March 24, 2015
I introduced you to the book Martinis and Murder by Henry Kane (originally titled, A Halo for Nobody, by the way, which is nowhere near as good) in an earlier post, and promised, much like old Jacob Marley, that we’d have three different quotes from the book. And here’s the second!
‘Now,’ she said and she produced rye and bitters and cherries and olives and gin and two kinds of vermouth, dry and sweet, and then she backed up against a table and put her hands behind her and clasped the edge of the table and watched me, her body tight against her dress.
I mixed drinks. And set them up on the washtub and I looked at her and she didn’t move and I looked again and I don’t know which of us was breathing more heavily.
–Henry Kane, Martinis and Murder
March 17, 2015
The cover blurb from the NYT review of this book says it all, “A brutal story of mayhem and murder, liquor and lust.” Okay, it doesn’t seem all that brutal today maybe as in 1947, but it does deliver on the murder, liquor, and lust, no doubt about that! Written by Henry Kane and starring a detective named Peter Chambers, Martinis and Murder is probably B level hard-boiled pulp action – not at the level of the masters, but not a bad little read. And as far as cocktail talking goes, this book is packed and overflowing with booze-y asides, varieties of imbibibles, and lots of general drinking. Oh, there’s a mystery, too, which gets solved in-between the drinks. Because the book’s so tipsy and happy about it, this is only going to be the first Cocktail Talk, of three! And there could have been more! Really!
She touched a cord with a gold tassel and the butler came in.
‘Aperitif?’ she inquired and looked at me.
‘Manhattan,’ I said.
‘Manhattan, Alfred. And several Martinis, dry. Please serve them in the garden. Now, come along, Peter Chambers. And don’t disgrace me.’
–Henry Kane, Martinis and Murder
March 10, 2015
Tales of Whisky and Smuggling is a fun read, full of stories that take a variety of paths, but at heart are all about the struggle between what we might call the revenue men, though in the book they’re usually referred to as gaugers or excisemen, versus the smugglers, the home-distillers operating outside the tax scheme much as their foreparents did, making their Uisge Beatha (water of life, or whisky). Neat, right! Even neater though, is when reading one of the stories I learned of the deoch-an-dorus, or a drink-at-the-door you give a guest as they leave. That’s a great tradition. I am in to that! Check out the below quote to see it in action.
‘Ach,well, you’ll just have a deoch-an-dorus before you go, I insist,’ their host said. Although feeling vaguely disappointed Holton and Muir were delighted to have this traditional Gaelic drink-at-the-door. James fetched glassed and poured them a hearty measure each and a smaller one for himself. The gaugers tossed off their drinks and said goodbye to their very convivial host, who was delighted to see how unsteady they were on their feet as they set off down the road.
–Stuart McHardy, Tales of Whisky and Smuggling
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
