Cocktail Talk: The Girl With the Long Green Heart
I’ve had a few Cocktail Talk quotes from Lawrence Block books before – I tend to like the older ones, some of which have awesomely been reprinted by the awesome Hard Case Crime folks. The Girl with the Long Green Heart falls firmly into the latter category, as it was originally published in 1955, then reprinted in 2005, and as it’s full of cons, dames (one real serious dame, really), back-dealings, and drinks. No foolin’, just check out the below quotes:
The maître d’ beamed his way over to us, and Evvie said something about Mr. Gunderman’s table, and we were passed along to a captain and bowed through a cocktail lounge and a large dining room into something called the Terrace Room. The tables were set far apart, the lighting dim and intimate. We ordered martinis. “You might as well order big,” she told me. “He’ll be unhappy if I don’t give you the full treatment. This is quite a place, isn’t it? You don’t expect it in Olean. But they have people who come from miles to eat here.” The martinis were cold and dry and crisp. We had a second round, then ordered dinner. She touted the chateaubriand for two and I rode along with it.
—The Girl with the Long Green Heart, Lawrence Block
