Blood & Whiskey #31: end-of-year edition

A serial killer, the Korean Provisional Government, a crumbling Ireland, a Queenpin, Rebecca three ways, "The Last Word" cocktail + podcasts and pencils & more.

Dec 17, 2023

Hello friends and readers,

Before we get to the moll or the Korean novelist or the Irish unraveling or the Du Maurier homage or my favorite cocktail of the year, let’s start with the serial killer on death row.

I’d missed it when it came out last year, but glad I finally found time for Danya Kukafka’s incredible Notes On An Execution. We meet Ansel Packer twelve hours before he’s scheduled to die. In alternating chapters, we slide back in time to hear different women in Packer’s life — a detective, his mother, a girlfriend’s sister — tell his story. It’s the story of an abandoned boy becoming a manipulative monster. Yet in Kukafka’s telling, he’s also earnest, human, and hopeful, making him all the more terrifying as we learn about his crimes.

Convinced he’s more than wicked — “You are expansive… You are complex” — Packer has written a manuscript, his “Theory,” that he hopes will explain everything, help him outlive death. “It’s like I’m leaving a piece of myself behind,” he tells the female prison guard he’s wooed into helping with an escape plan. A jaded warden sees through him, sniffing: “So, you’re a manifesto guy, huh.” Told with empathy and in an eerily poetic prose, we see Packer realizing too late that he’s not special at all. He just a bad man who’s about to die.

Same Bed Different Dreams, by Ed Park

I hate to lean on terms like fever dream and kaleidoscopic, but it’s no easy task to describe Parks’ brilliant, trippy, outrageous and long-awaited second novel. It’s mostly the story of a writer named Soon Sheen, who works for a tech giant called GLOAT. Soon meets a group of writer friends at a party in New York, an opening scene that felt like the last sane moment for hundreds of pages.

Woven throughout is the bizarre (fictional, mostly) century-long history of the Korean Provisional Government (KPG), which is told in the pages of a manuscript entitled “Same Bed, Different Dreams” that Soon steals at the end of the party. I’d need too much space (and a drink) to explain where the story goes from there, but it’s manic and hilarious and an absolute blast, featuring walk-ons by a nutty mix of characters, from Jack London to Teddy Roosevelt to Marilyn Monroe and literally hundreds more, many of them agents with the KPG. Maybe. There’s also photos, diagrams, puzzles and codes sprinkled throughout, and I mostly gave up trying to make sense of it all and just held on for the thrilling ride and its Vonnegut-meets-Murakami-meets-LSD vibe.

(Ed and I once worked together at a GLOAT-ish company)

Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch

Gotta admit, this recent Booker Prize winner was a tough read — brilliantly and beautifully crafted, but all too believably terrifying. Eilish Stack is a biologist living in Dublin with her husband, Larry, an official with Ireland’s teacher’s union, and their four kids. We’re subtly introduced to a simmering civil unrest afflicting this fictional Ireland, where citizens worry about the rise of the National Alliance Party and the menace of the Garda National Services Bureau, which Eilish’s husband insists is “not the Stasi” — just before he heads off to join a protest march and disappears, never to be seen or heard from again.

Such disappearances are soon a common occurrence in a nation that is slowly and then rapidly imploding as a nationalist frenzy sweeps the land.

What makes Lynch’s story so terrifying is the frog-in-boiling-water inaction, the under-explained references to “the party” and the “Emergency Powers Act”; the flags draped outside some homes while others go dark; the store shelves empty, the ATM machines dark. Misinformation runs wild, then the intimidation and vigilantism begins. As Eilish’s 12-year-old son Bailey spookily declares: "the worm is turning … the worm does what it likes.” The chaos builds slowly and then horribly. And then it gets worse. At its core is a strong woman fighting to save her wounded family, clinging bravely and sometimes naively to hope, trying to keep her shit together as the world she knew collapses around her.

