Bozeman News

Retiring to a nudist camp

Former MSU Mathematicians Launch Mystery Series

By Marjorie Smith, 3-29-07

I don’t suppose it’s up there with golf and fishing yet, but I’m guessing novel and memoir writing are gaining on those traditional retirement pursuits. With the desktop publishing revolution, to say nothing of the opportunities opened up by e-publishing and on-demand printing, aspiring writers have more opportunities than ever before to get their words out into the universe. No longer constrained by the narrow vision of traditional publishers seeking surefire blockbusters or by greedy vanity publishers, writers with something to say can say it now, again and again.

While some late-blooming devote themselves to memoirs or volumes of advice aimed at the younger generation, the Bozeman writing team of Byron and Kay McAllister has launched a series of tongue-in-cheek murder mysteries set in a nudist camp. Their second novel, Runaway Nudist has just come out in paperback after being available as an on-line read for a few months. A third,To Kill a Nudist is currently available on-line and will be out in paper in a few months.

I’ll confess, when I heard that the McAllisters had published their first book a year ago, I was startled. I’d known Byron was interested in mystery writing – I’d run into him at a couple of writer’s groups shortly after he retired from his career as a math professor at MSU. But I hadn’t realized that Kay was also into murder and mayhem.

And yes, I was also curious about the word “nudist.” I’ve known these folks for over 20 years, visited in their home, interviewed them for a long-ago story about student exchanges to exotic lands. Was it possible that these very professorial people were nudists? In Montana?

When I talked to them about the first book, they quickly erased those naughty images from my voyeuristic mind. They’d never been near a nudist camp, they said—they researched everything about “naturists” (as nudists prefer to be known) on the internet.

So were they just looking for a catchy title?

Byron explained that he had analyzed the mysteries he enjoyed reading. “I wanted to set up a situation like that of Nero Wolfe,” he said, referring to the novels by Rex Stout. “Wolfe can’t go out and investigate things because he’s so fat he’s practically housebound. So he sends an amateur out to do his legwork. Our hero, Ned Nackero, prefers not to put his clothes on, so he sends his nephew.” That was in the first book, Undercover Nudist, where an amazingly naïve teenager named Tim helps solve a five-year-old murder mystery.

In Runaway Nudist, the McAllisters use a far more experienced set of legs to get out into the world and bring back information. In fact, for much of the book, Barbara Bassett is doing her best not to cooperate with Nackero and Carola Szegy, his partner-in-crime-solving, nudism and gourmet cooking. Barbara is a professional burglar who comes to Motherlode, Montana, because she’s heard that a very wealthy woman is moving into a newly completed mansion there, along with scads of valuable paintings and jewelry. Barbara believes in “liberating” property which folks don’t really need when they leave it strewn about where she happens upon it. She is not only befriended by Ned and Carola, but she falls for the local sheriff, an amateur in law-enforcement because he was elected to the position without any particular interest in or aptitude for the post.

Make no mistake, the McAllisters are not attempting to perpetrate great literature. They are clearly having a great time making up situations and characters and weird names. In the tradition of Rex Stout, they lavish attention on the meals that their central characters cook and eat. They tend to skip past some of the messier plot questions they raise. But they pepper their pages with an entertaining, quirky point of view that sometimes seems more fit for Byron’s basso-profundo than for their heroine/narrator’s presumed soprano.

Byron says he got into writing after he realized that his post-retirement math research wasn’t going any place. He began writing poems and eventually had some accepted by little magazines that paid in copies. When she retired a few years after Byron, Kay started working with him (“I’m better at cutting; he’s better at adding words,” she says) and they actually sold some poems for money. So they moved on to writing short mystery stories, working their way up to a novel.

They have strong opinions about much current fiction. “There’s a lot of aggression in mystery writing today,” Byron says. “Publishers say they want characters that are well defined, but then they buy stuff that caters to what’s on the front pages. Instead of the intricate puzzles of the past, they’re moving toward serial killer thrillers.”

When their first book came out I asked the all-American question: “Do you expect to make money on this?”

Byron laughed. “There’s no reason to think so,” he said. In the year since, they sold two dozen copies through local independent bookstores. Byron checked the monthly reports from the publisher (Cambridge Books) and discovered that they had apparently sold 20 paper copies and 24 downloaded ones over the year via that route.

“Compared to the greats of mystery writing, these results are pathetic,” Byron says, “but then the greats have a great deal more going for them in terms of publishers’ help with advertising and placement, so we’re not weeping.  We decided several years ago not to list writing as a professional expense to the IRS since writing has failed to balloon into a second profession. 

“Let’s face it,” he adds, “it’s a moderately expensive hobby, and the returns can’t be expected to come anywhere near covering the costs.”
Bozeman readers can find the McAllisters’ first two novels at the Country Bookshelf on Main Street. The printed version is also available on Amazon.com and both novels, along with their newest, To Kill a Nudist, can be downloaded from the publisher at http://www.ebooksonthe.net.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.