November 19, 2024
Here’s a swell quote from a swell old pocket book called Suddenly A Corpse, by the legal thriller/crime/pulp master Harold Q. Masur, or Hal Masur, or just old HQM, as his pals used to call him (I hope). It stars his regular, lawyer Scott Jordan, and is well worth tracking down. I could tell you more, but I’m not gonna. Cause I want to get to the quote, which I find is ideal for this time of year, the Thanksgiving time, the time when all of those who don’t have some sort of insane ability to skip seconds, end up being overfull. Or, because their stomachs, as below, were installed by . . . well, just go on reading.
She had another pull of rye that would have knocked me kicking. She might have been drinking water for all the effect it had. Her stomach, I thought, must have been installed by the Bethlehem Steel Company.
For a moment there I was busier than a drunk on a tightrope.
–Harold Q. Masur, Suddenly a Corpse
August 20, 2019
It’s been many a moon (and many a year, really) since I first mentioned the book Suddenly a Corpse, published originally way back in 1949, with my copy from 1950. It features dashing, drinking, dame-loving, crime-solving lawyer Scott Jordan (Masur wrote a series of books with Mr. Jordan), doing all of the above, all starting when a large man shows up at his door – and then dies instantly. It’s a good rollicking read, and if you can find a copy in your local pulp booksellers, then pick it up. I recently re-read it, and realized that while I’d had a Cocktail Talk from it (be sure to read Suddenly a Corpse Part I, as it has one of my favorite lines), that really, it deserved two. Cause I really like the below quote about school, or a school at least.
I hesitated and said, “Give me a little time to think it over. Maybe we can do something for you.”
Her mouth twisted contemptuously. “Listen, mister, the finishing school I graduated from taught me more than how to sling a fancy highball. I don’t trust you. When a lawyer asks for time he’s thinking up ways to trick somebody.
–Harold Q. Masur, Suddenly a Corpse
May 14, 2009
There hasn’t been any Cocktail Talk on here in forever, thanks to me going to Italy and making videos and being generally an anti-literary bum on a tramp steamer. So to speak. But here are a couple quotes for your Friday from a fine bit of pulping (lawyer pulping even, as the main character’s a legal man), a little pocket book called Suddenly a Corpse, by Harold Q. Masur (which you’d think would have to be a pseudonym, right? But no, it’s just one of the greatest names ever). Tough stuff, but then again, so are you:
She had another pull of rye that would have knocked me kicking. She might have been drinking water for all the effect it had. Her stomach, I thought, must have been installed by the Bethlehem Steel Company.
For a moment there I was busier than a drunk on a tightrope.
—Harold Q. Masur, Suddenly a Corpse