It’s filled with achingly dark and stunning lines. And yet… too much relentless chaos and sorrow for my taste. A “challenging read,” as they say. But given the horrors we know people are capable of inflicting on neighbors, he’s not wrong, either. It’s just a bit too uncomfortably real. Maybe that was the point.

Queenpin, by Megan Abbott

I understand the phrase “stay in your lane” and understand why (even Michael Jordan) you should stick with the sport you know best. But after five nonfiction books and a memoir, I can’t shake a nagging obsession with writing a novel. Over the years I’ve spoken to many fellow writers about making the switch (including Abbott Kahler, a nonfiction writer whose first novel, Where You End, is out next month). After a nonfiction book project recently fell through (RIP spy story), I’m now trying to revive enthusiasm for my fiction project by returning to a stack of novels recommended by writer friends, some based on true stories.

That led me to Megan Abbott’s amazing third novel, 2007’s Queenpin. Part of her early-career string of award-winning dames-and-thugs noir novels (set in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, often Los Angeles), it’s the story of an ambitious young woman taken under the wing of mob-connected Gloria Denton, beautiful and infamously brutal. But when the unnamed young woman falls for a handsome gambler, she wonders if she’s capable of double-crossing her mentor. The dialogue is as Chandler as can be, but the women are smarter and the sex is better. Packed with jewels (“sparkly wampum”) and smoldering Chesterfields, nightclubs and racetracks, the vig and the knife, our protagonist knows it can’t last: “I knew it had been headed toward this from the minute she set her hooks in me.” Inhaled in two days, it was one of the most enjoyable reads in a while. Now I’m onto The Song is You, based on a real-life late ‘40s Hollywood murder.

On the novel-writing front, shoutouts to the player-coaches sharing wisdom here on Substack:

Jami Attenberg

(Craft Talk);

Rebecca Makkai

(SubMakk);

Gary Shteyngart

(Gary’s Journey Through Hell);

Edan Lepucki

(Italics Mine);

George Saunders

(Story Club — for kicks, here’s an old interview I did with Saunders);

Courtney Maum

(Before and After the Book Deal); and

Laura Lippman

, with the best-named newsletter, Shaved Meats, Piled High.

The Fiction Writer, by Jillian Cantor

On a ferry ride to Victoria, BC and back (to see my kid), I gulp-read Cantor’s fun twist on Rebecca Du Maurier’s Rebecca, which had yet another fictional Rebecca homage (entitled Becky) tucked inside, like a nesting doll.

It was a clever idea: after the flop of her novel, Becky, Olivia Fitzgerald is lured to the Malibu home of handsome billionaire Henry "Ash" Asherwood, who thinks Du Maurier stole his grandmother’s story and wants Olivia to ghostwrite a book about it. I kept turning the pages, even if Olivia bugged the shit out of me. One of many examples: the maid, who is the sister of Ash’s suspiciously dead wife (and the stand-in for Du Maurier’s Mrs. Danvers), drugs her coffee, but then Olivia thinks maybe she imagined it? This kind of thing happens a few times — maybe that thing I saw with my own eyes wasn’t real? — and I came to find Olivia annoying, sometimes tough but often naive. Still, it was a fun enough read and it sent me to my own copy of Rebecca to revisit nuggets from the real Mrs. Danvers — and to the Criterion Channel to watch Hitchcock’s classic 1940 film.

The amazing Judith Anderson as Danvers, with Joan Fontaine

Cocktail of the Month

I’d previously mentioned the passing of Seattle cocktail legend Murray Stenson, who was once named the best bartender in America. Then I came across this wonderful ode by Tan Vinh, an excellent food/drink writer at my local paper, The Seattle Times, who met with Stenson regularly to discuss cocktails and life in what Vinh describes as “Tuesdays with Murray” coffee sessions.

In Murray’s honor, and with thanks to Vinh, here’s The Last Word, a Prohibition-era cocktail from Detroit that Stenson revived and popularized at the Zig Zag Cafe, where he spent eleven years (including a few drinks served to yours truly).

