which meant I had a good idea what to expect from the contributors.

In terms of the stories, though, the events of the two decades generated different approaches to the fiction. During the sixties, we experienced great social and political upheaval, and society as we knew it changed dramatically. During the seventies, we came to grips with many of these changes and settled into a new reality. I think the stories reflect these differences.

S.M.: Detective fiction really came of age in the seventies and went in many different directions. What do you think caused this?

M.B.: Traditional publishing moves slowly, much like pouring molasses uphill, and I think publishing in the seventies finally caught up with the significant societal changes of the sixties, much like the rise of female private eyes in the early eighties may have been positively impacted by advancement in equal rights during the seventies.

S.M.: Were you surprised to have two stories involving The Riggs-King Match?

M.B.: “The Battle of the Sexes,” as the tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King was dubbed, was a significant and extremely public step forward in the ongoing struggle for equal rights, proving that women can compete successfully against men. I think it serves as a touchpoint for all the advancement in women’s rights during the seventies, rights that, sadly, seem to be eroding. So, I’m not surprised that it plays a role in two of the stories in Private Dicks and Disco Balls.

S.M.: Were there any topics of the decade you wish you had a story for?

M.B.: The shooting at Kent State, Nixon’s resignation, the end of the Vietnam War, the assassination of Harvey Milk and the Twinkie defense, and so many other events could have been backdrops for stories set in the seventies.

S.M.: What are at least three seventies private eye novels that represent the genre in that decade?

M.S.: I’m not certain I can identify three novels that best represent the private eye genre in the seventies, but Lawrence Block’s series about Matthew Scudder, which began with The Sins of the Fathers, is what I most associate with the era.

S.M.: Any plans to go into the eighties?

M.B.: I recently delivered Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties, which includes fourteen new private eye stories, to Down & Out Books, and we have a tentative April 2025 publication date.

I’m currently toying with the idea of editing an anthology of private eye stories set in the nineties, but I haven’t yet pitched it to a publisher.