Authors Jan Burke and Marcia Clark return for "Write Murder Madness" to discuss their favorite mystery and detective novels. Plus, adorably incompetent critic-at-large Jordan Ampersand's ongoing effort to derail the publication of Eric Shaw Quinn's new novel "Write Murder" leads him to examine the mysteries of book signings in "Jordan Ampersand Investigates." And Christopher and Eric offer their exasperated take on current headlines in "The Not Report."

This is worse than court.MARCIA CLARK

The Dinner Party Show Podcast — Ep. 122 Jan Burke and Marcia Clark Interview Transcript

{This transcript is the interview portion of Episode 122}{This transcript is provided as a courtesy and was transcribed as best as possible. Any errors or omissions in the transcript are unintentional. The recorded audio file of the podcast episode is considered the master of what was said.}

Announcer: You are listening to The Dinner Party Show with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn. And now it's time for The Dish. We hope you kept your silverware.

Christopher Rice: Welcome back to The Dinner Party Show. I'm Christopher Rice.

Eric Shaw Quinn: I'm Eric Shaw Quinn.

Christopher Rice: And the lovely Jan Burke is joining us.

Jan Burke: Hi everyone.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Hi Jan.

Jan Burke: Hi.

Christopher Rice: And the chair next to Jan is empty unfortunately. I was going to say this was a Dinner Party Show first, but actually it is the second time we have had a guest arrive mid-show. Can anyone out there remember the first time? Can any of our party people remember?

Eric Shaw Quinn: Right. Do we have a prize?

Christopher Rice: No. I can remember. I'm going to spoil it for you. It was Laura Benanti when we used to do a two hour show. She showed up for the second hour and came…

Eric Shaw Quinn: She came straight from the plane I think. She came from the airport straight to here. It was a storm or something. New York was totally snowed in…

Christopher Rice: Well, we knew she was going to be late. The other guest was Chad Hodge, who has been on the... TV writer, had been on the show several times, and they had done the Playboy Club together. And he said, "I'm bringing Laura, but she's going to come in late. So it's just going to be exactly like an actress..." And I see Marcia Clark coming through the studio now.

Eric Shaw Quinn: She's running down the halls. Yes. We're tempted to maybe on her frequent diner card…

Christopher Rice: We're going to give her half a fork on the frequent diner card. And we're acting like it's not significant that Jan is here and Marcia's here. She's coming on. She's on the show. She's on the show.

Marcia Clark: I wanted to see carnage. I wanted to see bloodshed because with traffic that bad there better be limbs flying.

Eric Shaw Quinn: We're live. We're live. We're live.

Christopher Rice: The video's not live. You can ignore the cameraman putting the camera in your face, but welcome back to the Dinner Party Show, Marcia Clark. We're glad you're here.

Marcia Clark: My apologies. Oh my God.

Jan Burke: It's LA. There's carnage somewhere. Marcia, Marcia. Marcia.

Marcia Clark: So be of good cheer, right?

Eric Shaw Quinn: Cheer up. Somebody's dead somewhere.

Christopher Rice: Somebody's dead.

Eric Shaw Quinn: You used to be the DA, you know.

Marcia Clark:  I still know. I'm still practicing.

Christopher Rice: Pull that microphone up to your face and get those... Yeah.

Marcia Clark: I'm sorry. Here we go. Here we go.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Get her on the show.

 [crosstalk]

Christopher Rice: Everyone remembers very fondly the first time you all came on the show together.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Oh my God, one of my favorite things we have ever done on the show.

Christopher Rice: And Jan, you brought with you that time... We don't want to call them goofy murders, but they were strange murders.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Wacky crime blotter.

Christopher Rice: And we felt a little weird and hanky afterwards because we were-

Eric Shaw Quinn: I didn't, I thought they were hysterical.

Christopher Rice: We were laughing about people dying. But this time you have brought a selection of headlines of a similar nature, but maybe not quite exactly the same thing.

Jan Burke: Yeah. I thought we'd start out with just the merely, you know, mayhem and wounding kind of things.

Christopher Rice: Okay. Mayhem and wounding.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Right. The sort of thing one encounters on a drive through Los Angeles.

Jan Burke: Well, one of my favorite things is sort of the armadillo revenge month, which happened a few months ago, where a guy in Texas shot an armadillo and the ricochet came back and hit the guy in the head.

Christopher Rice: Whoa.

Jan Burke: Yeah. He wasn't killed by the ricochet and we don't know the fate of that armadillo, but it was the second time armadillos had made the news for something like this because in Georgia, and this is really spectacular, in Georgia, a guy shot one and the ricochet went through the, this is going to shock you, the trailer. This took place in a trailer park.

