August 26, 2014
Charles Williams, the hard-boiled, pulpy, mystery, thriller-y writer, has shown up on this blog before a few times in Cocktail Talk posts. With good reason, as he’s one of the best 1950s/60s writers in all the genres mentioned. I’m always pretty excited to track down one of his books I haven’t read – his plots are crisp, his language is entertaining and right on, and his characters aren’t afraid of a good drink. Recently, I picked up his book Man on a Leash, which is about a young-ish guy trying to track down what happened to his recently-murdered and very larger-than-life father, and then getting into all kinds of predicaments himself. And having a Bloody Mary or two (not the normal drink, really, for pulp-ish books). Which is the where the first quote below comes from. The second has nothing to do with drinks, but is just a darn sweet quote. I’ve begun quoting it, actually, every day at work.
‘It sounds a little kooky, out here in the sagebrush, but would you believe a rescue at sea?’ She glanced at her watch and stood up. ‘But I’ve got to run. If you’ll stop by when you get through here, I’ll hammer together a couple of Blood Marys and a bit of lunch and tell you about it.’
Brubaker got up and began to pace the office. ‘Jesus Christ, when I think that I could’ve been a pimp or a geek in a sideshow, biting the heads off chickens!
— Charles Williams, Man on a Leash
July 15, 2014
I 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
July 1, 2014
I probably don’t need to reiterate my love for English writer Anthony Trollope, but what the heck – I love me some Trollope. I’ve nearly, nearly, read all of his books (well, I’m still missing a few, but I’ve done a fair job and am hunting out the few that I’m missing), and re-read a ton, too. But somehow, the first time I read Doctor Thorne (one of the Chronicles of Barset), I skipped, or read but then forgot about, the below quote. Which is, admittedly, a quote about a character who has a serious probably with the drink. But still! It mentions some bottles that continue to be favorites today, including one thing that’s being in made in Seattle after a long absence by the Old Ballard Liquor Co. See if you can figure out which one!
His father had killed himself with brandy; the son, more elevated in his tastes, was doing the same thing with curaçao, maraschino, and cherry-bounce.
–Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne
June 3, 2014
You know I love me some Peter Lovesey (British detective writer extraordinaire), especially his Peter Diamond series, but other stuff too. I figured, until recently, that I had or had seen the majority of his book. But then I was down at Powells in Portland (a bookstore of massive proportions) and they had a number of books by Mr. Lovesey that I’d never seen, including On the Edge, which I picked up and read and dug (well-plotted, nice post-war-London-ness, some scary ladies), especially for this quote, which highlights an old gin favorite:
He always whistled at the prices but it was the only pub in the district with carpets and soft lighting and barmaids who called you “sir,” and Antonia preferred it to anywhere else.
Today he offered her a Gin and It instead of the usual shandy.
She raised her eyebrows. “What’s this for, naught boy? No point in getting me sloshed if you’re going straight back to your boring students.”
“Is it no, then?”
“That’s a little word I never use.”
–Peter Lovesey, On the Edge
May 27, 2014
Death Elects a Mayor is a book from 1939, so a big of an older read. And, to be completely honest, I picked it up (wherever it was – book sale of some sort) because the spine (I have the hardback) has a sweet picture of a skeleton. But as a read it turned out awfully fine, a sort-of combination of old skool political backdealings combined with hospital intrigue combined with murder. That’s a good drink right there. And it contains the below quote, which I think is fine, in a 1939 way:
The three men were drinking highballs mixed from a bottle of the mayor’s whiskey standing on a bedside table, and cracking smutty stories while they laid plans for the coming campaign. From their happy expressions the machine must have given signs of functioning smoothly. Most of what they said concerned what they were going to after the election.
—Death Elects a Mayor, James G. Edwards, MD
May 20, 2014
Part two of my re-reading and Cocktail Talk-ing from Chester Himes books continues (part 1 here) continues with a quote from the awesome book, The Crazy Kill. I talk about it more in the first Crazy Kill Cocktail Talk (see it when you look at all Chester Himes Cocktail Talks), but as a quick refresher, it starts at a wake where a man is found dead in a bread basket. And goes from there. Actually, I’m going to be put in two quotes, but the first one is really short – and so perfect if you know a bunch of bartenders. Like I do (luckily). The second is an overview of the wake, and is a dandy party quote (even if a wake isn’t, I suppose, always a party).
‘I ain’t interested in that whiskey jockey,’ Doll Baby said.
The table, sink, sidestands and most of the available floor space were strewn with empty and half-filled bottles – gin, whiskey and rum bottles, pop bottles, condiment bottles; pots, pans and platters of food, a dishpan containing leftover potato salad, deep iron pots with soggy pieces of friend chicken, fried fish, fried pork chops; baking pans with mashed and mangled biscuits, pie pans with single slices of runny pies; a washtub containing bits of ice floating about in trashy water; slices of cake and spongy white-bread sandwiches, half eaten, lying everywhere – on the table, sink and floor.
— Chester Himes, The Crazy Kill
May 13, 2014
I’ve been re-reading some of my favorite Chester Himes books lately (if you haven’t read Chester Himes at all – then get to it, cause he’s one of the real greats – if you have read some of his books, then let me say, re-reading them is well worth it), and realized that when Cocktail Talk-ing them earlier on this blog, I overlooked some choice quotes. Including the below from the book The Heat is On, which stars (of course) the finest Harlem detectives – and best named detectives – Grave Digger Jones and Cotton Ed Johnson, as well as an albino called Pinky.
Mamie Louise was sick and the other all-night greasy spoons and barbecue joints had no appeal. They decided to eat in the Great Man nightclub on 125th Street.
‘I like a joint where you can smell the girls’ sweat,’ Coffin Ed said.
It had a bar fronting on the street with a cabaret in back where a two-dollar membership fee was charged to get in.When the two detectives flashed their buzzers they were made members for free . . .
‘You want stink, you got it,’ Grave Digger said.
‘And everything that goes with it,’ Coffin Ed amended.
Some joker was shouting in a loud belligerent voice, ‘I ain’t gonna pay for but two whiskeys; dat’s all I drunk. Somebody musta stole the other three ‘cause I ain’t seen ‘em.’
— The Heat is On, Chester Himes
May 6, 2014
Every time I find a new Day Keene book, I’m a happy man (check out past Day Keene posts). Recently, I found a reprint book that contains not one, but two Day Keene amazements – and instantly became doubly happy. Put out by Stark House, who does a bunch of other classic pulp reprints, it contains Framed in Guilt and My Flesh is Sweet. Both are worthy reads, in the fast-paced, thrilling way Mr. Keene always played out his mysteries, thrillers, and pulpy goodnesses. The quote below is from the latter book.
After the air conditioned bank, the street was like an oven. Elena blew up a lock of hair the heat had plastered to her forehead. ‘How,’ she asked, unsmiling, ‘would you like to buy me something tall and cold and filled with gin?’
–Day Keene, My Flesh is Sweet
