March 3, 2015
I’ve had three different Charles Williams Cocktail Talk posts, and you should go read them all. All of them! Both cause you’ll be able to learn a little more about this master of thriller/pulp/mystery writing, and cause then I don’t have to go through it all again. You don’t want me to be repetitive, right? Anywho, I have a fair amount of Charles Williams’ books, enough that I’m always worried I won’t be able to find more – but then super happy when I do, as I recently when I picked up The Wrong Venus. It’s a rollicking read, which starts on a high note and never really lets up until the last page. What does that mean? If you like books that move fast, this one’s for you. And it also has a great scene with both Cointreau and crème de menthe. Really!
‘Do you have any Cointreau?’
‘Cointreau?’ It was obvious she thought he was crazy.
‘You do sell liquor on these flights, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course . . . But with this turbulence, naturally we couldn’t bring the cart through. And we don’t have any Cointreau anyway.’
‘Then crème de menthe?’
‘Y-e-e-s, I think so. But I’m afraid only the white . . .’
He was conscious again of time hurtling past him, but managed a reassuring smile. ‘It’s all right. I only drink in the dark.’
–Charles Williams, The Wrong Venus
February 24, 2015
Okay, after serious consideration (and sitting down with a drink to think about it), I decided that one Day Keene Cocktail Talk from the story collection The League of the Grateful Dead was not enough. Not at all. So, here’s a second, and one of the few quotes I’ve seen about a portable bar. I certainly wouldn’t you to miss that, that’s for sure.
LaFanti told him to shut up. A gun punk whom he called Gordon opened a portable bar and began to slop whiskey into highball glasses. LaFanti asked if I wanted a drink. I admitted that I could use one. There had been plenty of wine where I’d come from, but Old Grandad had been rare.
–Day Keene, Dance with the Death-House Doll
February 17, 2015
I’ve had four different Day Keene Cocktail Talk posts – that’s nowhere near enough! C’mon me. Seriously. My appreciation, no, obsession with Mr. Keene and his pulptasticness is certainly not going down to a simmer any time soon. This is why it’s so swell that Ramble House is putting out all of Mr. Keene’s stories and novellas from the Detective Pulps in the ‘40s in book collections. And there are a lot of stories, so more Day Keene for us! Though I do wish Ramble would hire a decent copyeditor. But hey, at least the stories are becoming available again. Anyway, this particular quote is from the first volume, League of the Grateful Dead and Other Stories (and yeah, that’s where the band got its name), from a story with a memorable name: Crawl Out of that Coffin!
‘The D’Andrea’s don’t live to be twenty-one,’ he told me.
While I was considering that, he motioned our waiter to the table and told him to bring whatever we were drinking and a Rum Collins for himself.
The waiter looked at the passed-out girl.
‘No. Nothing for her,’ Pierce said straight-faced. ‘Miss D’Andrea is driving.’
–Day Keene, Crawl Out of that Coffin!
February 3, 2015
Not too long ago I had my first George Simenon Cocktail Talk post, and in that very post mentioned that I thought I’d probably have more – and I was right! I’ve read a few more Inspector Maigret books since then, most recently A Man’s Head. And it was a good yarn indeed, fast-paced, intriguing, nicely mysterious, and really tightly plotted. Everything you’d want (if what you want is a worthy book, that is). Also, a fair amount of the action takes place in bars, which I’m all for, as you might guess. The main bar is the American bar in the Cupole, where Maigret makes a sorta rare foray into cocktails.
He heard someone call out.‘A Manhattan.’
And he said: ‘The same for me.’
He was not himself of the cocktail generation. Beer was more in his line. The barman pushed a dish of olives toward him, but he did not touch them.
—A Man’s Head, George Simenon
January 27, 2015
I’ve talked a pretty fair amount about my love of the writer Chester Himes, and pretty much everything he’s written. And have had a number of quotes from books of his featuring the Harlem detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. But I’ve never had a quote from the book All Shot Up? That seems almost unbelievable. But I’m here to rectify that (and might have more quotes from this book in the future, cause it is awesome) with the below from the very first page of the book.
His eyes popped. He knew he was sober. He hadn’t been drinking any whisky and he hadn’t been smoking any weed. But he didn’t believe what he saw. It was a mirage; but this was not the desert and he was not dying of thirst. In fact he was cold enough for his guts to freeze; and the only thing he wanted to drink was a hot rum and lemon.
He saw a Cadillac pass, the likes of which he had never seen. And his business was cars.
This Cadillac looked as though it were made of solid gold.
–Chester Himes, All Shot Up
January 13, 2015
Not long ago, I had a Cocktail Talk post talking about Edmund Crispin’s The Case of the Gilded Fly, and how I hadn’t read anything by him, an honest post I must say (sometimes it’s hard to admit things). Since then, I’ve read a second book by Mr. Crispin, another starring his literary (but action-oriented) sleuth Gervase Ven, a book called The Moving Toyshop. I liked it even more! It’s fairly madcap in a way, but still has a good mystery along under the motion, and the below fun drinky quote.
‘My dear Anthony, how delightful to see you,” said Mr. Barnaby with pleasure. ‘I’m sorry there are all these frightful gymnasts about, but they simply invited themselves. What will you have to drink?’
‘What is that that Charles is drinking?’
‘Oh ether and milk, or some terrible chemical affair of that sort. But you know Charles. The poor dear cannot be made to realize that the romantic decadence is over. He still writes verses about affreuses juices and things. How about some Madeira?’
–Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop
January 6, 2015
I’m not always in the mood for an anthology, but sometimes it’s fun to bounce from author to author fairly rapidly instead of settling in with one person. While I don’t know (though I haven’t checked this assertion) that there are less anthology type books today, it feels like there are, and the difference between last century and now seems almost completely to come from the lack of Alfred Hitchcock collections. There used to be tons of these, all fairly reliable, and all with fun names and covers. The below sherry quote comes from one called Stories My Mother Never Told Me, specifically from a story by Gerald Kersh, who must have enjoyed sherry quite a bit.
‘Hold hard, my friend,’ I said in Spanish. But he only bowed low and made a graceful gesture toward the glass. I believe that that sherry was in the hogshead before Napoleon came to handgrips with the Duke of Willington at Badajoz. Sherry is the worst thing in the world for rheumatism, and I meant to take no more than one sip. But that one sip filled me so full of sunlight that I felt myself responding to it as if to Spanish music, and my appetite came roaring back.
–Gerald Kersh, The Secret of the Bottle
December 23, 2014
I’ve had a fair number of Raymond Chandler Cocktail Talk posts, which you might expect cause the hard-boiled tend to have serious imbibables when they’re not talking sharp, solving crimes, getting smacked and dealing out smacks, and cuddling the ladies. The High Window is no different, and one of the tops of the Marlowe realm I believe. I recently re-read it, and found all sorts of choice whiskey moments, and drinky times. This one’s a champ. I hope Mr. Chandler got at least a bottle of Four Roses because of it. And it’ll help you get ready for serving multiple drinks round the holiday season.
I got a bottle of Four Roses out of the kitchen closet and three glasses. I got ice and ginger ale from the icebox and mixed three highballs and carried them in on a tray and sat the tray down on the cocktail table in from the davenport where Breeze was sitting.
–Raymond Chandler, The High Window
