Fletcher Flora is a last-century pulp/pocket book/noir/mystery/etc. writer who perhaps in my humble opinion (or imho, as they say) hasn’t always gotten his due as being in the upper echelon of such writers. He has, in his best work, an individual style (I have a hard time pinning it down in words. I read it called “off-beat” and that’s not a bad description, character-forward, wry in a way, you just have to read them), and he’s from KS, as I was, both of which drew me to him. Until recently, there weren’t a lot of reprints of his novels, and the stories were – like so many stories pubbed in the pulps – entirely impossible to get unless you were lucky enough to inherit a stack of said mags or the money to track them down. However! As with Day Keene and a few others, more recent years have provided a boon to those of us who enjoy a good yarn in the genres, as reprinting tech has been made easier, making it possible to rediscover more of the words written by worthy authors like Flora and Keene (very different writers in style, by the way). We’ve had a few Fletcher Flora Cocktail Talks in the past as I’ve managed to score more books, and then recently I found on the Amazon a wonderful collection called The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack – funny enough, the First Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack wasn’t available when I was shopping, so I started with the second, though I’ll remedy that asap. The megapack (from Wildside Press – thanks by the way Wildside) has an assortment of stories from Mr. Flora, ranging in length, and while all slide into the crime and mystery shelf, the set-ups and characters and driving forces change enough to make it a swell read. They aren’t all of the same high quality as his best – he had to make a living and the pulps didn’t pay phenomenally well, so quantity mattered, too – but they’re all close enough that I was amazingly happy to get the collection, and to round out my Flora-fiction. I can’t wait to read more in the first megapack, if I can wrangle it! With all that preamble, I should say that there was lots of Cocktail Talking in the stories, so expect to hear more in the coming weeks. To start, a quote from a story called “Hell Hath No Fury.” In it, we step into a little dive bar, which Mr. Flora describes perfectly in a few short sentences, and then heads for the rye.
On Fifteenth, just off Wamego, The Peanut was a dismal, little bar which, like all bars in the morning, somehow gave the impression of having a hangover. In the shadowy interior, behind the peanut bowls, a bartender looked at me as if he wished he didn’t have to. Opposite the bar lining the wall, there was a string of booths, each with its own peanut bowl, and private remote-control box for the juke box in the rear. In the last booth, where the shadows were deepest, I caught a glimmer of platinum, the white movement of a lifted hand.
I told the bartender to bring me a shot of rye and went back to the booth and sat down.
I’ve had a couple Erik Ambler Cocktail Talks in the past (the long-ago past if we’re talking about the full age of this blog, but the short-ago past if we’re talking the age of peoplekind), and today feel I maybe didn’t give Mr. Ambler enough credit way back when. Or perhaps I’ve changed, as I just read Journey Into Fear, his international, I suppose intrigue novel is one way to describe it, spy-ish, is another, though the main character is in no way a spy, but an engineer of sorts. Said main character is in Turkey for his company in hope of updating Turkey’s water defense systems at the beginning of/right before WWI, and it turns out other countries aren’t hyped for this and so want to kill him. Exciting, right! I loved the pacing, the person-thrust-into-the-espionage-world nature, the exotic historic locales, and the intriguingly suspicious side characters that populate it. Enough that I went back and re-read another one of his books, and liked it better than in the past, too. Now I’m on the hunt for more! Hopefully more with Cocktail Talks like the below.
“I think some food would do me good.”
“My dear Mr. Graham! How stupid of me! Some food. Of course! We can stop at Novi. You will be my guest. And if there is any champagne to be had, we shall have it. There is nothing like champagne when one is depressed.”
Graham felt suddenly a little light-headed. He laughed.
The Consul raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry,” Graham apologized. “You must excuse me. You see, it is rather funny. I had an appointment to meet someone on the two o’clock train. She’ll be rather surprised to see me.”
Years and years ago I featured here on the Spiked Punch a quote we’ll call A Man’s Head Cocktail Part I, at least we will now, as today we are having A Man’s Head Part II! Both are from the George Simenon book of the same name, a book featuring his character par excellence, Inspector Maigret, the taciturn, sometimes slow-moving, relentless, irreplaceable Parisian policeman, and a book (you may have guessed this!), I recently re-read. It was as good this time as the first time, whisking you away in a bygone Paris through prose that is as unmistakable as our Inspector. This case circles around a man waiting to be hung for a double murder, but a double murder Maigret has come to believe the man didn’t commit – so he basically breaks him out of prison, and lets the chips fly. They come to fly around a bar for part of the time, the famous La Coupole, which is where the action, as it is, is taking place in the below. In that quote, a Rose cocktail is ordered, which if you don’t know (I had to double check), is a mix of London dry gin, Heering cheery liqueur, and dry vermouth, garnished with a cherry. My guess is there are about 137 Rose cocktails, but this is a classic number that you see referred to as “French style,” making me believe it’s the Rose below!