Marcia Clark: Oh, I could not see that coming.

Jan Burke: It went through a trailer into the recliner in which his mother-in-law was sitting and shot her in the back.

Christopher Rice: Did she-

Jan Burke: She survived.

Christopher Rice: Oh. Which is worse for him.

Jan Burke: I'm not sure the marriage is surviving.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Certainly not Thanksgiving.

Marcia Clark: So the message to be taken from all this, children, is don't shoot the armadillo.

Jan Burke: Yeah, leave the armadillo alone.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Or they make a great cover story if you're planning to shoot your mother-in-law in the back.

Marcia Clark: That is an excellent point.

Christopher Rice: I just fired at that armadillo. I wasn’t shooting at you.

Marcia Clark: Ossifer!

Jan Burke : Sure, there was an armadillo.

Eric Shaw Quinn:

It was a ricochet.

[crosstalk]

Christopher Rice: That's a good one.

Jan Burke: Yeah. Yeah. The other one was the guy who wanted to kill a spider with a lighter, which might've worked out cruelly but okay…

Eric Shaw Quinn: That's a little twisted.

Marcia Clark: Why do you want to?

Jan Burke: Except he did this in a gas station while he was pumping gas.

Marcia Clark: Oh my God.

Jan Burke: And caused-

Eric Shaw Quinn: Yeah, this is a Darwin Award nominee.

Marcia Clark: This is definitely. Yeah.

Christopher Rice: Yeah. This is a Darwin Award evening, I think is what this is turning into.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Clearly.

Christopher Rice: Is this the story we're seeing the video of? I clearly haven't watched this video, but I see the still of the guy at the gas station surrounded by flames. He was trying to kill a spider.

Jan Burke: Yes.

Eric Shaw Quinn: With a lighter while he was pumping gas.

Jan Burke: With a lighter.

Jan Burke: Yeah.

Eric Shaw Quinn: And so he set the gas on fire is I guess the-

Jan Burke: Yeah. I mean, I didn't hear that his mother-in-law was in the car or anything, but that was his-

Christopher Rice: No, I'm sure-

Marcia Clark: What happened to him? Did he shuffle off his mortal coil?

Jan Burke: No, he survived that.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Did his car?

Marcia Clark: That's in a way really too bad…

Jan Burke: The gas station owner is probably a little ticked off at him but yeah.

Christopher Rice: The gas station owner wants your number, Marcia.

Eric Shaw Quinn: It was his own car. So the car is history? I'm getting the picture. I haven't seen the video. Forgive me.

Christopher Rice: I haven't seen the video either. The videos on the internet are so upsetting I just look at the still and I go, yeah, I'm not watching that. I don’t want to see a guy…

Marcia Clark: You know I don't understand this being cruel to animals, insects, all the... What is up with that? Why's that a thing? What's going on here?

Christopher Rice: We're in a rash of snake videos, which I can't tolerate. And it was, I guess because we were in heat wave here for so long.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Oh, really, that just breaks my heart.

Christopher Rice:  Shut up, you’re going to bring up my snake book again!

Eric Shaw Quinn: He wrote that damn book…

Christopher Rice:  With the snake in the car…

Eric Shaw Quinn: …with the snake attack in the car in the water. It was the most... If it hadn't been him, if it hadn't been his book. I would never have finished reading it.

Christopher Rice: It's terrible. It's terrible. And I'm really sorry.

Eric Shaw Quinn: And what's the name of it... The Heavens Rise .

Christopher Rice: The Heavens Rise.

Eric Shaw Quinn: It's available at thedinnerpartyshow.com.

Christopher Rice: It's a nice plug that you always do. But there was all these videos that I... Twitter and Facebook now do this auto play thing where it just starts playing automatically and you can't stop it. And it was like these people found a rattlesnake in their laundry room. And I'm running away from the computer because I can't stop it in time. All right. That's my snake story of the week.

Eric Shaw Quinn: Okay. That's enough snake stories. Any more wacky crime blotter?

Jan Burke: Well, I'll give you a couple of just news stories I thought were... One was the headline from Wisconsin that the Wisconsin Supreme Court held a moment of silence for crooks and it turned out to be there was a…

Eric Shaw Quinn: Uh…okay. Because where would they be without crooks?

Marcia Clark: Exactly. I guess so. That’s true.

Eric Shaw Quinn: They'd have to go out of business.

Jan Burke: And it turned out to be there was a Justice Crooks, and the headline writer…

Christopher Rice: Had some fun.

Jan Burke: …had a little fun and left out the guy's title.

Marcia Clark:  Yeah It's almost too easy....