May 5, 2020

Cocktail Talk: Spiderweb

Rough Edges: Spiderweb -- Robert BlochRobert Bloch was a well-known writer, novelist, short-story-ist, pulper, and though he wrote a fair amount of crime fiction, his best known work is Psycho, which as you could probably guess was the book made into the famous Hitchcock film. He started, interestingly enough, as a student of the legendary brain expanding horror master H.P. Lovecraft, even. Wowsa! But here we’re taking a nice quote from a crime novel, Spiderweb, which was originally an Ace Double, meaning a book from well-known pocket-book publisher Ace that actually contained two books – whatta deal! Here, it was with David Alexander’s The Corpse in My Bed. Though I don’t have that book (I might like to have it!); instead, I have a modern reprint of it from the happening folks at Hard Case Crime. Here’s the ringer: said modern reprint is also a twofer, combining Spiderweb with another Bloch book, Shooting Star. Get it! And enjoy the short quote below, which I thought would fit nicely with the last Friday Night Cocktail, I Should Classicoco, as they both have an apricot component.

 

’Your order?’ I looked at her. Then, ‘two apricot brandies.’ She slid into the booth across from me and she smiled.

 

–Robert Bloch, Spiderweb

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