And William Kirby, pushing his way between two people, held out a hand across the mahogany bar.
“How are you, Bob?”
Mrs. Kirby went straight up to the yellow-haired Swedish girl, kissing her and talking volubly in English.
The newcomers had no need to order drinks. Bob promptly handed Kirst a whiskey and soda, and mixed a Rose for his young wife, asking:
“Back from Biarritz already?”
“Only stayed three days. It was raining worse than here.”
Here’s another Cocktail Talk quote from one of the super swell British Library Crime Classics anthologies. We’ve had a number of them on here in the past, as I’ve been slowly picking these collections up – there are a fair amount, all well edited by the hardest-working editor (at least it seems so from the many collections and individual novel reprints he’s edited) in fiction, Martin Edwards. Each, as a reminder or if you missed them in the past, features an assortment of mystery stories from better-known and lesser-known British writers who put pen to paper around the beginning of last century, with a little wiggle room on dates, all around a central theme. Today, the anthology is called Crimson Snow, and as you might expect, all the mysteries within it take place in winter, many around the holidays proper. Like in other collections in the series, some of the stories are known, some lesser-known, and some recovered by Mr. Edwards from deep in the pile, so to speak (meaning, they’d not be known at all today if he hadn’t dived deep into the British Library archives to find them). Being able to read these latter stories is amazing, to me, as nearly all are worthy reads, and ones I’d never have found on my own. Even some that were by authors very popular in their time, such as Victor Gunn (aka Edwy Searles Brooks), who wrote the story the below quote is from, a story called, straightforwardly enough, Death in December. Mr. Brooks wrote a fairly massive amount of books, and while he isn’t read as much today, perhaps he should be – these anthologies are great for introducing you to writers you don’t know but can hunt down more books by. This particular story features a sturdy, no-nonsense police detective named Bill “Ironsides” Cromwell (who featured in 43 books!) and his sidekick younger sergeant Johnny Lister, who find themselves trapped at country-house holiday party in a snowstorm, with a corpse (or two), lots of holiday merrymakers, an impossible crime, a ghost (?), and more chilly fun. As well as some excellent hot toddy.
Bill Cromwell and Johnny Lister quite naturally found themselves in a little gathering of men round the library fire after the ladies and more of the other guests had retired for the night. There was some excellent hot toddy going, and, incidentally, going fast. Everybody round the first was very talkative and affable; men who had not met one another until that same evening were pouring confidences into one another’s ears, and forgetting all about them the next minute.
I’m realizing now, after a period of reflection, that I didn’t actually say inThe Five Bells and Bladebone Part I Cocktail Talk what the book was about, outside of a general overview into Martha Grimes books being named after pubs (or at least a fair portion of them and all the ones I’ve read). The non-description is a bit of an oversight, not that I’m here on the Spiked Punch to do book reviews. But I would be happy to try and entice you to read the books we Cocktail Talk from, if in a light manner that doesn’t interrupt your drinking. With that: a bit of a TW (twat-waffle) is found after being murdered and stuffed into a secretaire, which has been delivered to an antique dealer, who resides in the same town as wealthy ex-lord (he gave up the title, if you’re worried) Melrose Plant, bestie of the intrepid and dreamy (at least to some of the ladies) Inspector Jury (star solver in the Grimes pantheon). From there, there’s a confusing case of identity, some British village characters, a dip into Thames-adjacent London (where our titled pub is), and lots of gin. In the below quote for a start.
As she poured a small Niagara of gin into the pitcher, Jury said, “I’m sorry. Were you expecting a friend?”
“Only you, Superintendent.” She filled the cap of the vermouth bottle, poured half back in the bottle, and added this breath of vermouth to the pitcher.
“Olive? A twist? I prefer a bit of garlic rubbed round the glass myself. Or would you rather have vodka?”
“The search for the perfect Martini, is that it?”
“The perfect Martini, Superintendent, is a belt of gin from the bottle; one has to be slightly civilized, however.”
