July 21, 2015

Cocktail Talk: Murder Always Gathers Momentum

murder-gathers-momentumFrom personal experience, I can say that never has there been a more accurate title. Hah! Having never actually committed a murder, I’m actually not super sure about that, really. But what I have done is read a lot of Cornell Woolrich, the master of the darker side of the noir world of the middle of the last century. I’ve had some Cornell Cocktail Talking before, here on the Spiked Punch, but when I find new books of his I haven’t read, I always want more. More! And recently I found a collection called Four Novellas of Fear containing some of his moodily awesome work, including one called, as you might expect by now, Murder Always Gathers Momentum. It’s a bit grim, but so well-paced, and so wonderfully inevitable. And it calls out a classic whiskey brand, too.

Paine fought down the flux of panic, the ultimate result of which he’d already seen twice now. Any minute someone might come in from the street. Someone sober. “All right,” he breathed heavily, “hurry up, what’ll it be?”

“Thass more like it; now you’re being a reg’lar guy.” The drunk released him and he went around behind the bar. “Never anything but good ole Four Roses for mine truly –“

Paine snatched a bottle at random from the shelf, handed it over bodily.

– Cornell Woolrich, Murder Always Gathers Momentum

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