Blood & Whiskey #26
New books from S.A. Cosby and Colson Whitehead; older books from Richard Stark, David Joy, Edna O'Brien. Plus an "Italian American" cocktail - and Neal on the Cape.
Hello friends and readers,
It’s becoming a problem. I can’t walk past a Little Free Library without checking inside and usually end up finishing my jog with a book or two in my sweaty hands. I can’t enter a bookstore without buying. And the library? It’s like crack for a book addict. The result is a house full of stacks and shelves and hoarded piles. Donations to friends and Little Free Libraries barely make a dent. It all gets replenished. But here’s the thing about the actual reading of all these books, especially in summer… Some people (looking at you, wife) know how to get fully lost in their pages, never looking up until The End. Others (looking in mirror) flit and dabble. I do read a lot, but lately must confess that for every 3-4 books read to completion another 2-3 are DNFs (did not finish). There. Got that off my chest.
All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby — This one I did finish. With three books in the past few years, Cosby has emerged as one of the best new crime writers around. This one is my favorite — funnier, smoother, though no less brutal than his previous two (Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland, both past Blood & Whiskey picks). Titus Crown is the new sheriff — and first Black sheriff — of Charon County, in rural southeastern Virginia. He’s a former FBI agent who’s back home after a dubious end to his FBI career, when he’s confronted with the daytime shooting of a beloved school teacher (white) and his deputies’ shooting of the suspect (Black). Titus quickly learns that the dead teacher and shooter — plus a third man, still on the loose — were involved in the grotesque torture and murder of Black children. Titus’s search for the evil third man leads us through a southern gothic freak show of secrets, snake handlers, blood, and bodies. Stephen King praised the book as “a crackling good police procedural.”
The Hunter and The Man with the Getaway Face, by Richard Stark — Stark is one of prolific noir legend Donald Westlake’s pseudonyms. These are the first two in the series featuring one-named crook, Parker, who moves brutally from caper to caper, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. I was tipped off to the Parker novels via a post by author Duane Swierczynski, who wrote a foreword to one of the last in the series, Nobody Runs Forever (2004), in which he credits Stark/Westlake (who died in 2008) with inspiring his own crime-writing career — and the name of his child, Parker. Mostly published in the 1960s and 70s, the series is available in a slick reprint collection from The University of Chicago Press. In the first two books, the action is steady and jagged, packed with sassy dialogue (clearly Elmore Leonard was a fan), even if some of it is cringingly outdated. (Stark’s women, for example, all seem to be prostitutes, waitresses, bleached-blond “birds,” and battered wives.) I look forward to seeing how the tone shifts over the next few books. End to end, the series spanned forty years. Parker has been played on screen by Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall, Peter Coyote, Mel Gibson, and Jayson Statham. I’m onto book 3 now, and enjoying the ride.
Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead — I saw Whitehead speak at a Harvard Bookstore gig last night and he credited Parker as an inspiration for the second in his Harlem crime trilogy. (“He’d be a millionaire if he didn’t have to work with all these losers,” Whitehead said, also giving credit to Patricia Highsmith and Chester Himes for giving him license to be “expressionistic and weird.”) I started Crook Manifesto last night — continuing the story of furniture dealer and stolen goods fence Ray Carney, who we first met in Harlem Shuffle — and will review it next month. (In the New York Times, the legendary Walter Mosley called it “a glorious and intricate anatomy of the heist, the con and the slow game.”)
Where All Light Tends to Go, by David Joy — I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of this North Carolina writer before seeing an Instagram post by the scrappy-cool Artifact Books in Encinitas, CA, from whom I ordered Joy’s debut (from 2015) and its follow up, The Weight of This World (2017). Set in the mountains of western NC, Jacob McNeely is the son of a meth dealer dad and a meth head mom. He’s in love with the beautiful Maggie, who hopes to rescue him, but he can’t seem to escape his controlling and murderous father. A showdown looms. With shades of Daniel Woodrell, Eli Cranor, and even S.A. Cosby, the writing is dark yet shimmering. Like the best of country noir, the violence is offset by beautiful lines and moments. But as the story heats up and the bodies fall, Jacob realizes that escaping his hometown is fantasy: “Light never shined on a man like me.”
House of Splendid Isolation and Down By the River, by Edna O’Brien — she’s a brilliant writer, but both were DNFs. (Also started but DNF the excellent Trespasses, by Louise Kennedy. Just wasn’t in an Irish-lit mood, I guess.)
What my current wife is currently reading: Shutter, by Ramona Emerson — “Rita was raised by her grandmother on New Mexico’s Navajo land and now, in early adulthood, is a forensics photographer for the Albuquerque police department, a job that involves a lot of dead people. All this death surfaces ghosts and spirits who try to reach Rita but can only get in when her resistance is down. These hauntings weighed heavily on her grandmother, knowing that Rita’s communication with the dead would be a terrible burden. When a new and powerful ghost gets Rita involved in a dangerous situation, she does what she must to survive. Fast paced, intense and thoughtful. I liked Rita’s sensibility. I understood her. The land was a strong character.”
Other lit shit…
As record holder for sloppiest handwriting (seriously, it’s frightening) I appreciated this piece in The Atlantic on the loss of penmanship.
Ten super-short stories on cocktail napkins, from Esquire (except for Rumaan Alam, who typed his, because… bad penmanship). Fave: Jess Walter.
An excellent short story, “Bandits,” by a friend I’d studied with twenty-plus summers ago in Gambier, Ohio, in the New Ohio Review.
Prom Mom, by Laura Lippman (coming later this month); Time’s Mouth, Edan Lepucki (coming August 1); new Mick Herron (coming Sept).
Cocktail of the Month
I enjoyed mixing up this one up with friends Rob (like my spouse, an Italian American himself) and Nancy, in their very Americana town of East Aurora, NY, on the Fourth of July. There are different versions of this out there, but to me this one (similar to the Paper Plane) is simpler and less sweet than some others.
The Italian American
1 oz. bourbon
3/4 oz. Campari
1/2 oz. amaro (options: Montenegro, Meletti, Nonino)
1/4 oz. lemon juice (or more to add tartness)
1 tbsp maple syrup (or more to add sweetness)
Combine ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker, shake till cold then strain into a chilled coupe or martini glass. Garnish with lemon peel or twist.
Speaking of whiskey…. Here’s a piece I wrote for Whisky Advocate magazine — about moonshiners and the early days of Nascar, which was the subject of my second book, Driving with the Devil.
Finally, if you missed my interview with Andre Dubus III, check it out in the new Interrogations section of Blood & Whiskey: HERE.
If anyone happens to be on Cape Cod… I’ll be discussing The First Kennedys at the JFK Hyannis Museum at 4p on July 31. I’ll be in conversation with my former Baltimore Sun colleague Candy Thomson and signing books after.
Until next month…
-Neal
Find me @ Instagram; sometimes 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”
Those We Thought We Knew is another good David Joy novel.