February 15, 2022
I’ll admit freely that I am not a very social-media-y person. Maybe it’s age, maybe inclination, maybe I type too slowly, maybe it’s a curse put on me by an ancient sorcerer, who knows? However, I will say that at least one awesome thing has happened for me via the socials (I’m sure many things, but that’s not as dramatic), and that was when someone on the twitters pointed me towards the author Craig Rice and the book Eight Faces at Three. I believe it was mystery author and cool cocktailer (author of Down the Hatch: One Man’s One Year Odyssey Through Classic Cocktail Recipes and Lore) and noir-ish editor (typing all that out, I’m sorta jealous I’m not him!), Vince Keenan. I didn’t know Rice at all before this pointing, and that was a big failing I’m now happy to say I’ve corrected. Rice (full name something like Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig Rice) lived a bit of a wild, early-to-mid 1900s life, and that’s saying something. Not only married many times (including to a beat poet, of all things), a cocktail and booze-swirler and swigger during some rollicking periods in history, a mystery book writer and ghostwriter, and the first crime-etc. writer to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, when Time was a bigger deal than we can probably really grasp – I mean, that’s huge! – she was also (I as I read when trying to track down more info, and which I loved so much I wanted to type out), described by Bill Ruehlmann as “the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction: she wrote the binge and lived the hangover.” Wowza!
Of course, none of it would matter as much if Eight Faces at Three wasn’t all kinds of fun to read! It starts a wee bit slow, but once murder happens, and a (perhaps wrongly accused?) suspect suspected, and (most of all) said suspect’s pal, the tipsy debutante Helen Brand arrives and decides to solve things with press agent (and also tipsy) Jake Justus, well, the fun starts rolling at speed. They’re accompanied (into bars, cars, and bottles) by defense council John J. Malone, which means this book kicks off the John J. Malone series of Rice books, and while he’s a hoot, I hope in other books our other two named imbibers also show, cause they have a madcap 20s romance vibe that was all kinds of kicks. And they cocktail a lot! As well as open bottles, as in the below quote (which doesn’t specific a spirit, but I’m taking it to be rye, as that seems their tipple of choice).
Drink?
Jake gasped, collected his thoughts. “Invariably.”
She laughed. “Reach into the side pocket. No – this side. I thought it might be a long, cold ride into town.”
Jake beamed approvingly at her. “There’s a certain Florence Nightingale touch about you that’s beginning to grow on me.”
She laughed again. “No glasses though.”
“Well,” he said, “you couldn’t have everything. It wouldn’t be fair”
He passed the bottle to her, watched admiringly as she tilted it up and drank deeply without allowing the big car to waver more than a little on the icy pavement.
–Craig Rice, Eight Faces at Three
February 7, 2022
I haven’t perused many pages written by Sax Rohmer, who was one of – if not the, at least for a moment or two – best-selling mystery/adventure/action writers of his early-to-mid last century timeframe. Like too many of his contemporaries, he was fairly awful or deplorable, or really, in how he depicted people not exactly like him (other races, other genders, pretty much anything he would have thought of as “other”), and it makes reading much of his work not something I want to delve into, when there are many other things to read! However, I did receive a copy of stories by him recently, called The Secret of Holm Peel, and Other Strange Stories, and felt I should give it a whirl, and can admit that in the main, not too bad a collection. More adventure than strange (though there’s a demonic presence or two), and covering the basis of last-century adventure stories: meaning, there’s a pirate story, a swashbuckling story (the difference between those two genres is there, my friends!), a haunted castle and a haunted cliff story, all that. And a WW II story, naturally, which is called “Brother Wing Commanders,” and which is really a bird story combined with a hospital story and a little romance! That’s where this Cocktail Talk is coming from, a quote which contains a whisky line I hope to remember to use in the future!
“Inquiry from Buckingham Palace yesterday – and the eats and drinks! Why, Charles will be fatter than Goering if he goes to it! Yes, thanks a lot, it would set me up . . . Please excuse me reminding you, but your whisky is too good to deserve drowning. That’s fine.” There was a breathless interval.
