August 20, 2019

Cocktail Talk: Suddenly a Corpse, Part II

Image result for suddenly a corpseIt’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

Cocktail Talk: Suddenly a Corpse

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

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