I’ve had a few Martha Grimes Cocktail Talks on the Spiked Punch in the past, and now it’s time for another! From a book of hers I recently picked up called The Five Bells and Bladebone, which may seem a rather odd name for a book. But it’s taken from an English pub (which might differ in one space from the book title, that being between blade and bone), as are all the books I’ve read by Martha Grimes, and a big portion of all the books she wrote – so far, as she’s still alive at 93, and might write more! These titles and the pubs contained within the books makes said books, as you might expect, ripe for Cocktail Talking. That’s not the only reason for reading them, naturally, as she writes a fairly good mystery yarn, too, featuring her crime-solving, somehow wistful to me (as wistful as a hunky tall dude can be), Inspector Jury, alongside, for some of the time, his pal and sometimes helper Melrose Plant, who was an English Lord (before giving up the title, though perhaps not some of the lord-y-ness), and his always-sick-talking hypochondriacal sidekick sergeant Wiggins. I perhaps didn’t love this book of hers as much as past ones I’ve read, but it’s still well worth tracking down, and not just because one character drinks whiskey out of a toothbrush glass, as you’ll see below.
Jury half rose, but she was already out of her chair, moving quickly and purposefully towards her target. All of her movements were quick and purposeful, thought Jury. If this was Lady Summerston sick, he be almost afraid to see Lady Summerston well.
Her voice preceded her as she returned with the picture. As if reading his mind, she was saying, “I imagine Crick told you I had a heart condition, a lung condition, a live condition. The last might be true, but not the first two. There’s a decanter of whiskey on the bureau. Get it, will you? And” – she called after him – “ get the toothbrush glass from the bathroom.”
Here we are and the ol’ Spiked Punch blog has gone high-brow. Countryside high-brow, I suppose, as below we have the first Thomas Hardy Cocktail Talk ever! And Hardy, as we all know, was devoted to his particular countryside, which he called Wessex, perhaps more devoted to this one place than almost any other author was or is to a spot. Perhaps. But I ramble! I went through a heavy Hardy phase as one does in say my late 20s to mid-30s (somewhere in there), and while I never returned to him again and again in the way I do with Dickens, or Trollope, or Mosley, I did recently re-read The Return of the Native, and might delve back into another of his, too, soon. We shall see. But again, I ramble. There’s been enough said about Hardy that I don’t need to give some sort-of Return of the Native critique, but I will say that, outside of the Hardian language and narrative and landscape, the book also features a pub called The Quiet Woman Inn a little, and while not a book full of Cocktail Talking, the pub does set the scene for the below quote, which has the prettiest drink under the sun in it!
“That’s a drop of the right sort, I can see,” said Grandfer Cantle, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it.
“Yes,” said Wildeve, “’tis some old mead. I hope you will like it.”
“O ay!” replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural when the words demanded by politeness coincide with those of deepest feeling. “There isn’t a prettier drink under the sun.”
“I’ll take my oath there isn’t,” added Grandfer Cantle. “All that can be said against mead is that ’tis rather heady, and apt to lie about a man a good while. But tomorrow’s Sunday, thank God.”
“I feel’d for all the world like some bold soldier after I had had some once,” said Christian.
“You shall feel so again,” said Wildeve, with condescension. “Cups or glasses, gentlemen?”
“Well, if you don’t mind, we’ll have the beaker, and pass ‘en round; ’tis better than heling it out in dribbles.”
I’ve had a fair number of Charles Williford Cocktail Talks on the ol’ Spiked Punch in the past, and I suggest you go read all of them to learn more about this interesting writer, who became more widely famous when he started a series about a Miami detective named Hoke Mosely (though his other books are well worth tracking down in the main – you’ll catch a few of them and a few Hoke’s in the past Cocktail Talking). Hoke featured in four books, and I sure wish there were more, as he’s quite a character. The Way We Die Now is the last of the four novels featuring him, and was published early in 1988, the same year Williford sadly died. It’s a dark book at times, as a warning, but funny, too, and great, I think, in many ways. One of which is Larry’s Hideaway, featured in the below quote.
Hoke was well pleased by the interrogation. It had gone more smoothly than he had thought it would. Before returning to the station, Hoke stopped at Larry’s Hideaway for a shot of Early Times and a beer. Sergeant Armando Quevedo was sitting at the bar, and staring glumly into a seventeen-ounce strawberry Margarita. A large strawberry floated on top of the drink. Hoke sat on the stool next to him and ordered a shot of Early Times and a Michelob draft.
“When did you start drinking that shit, Armando?” Hoke said.
Quevedo turned and grimaced. “It’s pretty awful, but the doc said I’d have to give up boilermakers. So I figured if I stuck to this belly wash, I wouldn’t overdo it. It’s sweeter than hell. Are you off today?”
“No, I’m working. I just stopped off for a quickie.”
