I’m not crazy about the idea of rehashing stories from columns in other newspapers, but this one is too good to pass up. I have to give credit to Keith J. Kelly of the New York Post for a two-part tale.

Several years ago, Mr. Kelly broke the story that a Harvard graduate who was a literary millionaire was working for the New York Police Department. Since the policeman was working undercover, Mr. Kelly rightly did not divulge the officer’s name when he learned that the real-life cop story of working in a South Bronx housing project was auctioned to a publisher for nearly $1 million.

This was pretty big news, but NBC, the Associated Press, and other press outlets also did not divulge the author’s real name. Five days later, with its usual timeliness and sense of decency, the New York Times outed the author. A journalist named Alex Kuczynski published the cop’s real name for the first time, which must have gladdened the hearts of the city’s drug dealers.

“Blue Blood” by Ed Conlon went on to become a best seller and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Now he has written a novel and his publisher has rewarded him with another huge check.What makes the story really good, in my view, is that Mr. Conlon, who has been on the job for 11 years, has decided to stay on it.

But, thanks to the New YorkTimes, it won’t be as an undercover cop.

***

If you’ve had enough of the cold weather and want to plan ahead for some hot stuff, you might like to attend the first ThrillerFest, scheduled for the weekend of June 29-July 2 in Phoenix. Summer in Phoenix will make you nostalgic for a nice, cold winter wind.

My experience with Phoenix and other cities that were cleverly planned in the middle of deserts, however, is that the concept of air conditioning has not been fried out of the brains of the locals, and the event will be indoors, so it should be cool in both senses of the word.

And not just any old indoors. It will be held at the Arizona Biltmore Resort, which just happens to have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which means it’s no adobe hut or teepee or whatever it is in which people in the desert normally live. Come to think of it, people don’t normally live in the desert. That’s why it’s called a desert.

The International Thriller Writers is celebrating its first anniversary with this event, open to its 300 members (who, the organization boasts, have worldwide sales exceeding 1.6 billion books, which may not be McDonald’s numbers but aren’t shabby, either) as well as to the general public.

Special guest authors are John Lescroart, Brad Meltzer, Douglas Preston, and R.L. Stine. Many other authors have signed up, including Sandra Brown, Lee Child, Barry Eisler, Tess Gerritsen, and David Morrell. I’m not sure what makes the first four more special than the others, but then it’s not my conference.

The festivities include a reader’s reception, the Saturday night awards banquet, and panels. If you enjoy hanging out with your favorite writers, talking about books, and getting them signed, this should be a pretty good chance to do that. Registration is $195, and there is a block of specially discounted rooms at $109 a night, roughly the same price as a flophouse in New York. For a lot more information or to register, go online to www.ThrillerFest.com.

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Among the many aficionados of detective fiction was W.H. Auden, the great English poet who became an American citizen in 1946. In an essay titled “The Guilty Vicarage,” he wrote lines that may apply to many of us: “If I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or 490 2174 594 2185sleep till I have finished it.”

***

Regular readers of this column (and there are, I know, because I’ve met both of them) may recall that I wrote about a lawsuit brought against Dan Brown by an author named Lewis Perdue, who claimed that Mr. Brown plagiarized his novels. He sued for damages he believed to be in excess of $150 million.

Those are severe damages indeed, and you’d need a bit of time at the calculator to figure out how many of his paperback original novels he would have had to sell in order to achieve that enviable figure. Well, it now seems Mr. Perdue will have to enhance his bank account the old-fashioned way.The suit was dismissed, and Mr. Brown can get back to his real work and finish the next book.

If it enjoys a level of success similar to “The Da Vinci Code,” he will probably get sued by someone else who wants a bite of that lucrative apple.J.K. Rowling has been sued for plagiarizing the “Harry Potter” books, too. Isn’t it amazing how unsuccessful writers never get sued for stealing, but wealthy ones do?

***

It does not seem inappropriate to close with words of wisdom from the undisputed queen of crime, Dame Agatha Christie, who had a character (Anne Beddingfeld, in “The Man in the Brown Suit”) utter the lament: “It really is a very hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good looking and women will not be nice to you if you are.” Which, admittedly, has nothing whatsoever to do with mystery fiction, but is pithier than Hercule Poirot’s: “No crime can be successful without luck.”

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.