August 13, 2011
There is something about a good con-man noir that keeps me coming back for more (actually, I wish I knew about more con-man noir books–let me know if you know any). Which is why I recently went on a three-day reading jag of Lawrence Block Hard Case Crime reprints. Hard Case not only has sweet covers, but has done a sweet job re-printing hard-to-get books from the mid-last-century, including some fine reads from Lawrence Block that just so happen to fall into the con-man noir area (that’s what I’m calling them at least). They also tend to have main characters who aren’t shy about drinking lots when passing the time between cons-and-or-murders, which is why I’m bringing them up here on the Spiked Punch blog. Cause we like our criminals a bit, or a lot, tipsy. In Grifter’s Game, the con is a gigolo of sorts who gets into trouble over a woman (as you might expect) and who likes both brown liquors (as you might also expect) and clear ones (which isn’t so expected), as evidenced in the following two quotes:
One hotel had a terrace facing on the Boardwalk with umbrella-topped tables and tall drinks. I found an empty table and sat under the shade of the umbrella until a waiter found me, took my order, left me and returned with a tall cool vodka Collins. It came with a colored straw and I sipped it like a kid sipping a malted. I lighted a cigarette and settled back in my chair. I tried to put everything together and make it add up right.
It was a panic, in its own quiet way. I picked her up in a good bar on Sansom Street where the upper crust hobnob. We drank Gibsons together and ate dinner together and caught a show together, and we used her car, which was an expensive one.
In the next Lawrence Block I read, Lucky at Cards, the con is an ex-magician turned card shark, who wanders into a mid-sized Midwestern town just looking to get his teeth fixed, but who runs into trouble thanks to a random card game and a random meeting with a curvy lady (hmm, I sense a trend). Here (as in many other books from the time) they’re not shy about having some serious drinks with lunch, including scotch and sodas and Martinis (it was a better time in some ways, people):
We had Martinis first. Then I ordered a ham steak and he ordered an open turkey sandwich. He told the ancient waiter to bring us another pair of Martinis. The drinks came, then the food. We ate and drank and made small talk. We were working on coffee before he said the first word about business.
The final quote for today (also from Lucky at Cards) isn’t a booze one, but seemed so apropos after three days of con noir that I wanted to end with it (and if it leads you to drink, well . . .):
Life is a hellishly iffy proposition from beginning to end.
June 21, 2011
I’ve hit up Ed McBain quotes before (a couple from his boozirific The Gutter and the Grave), and talked a bit more about him there, so I’m going to skip too much intro here, and just say that the cover for this book, Like Love, is very tantalizing, and the two quotes below are also very tantalizing, especially if you like Rob Roys and Martinis (hey, wait a minute, I like both of those!). The Rob Roy sadly isn’t mentioned very often in books outside of those tomes focused specifically on cocktails and cocktail lore, which made it even nicer to see it in this police procedural-y book. Also, the Martini isn’t really thought of (enough, anyway) as a romantic drink enough anymore, which made it even nicer to seen in in a romantic scene here.
I worked until about four-thirty. Howard came in and said he was knocking off, and would I like a drink. I said yes, I would. We went to the bar on the corner, it’s called Dinty’s. I had two Rob Roys, and then Howard and I walked to the subway. I went straight home.
He was glad to be away from Kling and away from the squad room. He was glad to be with Christine Maxwell who came in from the kitchen of her apartment carrying a tray with a Martini shaker and two Martini glasses. He watched her as she walked toward him. She had let her blond hair grow long since he’d first known her, and it hung loose around the oval of her face now, sleekly reflecting pin-point ticks of light from the fading sun that filtered through the window.
–Ed McBain, Like Love
April 12, 2011
Lawrence Block is one of those crime/mystery/thriller who I have a strange relationship with, in a way. I’ve read a number of his books, and probably three-quarters of them have left me thinking I probably wouldn’t need to read another. They weren’t bad, but neither were they good, or original, or full of characters bursting with life. However, the other quarter of his books that I’ve read are everything opposite, and quite good. The number of good has been high enough that if I run into one of his books at a sale, or on the shelves of a country home in Italy that I’m staying in, I’ll probably give it a whirl. Which was the case with In the Midst of Death. Sadly, it didn’t rock my reading world. But it was okay, and did feature this nice quote about lunchtime (or shortly thereafter drinking):
I went over to Johnny Joyce’s on Second and sat in a booth. Most of the lunch crowd was gone. The ones who remained were one or two Martinis over the line now, and probably wouldn’t make it back to their offices at all. I had a hamburger and a bottle of Harp, then drank a couple shots of bourbon with my coffee.
–Lawrence Block, In the Midst of Death
January 26, 2010
I don’t know much, but I know I love the song “Starry Eyes” by Mötley Crüe. Do I love the book by Donald Hamilton called Assassins Have Starry Eyes? Not as much, definitely. But I did like it, though I don’t know the Hamilton oeuvre that well (and yes, I did just bust out the “oeuvre.” I rule like that, literarily.) I don’t even know Matt Helm, who’s called out so boldly on the coverm but who isn’t in the book at all. I do know that the book was once called Assignment Murder, but the Crüe never had a song called that (though, in hindsight, maybe they should have). And that it’s a funny jumble of a book, with some mystery, some intrigue, some hard-to-believeness, and some anti-government plot or rigmarole that Donald (if I can call him Donald) seems down on somewhat. I also know that the following quote is a nice kick in the face to those who would drink a pre-made or a poorly made Martini, and that is why I’m quoting it, and why Mötley Crüe would dig the book, because they don’t stand (in leather and thigh high boots) for any bad Martinis.
