July 15, 2014

Cocktail Talk: Death Warmed Over

deathwarmedoverI don’t know much about Mary Collins, outside of that she wrote 6 mystery books set in Cali in the middle part of the last century. The only one I’ve read is Death Warmed Over, and it’s worth tracking down. It’s mostly set around this Los Angeles boarding house during the war, where people keep getting knocked off, and has a plucky heroine who decides to do some detecting. But best of all, at one point our heroine is hanging with another LA sweetie, and they’re drinking B-and-Bs (or, brandy and Bénédictine). I love that (not so much the pre-bottled version, but the make-it-your-self version). Then they switch to brandy and soda! Neat. Check it all out in the below:

“Naturally,” she said, standing up. “Look, Janey, do you want some more B-and-B or would you like a nice plain brandy and soda?”

I said brandy and soda would be wonderful. When Jewel came back from the kitchen, we drank our drinks with unseemly speed. That’s the trouble with good liquor. It tastes so nice that a girl is likely to forget that aside from the taste, it also contains alcohol. With a few minutes we had drunk another brandy and soda.

Death Warmed Over, Mary Collins

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