–Sax Rohmer, “Brother Wing Commanders”
February 1, 2022
On a rainy days like today, and yesterday, and probably tomorrow, I start to think “wouldn’t it be nice if it was sunny and I was on a train riding through the English countryside, with curious and attractive small towns and verdant and buzzing fields and such passing by outside my window?” And then I go back to reading the excellent collection of Golden Age British train-fueled mystery short stories Blood on the Tracks, and start to think, “hmm, maybe I’m safer inside with the rain outside dampening murderous thoughts?” One of the British Library Crime Classics collections (a fine series edited by writer and editor Martin Edwards, and one which unearths many mystery and crime gems nearly lost to history, usually placing them alongside some better-known hits), Blood on the Tracks boasts 15 stories that all share a train connection, making it a top choice for railway enthusiasts as well as mystery hounds – and for those, like me, who fit both categories? It’s dreamy! Our particular Cocktail Talk here comes from a story by R. Austin Freeman, a writer from that late 1800s, early 1900s Golden Age of crime fiction, one I don’t know well, but look forward to reading more from (probably with the help of more British Library Crime Classics!). In it, there are diamonds, a nefarious deed, actual blood on the tracks, a doctor detective of note, and wonderful usage of the wonderful word, “jorum.”
“Have a biscuit?” said Hickler, as he placed a whisky-bottle on the table together with a couple of his best star-pattern tumblers and a siphon.
“Thanks, I think will,” said Brodski. “The railway journey and all this confounded tramping about, you know.”
“Yes,” agreed Silas. “Doesn’t do you good to start with an empty stomach. Hope you don’t mind oat-cakes; I see they’re the only biscuit I have.”
Brodski hastened to assure him that oat-cakes were his special and peculiar fancy; and in confirmation, having mixed himself a stiff jorum, he fell to upon the biscuits with evident gusto.
–R. Austin Freeman, “The Case of Oscar Brodski”
January 18, 2022
You know (cause you know things) I love Dickens, and have many Charles Dickens Cocktail Talks on this very blog thingy, and cause of that (the love), I tend to re-read his books on the regular, and one of my favs is one not quite as well know, Dombey and Son. To get all the particulars of why it’s a fav, to read loads of cocktail and spirits (and dog!) quotes from the book, well, let me point you to the Dombey and Son Cocktail Talks Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV, instead of prattling on again here. Instead, I’ll just prattle that I’ve recently re-read the book once again (and I will again, I’m sure!), and had to have at least one more Cocktail Talk. So, here it is, featuring Cap’n Cuttle himself, along with his bestie Sol and said Sol’s niece Walter.
‘Ah!’ he said, with a sigh, ‘it’s a fine thing to understand ’em. And yet it’s a fine thing not to understand ’em. I hardly know which is best. It’s so comfortable to sit here and feel that you might be weighed, measured, magnified, electrified, polarized, played the very devil with: and never know how.’
Nothing short of the wonderful Madeira, combined with the occasion (which rendered it desirable to improve and expand Walter’s mind), could have ever loosened his tongue to the extent of giving utterance to this prodigious oration. He seemed quite amazed himself at the manner in which it opened up to view the sources of the taciturn delight he had had in eating Sunday dinners in that parlour for ten years. Becoming a sadder and a wiser man, he mused and held his peace.
‘Come!’ cried the subject of this admiration, returning. ‘Before you have your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle.’
‘Stand by!’ said Ned, filling his glass. ‘Give the boy some more.’
‘No more, thank’e, Uncle!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Sol, ‘a little more. We’ll finish the bottle, to the House, Ned – Walter’s House. Why it may be his House one of these days, in part. Who knows? Sir Richard Whittington married his master’s daughter.’
–Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son
January 4, 2022
Here’s an interesting tidbit – when I picked up this Pocket Books book (which is actually pocket-sized), called The Last Score, I didn’t even read the back-cover summation closely, taking it for granted that it was both written by Ellery Queen (which is in fact one pseudonym for two people writing together: Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee) and starring their mystery writer/crime solving main character Ellery Queen. A strange state of affairs I find amazing, even though I haven’t read a ton of Ellery Queen books (also strange, as those books and stories I’ve read starring Mr. Queen I’ve enjoyed, which is probably why I picked up this one). Which is why when I started actually, you know, reading, I was surprised to find he’s not in this book at all. I kept trying to find him, but nope. Instead, it stars Texan travel agent (adventure travel only, that is) Reid Rance, who goes as a chaperon/bodyguard with a rich Texas lass who wants to live the on the road lifestyle a bit, and then trouble ensues, as you might expect. More adventure, less mystery, perhaps not what I was expecting, but not too bad. I did keep thinking, “well, Ellery Queen’s gonna show;” but nope, he never did. And I have now learned to read the back book cover more closely! Though if I had in this situation, I might have missed the below Cocktail Talk, I suppose.
He felt the vulture claw in his belly again then a sudden thirst. Locals were used to American tourists drinking in mid-morning.
Reid turned away from the plaza and walked into the bar of the Hotel Mexico. There he ordered a straight Bacardi, drank it quickly, ordered a second. The second he drank slowly, chasing it with Tehuacán.
–Ellery Queen, The Last Score
December 26, 2021
If you can, picture this: it is 86 years ago today (you have to use your imagination here, people). You are with the family, or friends, or just solo, and decide to go to a movie. What do you pick? Why The Philadelphia Story, of course. Romance, comedy, and the legendary trio of Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart? How could you go to anything else! And then, while watching you get to hear the below quote, which is an ideal Cocktail Talk. Of course, it being today and not 86 years ago, you can just stream up said movie. Go to!
Champagne’s funny stuff. I’m used to whiskey. Whiskey is a slap on the back, and Champagne’s a heavy mist before my eyes.
–Jimmy Stewart, The Philadelphia Story
December 21, 2021
As we wind our way into the final Some Slips Don’t Show Cocktail Talk (by the way: love the book cover here!), we find ourselves back at a situation touched on briefly in the book’s Cocktail Talk Part I (don’t miss Part II, either), where the real star of the series, detective Donald Lam (don’t tell his partner Bertha Cool I said he was the star, though), is getting cuddlier with one of the murder suspects in this here tale. And, as happens in the books (written by Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair), this cuddling, or prelude to cuddling, happens over drinks. Doubles, even.
A waiter came over and she ordered a double Manhattan.
“Single for me,” I said.
“Bring him a double, she said, smiling at the waiter. “I don’t want to get ahead of him.”
The waiter nodded and withdrew.
We nibbled pretzels and did a little verbal sparring until the waiter came back with the Manhattans. They were both doubles.
–A.A. Fair, Some Slips Don’t Show
Tags: A.A. Fair, Bertha Cool, Cocktail Talk, Cool and Lam, Donald Lam, doubles, Erle Stanley Gardner, Manhattan, Manhattans, Part III, Some Slips Don’t Show, Whiskey
Posted in: Bars, Cocktail Talk, Manhattan, Whiskey
December 14, 2021
Before we dive into our second quote and Cocktail Talk from the Cool and Lam (being Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, the star of this book and others) mystery in question, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards the Some Slips Don’t Show Part I Cocktail Talk, and all the Erle Stanley Gardner Cocktail Talks (he being the writer of said book, as his Cool and Lam-writing alias A.A. Fair, as well as being the writer of course of some books about a lawyer named Perry Freaking Mason), so you can enjoy more drinking fun, after you enjoy the below (which also gives some nice short insight into the Cool and Lam partnership).
“Fifty-seven smackers in one chunk?” she asked, he voice rasping.
“Right.”
“What’s it for? You could have got that broad drunk on gin at a total cost of five bucks. Why the Champagne?”
“It’s for a painting,” I said. “I bought it. It’s called ‘Sun over the Sahara’ and I’m going to put it in a purple frame and –”
“This is long distance, you drunken idiot,” Bertha screamed at me.
–A.A. Fair, Some Slips Don’t Show
Tags: A.A. Fair, Bertha Cool, Champagne, Cocktail Talk, Cool and Lam, Donald Lam, drunken idiot, Erle Stanley Gardner, Gin, Part II, Some Slips Don’t Show
Posted in: Champagne & Sparkling Wine, Cocktail Talk, Gin