The Last Word

3/4 ounce gin.
3/4 ounce fresh-squeezed lime juice.
3/4 ounce maraschino liqueur.
3/4 ounce green Chartreuse.

Mix in shaker with ice; strain into coupe or martini glass; garnish with cherry.

And here’s Vinh’s story about Stenson and The Last Word from 2009. Apparently the drink spawned variations like The Final Ward (which replaces gin and lime with rye and lemon). But... careful here. Tastes great, but like its other spinoff, the Paper Plane (equal parts bourbon, aperol, lemon juice and Amaro Nonino Quintessentia) it packs a punch.

Finally, one more from Tan Vinh, who this week reported that a Seattle-distilled whiskey was named #3 in the world by Whisky Advocate magazine. It’s the Westland Garryana single malt from Westland Distillery. But the magazine’s review isn’t inspiring me to drop $150: “The oak influence is exquisite, coaxing out notes of charcoal grill, Krispy Kreme doughnut, Honey Nut Cheerios and a touch of salinity on the nose.” (Then again, at our neighborhood cocktail bar, Baker’s, the bartender gave us a sample of a similar single malt from the same distiller, and maybe I did detect notes of Krispy Kreme in there.)

Read about the top 20 whiskeys here.

Listening: Speaking of strong drink… James Baldwin and John Steinbeck were world-class drinkers, which I learned while writing two episodes for the Wondery show American History Tellers, a new series on Great American Authors. My profile of Steinbeck is here (and Baldwin will be out soon):

Also listening: At last month’s Portland Book Festival, I spoke with their Archive Project podcast, offering two book recommendations (my bit starts at 29:25). Also last month I had reviewed Patrick DeWitt’s The Librarianist, which led me to a fabulous interview with DeWitt by novelist Brad Listi, who seems to interview everyone for his excellent OtherPpl podcast.

Watching: Fisher Stevens’ awesome 4-part Beckham documentary; third season of Slow Horses; wonderful German film, A Fire, about a thin-skinned writer. And I’m late to the party (cuz I didn’t think we needed another app/channel), but we finally subscribed to Criterion Channel - love at first sight.

Typing: Lately my desk has taunted me with unreasonable expectations (“Here is where you will write all the words!”) so I started moving around our empty-nesty home. I’d read that Michael Connelly writes on a couch, so I’m trying that, but still searching for a better device-surface system (currently iPad mini + mini keyboard). Open to any suggestions.

Plunging: Seattle’s Puget Sound just dipped below 50 degrees. Sometimes I wear a wetsuit, but when I’m feeling bold just my trunks. It’s biting but exhilarating. I’m still astounded by those who plunge into ice baths, though.

What my current wife is currently reading: Alice McDermott’s Absolution, after finishing Tana French's The Searcher and her first-time read of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (an unread gift to son).

Writing with: While researching Steinbeck, I learned he started his days by meticulously sharpening a dozen black Blackwing 602s. They’re lovely.

I’ve got a weird relationship with “best” books lists. Maybe it’s because I spent years picking them (I once ran Amazon’s Best Books of the Month program and was part of the team that picked Best Books of the Year). I still love a good “best of” list — books, music, film, TV. But these days, if asked to pick my favorite(s)? I’d have to say “the last book I read.” So that means no end-of-year Blood & Whiskey list. But I am happy to share the lists of others.

In addition to those mentioned last month (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Publisher’s Weekly, Time, New York Times), we have Vanity Fair, Esquire, NPR, and my two faves: 2023’s best crime novels from Crime Reads and

Sarah Weinman

(aka The Crime Lady here on Substack) at the New York Times, which includes a few books I enjoyed/reviewed this year.

Thanks for reading with me this year. If you’re inclined I’d be grateful to anyone who likes, shares, comments on this post — or becomes a paid subscriber…

Blood & Whiskey

Blood & Whiskey #31: end-of-year edition

A serial killer, the Korean Provisional Government, a crumbling Ireland, a Queenpin, Rebecca three ways, "The Last Word" cocktail + podcasts and pencils & more.

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