“Another of the same for me,” he said, pushing a tall glass in her direction. “And a Martini for my son-in-law; and none of that tired old bar mix, sister. Have him make it up fresh: Noilly Prat vermouth and Gordon’s gin, one to five–is that about right Greg?”
“One to five is fine,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “And none of those damn olives sister. Just a twist of lemon. Got it?”
–Donald Hamilton, Assassins Have Starry Eyes
September 8, 2009
Hey, happy Mon-Tuesday. Just hold off before calling me calendarily challenged. I know today is really Tuesday, and that there is no Mon-Tuesday day. But as it’s the day after a Monday holiday, all of us working slobs (those who work the regular work-week at least) going back to work feel like it’s a Monday, cause it’s the first day of the week with the good times that entails (sing it now, good times, any time you need a favor), but it’s actually Tuesday. Hence the Mon-Tuesday. What does this mean in the world of boozing and spiking of punches? That it’s a fine time for a quote by Hal Masur (who in his full name is Harold Q. Masur, as seen in this post about Suddenly a Corpse), from a book in his Scott Jordan series. Scott’s a lawyer, see, when that meant more than a bad film adaptation and a southern accent. What it means is he drinks hard, rumbles with jerky DAs, snuggles up with any number of hourglass figures, and then solves mysteries and murders. The kind of lawyer a boy or girl can admire, and aspire to being (or hiring). You know, as it is Mon-Tuesday, here are two quotes from Tall, Dark and Deadly: one martini one, and one bar one. Enjoy them, and then go litigate yourself something cold and strong (whatever that means).
“Thirsty Scott?”
“Parched. I’d like a martini, very dry.”
She went to a portable bar. “One martini, coming up.”
“May I help?”
“I know the formula,” she declared loftily. “Gin, vermouth, and cyanide.” She prepared the ingredients in a chrome shaker, applying the vermouth with an atomizer, and substituting a twist of lemon peel for the cyanide. I drank. It was very dry indeed and the gin left me a trifle lightheaded.
“Another?” she asked?
“Not unless you can handle me.”
“Does that mean I have to get you drunk?”
“Helps. I’ve very shy.”
I entered and perched on a bar stool. The place was humming with activity. Regardless of the hour or the temperature, it seems that a large number of citizens continuously suffer from parched throats. In order to accommodate this drought the city has spawned a thousand watering holes that serve no water. This one was indistinguishable from its cousins.
I ordered Canadian ale and got a glass of Milwaukee stout.
–Tall, Dark and Deadly, Hal Masur
July 31, 2009
Happy last day of July, 2009. And, happy last day of the hottest work week Seattle’s ever had (that’s what the weather people are going on about at least). You know what really hot weeks like this lead to? Drinking, naturally. But you know what else hot weeks like this lead to? You got it: murder. And mayhem. And mangling. And mauling. And muzzles. All those devious and deadly “m” words. Which is why I thought there’d be nothing better to start the weekend then a quote or two from Richard Sale’s Benefit Performance. Not that this is the most murderous of Dell pocket-sized book (which are about the same size as Pocket Books), but it does take place in Hollywood, which is of course also hot, matching up with the theme of murder and temperature (or something along those lines–really, I just like the quotes).
To the left was the bar. The bar looked as good as the band sounded. “We’ll have a drink,” Kerry said.
“We’ll go up to the office and wait,” said Willie.
“You heard what the Bull of the Pampas said,” Kerry replied. “Clam isn’t here yet. I’ll buy you a drink.”
Willie nudged him with a round hard muzzle.
Kerry said meaningly, “Shoot me in front of all these people. It’s good for business and it stretches your neck.” He pushed the muzzle away boldly. Then he walked into the bar and ordered a Scotch old fashioned. When he glanced around, Willie had joined him, looking mad and frustrated. “You’ve been seeing too many movies,” Kerry said, amused.
A night club in the daytime is full of phantoms.
He took a breath and passed through the dusty light shaft as if it had depth and breadth. When he reached the bar, there was no daylight, and the dust danced invisibly. The bartender was working patiently behind his bar, designing his architecture of inebriation. He was cutting his lemons, putting his olives and cherries in their receptacles, anticipating Manhattans and Martinis.
–Richard Sale, Benefit Performance
July 14, 2009
Poor Martini (I’m talking the real honest-to-Betsy-straight-up-gin-vermouth Martini here. None of your “ini”-added-to-anything-even-liquid-shoe-polish drinks that aren’t, after all, a Martini, but just a drink some joker was too lazy to come up with a real neato creative name for). Yes, the most popular drink in the world, and perhaps the most popular icon in the last 100 plus some odd years (maybe Mickey? But he’s a kid’s game.) And yet, still slogged off in the most ridiculous manner (hence the “ini”-on-anything-makes-a-name disgust). Well, don’t let ‘em get you down Martini. We still love you, and to prove it, everyone reading this will have a Martini tonight (that means you and you and you, and maybe you, too), and I’ll type up this Bernard DeVoto quote, which extols your loveliness (Mr. DeVoto will have a Martini tonight as well, in that great next world bar):
You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth, and one of the shortest-lived.
–Bernard DeVoto, The Hour
PS: I like mine this a-way, by the way: 2-1/2 ounces gin, 1/2 ounce dry vermouth, lemon twist.
