Blood & Whiskey #14
Attica Locke, Dorothy B. Hughes, Dennis Lehane, Rebecca Donner, The Bear - and the Aquatonic.
Hello friends and readers…
Well, the sun finally came out here in Seattle, and it’s mostly shined for the past few weeks — the hard-earned start to a stunning mid-70s Seattle summer. In contrast to that warm-and-shiny intro, here’s some dark and bloody storytelling…
Bluebird, Bluebird (Mullholand) — Attica Locke
One of the best books I’ve read this year. Written in 2018, my paperback is now defaced with notes and highlights, starting with: “They pulled a body out of the bayou last night … a white one.” Darren Matthews, a Black Texas-raised, would-be lawyer turned Texas Ranger travels to rural Lark — known hub for the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, straight out of Deliverence — to investigate two murders, despite being suspended. Locke (a writer for Empire) crafts subtle, exquisitely observed and uneasily tense interactions between Matthews and the white cops and bosses of Lark; Matthews and the owner of the roadside cafe where one victim was last seen; Matthews and the beautiful widow of the Black victim, and the loathsome widower of the white victim. The twisty mystery takes it’s time to unfold, and I admired Locke’s disciplined restraint. I wanted to flip pages and savor them at the same time. I’m serious, I literally caressed a few pages. Read it!
In A Lonely Place (New York Review of Books) — Dorothy B. Hughes
Originally published in 1947, I picked up this NYRB edition during my recent book tour from Malaprops (Asheville, NC), and finally got to it last week, devouring it in a few days. Dix Steele is an ex-World War II pilot who’s living lazy and unemployed in the apartment of mysteriously absent landlord, in a finely sketched version of post-war LA. He reconnects with a pal, Brub, from his wartime days in London. Brub (and his smarter-than-the-boys wife Sylvia) is now a cop on the tail of a serial killer — who happens to be Dix. (That’s not a spoiler.) This is brilliant, moody literary noir. The violence occurs offscreen and the view is mostly of a man falling to pieces and taking innocents with him.
Bonus: my edition came with a brilliant afterword by Megan Abbott, who praised Hughes’s “uncanny grasp of the connection between violence and misogyny and an embattled masculinity” — a timeless connection that gives this book a prescient and eerily timely vibe.
Coronado (William Morrow) — Dennis Lehane
A 2006 collection from one of my favorite writers, picked up at Square Books in Oxford, Miss. (see pic below). These stories reminded me not only of Lehane’s ability to create dark tension with a few taut sentences, but also his amazing breadth and diverse range. Since his pivot to TV and pull-back from books, I've forgotten what a great writer Lehane is, his characters all messed up and real, from southern dog-killers to a revenge-seeking couple high on GHB to a fresh ex-con and his murderous father. Stealing from a review quote on the jacket, there’s a Tom Waits-like quality to these stories — tragic, funny, lyrical, sad — a collection I'll return to again and again, when I need some dark inspiration.
Two books about islands (ahem… neither of which I finished)…
The Island, by Adrian McKinty — So, here’s a little secret: sometimes, if a book gets on my nerves, I bail. I donate it to a Little Free Library, move onto the next in the stack. Too many books out there to hate-read anything to completion. I didn’t hate this one (I’ve liked his other books), but when the deaf girl on a bike gets killed by the douchey doctor on a private island, and he and his wife try to hide the body from the hillbilly family who strings up their two young kids from a rafter, well… I just moved on.
Barrier Island, by John D. MacDonald — Scored from a Little Free Library, I found myself wishing I was with MacDonald’s hero Travis McGee, instead of these annoying Mississippi real estate developers. Too much plodding minutiae for me in this coastal swindler tale, which was MacDonald’s last novel (he died in ‘86 at 70), capping a stunning career of 70+ books.
And in the true crime-ish category, a WWII story…
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (Little Brown), by Rebecca Donner — Still reading this spy + WWII story, but great so far: the bio of Mildred Harnack, who led a resistance circle inside Nazi Germany — and paid for her efforts with her life. (No spoiler here, but Hitler had her beheaded in 1943.) The author, Harnack’s great-great-niece, lovingly brings this fierce woman to life. Meticulously researched and written with passion and novelistic nuance and packed with ‘holy shit’ details. Portrays Hitler as the Trump of his day, a ridiculed misogynist buffoon (he banned abortion as anti-German), surrounded by like-minded toadies until he captured a mass following, crushed opponents and the press — despite Harnack’s heroic efforts to undermine him and to help Jews escape.
Writer/reporter pals’ books — and a newsletter — I suggest you check out:
American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry (Twelve) — Just out from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz, shows how the opioid crisis was fueled by many more villains than the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma.
Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis (Little Brown) — coming in mid-August from Beth Macy (Dopesick).
Work/Craft/Life — an excellent and ambitious newsletter from author Neal Bascomb (The Winter Fortress, The Escape Artists) featuring profiles of real people doing real jobs, and how their work shapes their life.
What we’re watching: The Bear! What a beast of a show. Best thing I’ve seen since we sadly finished the eighth and final season of Spiral. Features Jeremy Allen White (from Shameless) as Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto, a celebrated chef who comes home to Chicago after his brother’s death to run the family’s Italian beef shop. Sounds simple, but the tense and mysterious storyline, the testy and fucked-up characters, the insanity of restaurant work all adds up to a work of real art and, at less than 30 minutes an episode, a hard-not-to-binge treat.
Listening to: At a friend’s suggestion, I revisited Bloodlines, Wright Thompson’s investigation of racehorse deaths at Santa Anita racetrack. Plus a couple recent episodes of the You’re Wrong About podcast: the story of Go Ask Alice, and Martha Stewart’s “crimes.” Up next: Who Killed Daphne, from Wondery.
Cocktail of the Month…
Keeping things simple, cool and quirky this month with a homemade thing I call the Aquatonic. Instead of Q&T, replace the G with chilly aquavit — easily found around my Nordic-rooted ‘hood. (If you’ve been reading this for the past year, you know clear spirits sometimes replace the “whiskey” of the title.)
The Aquatonic
2 oz aquavit
tonic
lime juice
dash of bitters (something light, like orange, plum, or tree bitters)
It’s best if the aquavit comes straight from the freezer. Pour over ice, top with tonic, squeeze a lime wedge over it and throw it in. Add a dash of bitters.
Tasting note from my wife: it’s a bit tart, so feel free to add some seltzer, or replace the tonic with seltzer (like lime La Croix).
Playlist of the Month…
All female singer-songwriter-rockers this month. (Small nod to the 50.5% of the population dissed by a politicized and meddling Supreme Court.)
I’d mentioned last month that my book THE FIRST KENNEDYS was picked as one of Amazon’s top-20 Best Books of the Year So Far. I’m mentioning it again.
And if you want to see/hear me wonk out about Irish immigrants, nativism, late-1800s Boston politics, check out my Kennedy Forum talk on C-Span or my interviews with the JFK35 podcast or the Kennedy Dynasty podcast.
Until next month…
-Neal
Find me on Instagram; sometimes on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goodreads
And it's a battered old suitcase
To a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on
An old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey…
-Tom Waits, “Tom Traubert’s Blues”
Thanks for the shout-out on WorkCraft. I'll have to try your new drink tonight, and by coincidence, just dove into an old Lehane book. Forgot how good he is--spot on.