Blood & Whiskey #37
Three from the South: the latest from Greg Iles, Ace Atkins, and Erik Larson. Also bourbon — and, even further south, tequila.
Hey friends and readers,
Better late than never.1 Mainly due to one lonnnnngggg book. It took a while to work my way through this 900-pager. I tried to savor it…
Southern Man, by Greg Iles
Iles has a lot to say about a lot of things: the history of the South (especially slavery), book-banning Karens, White Panic, voters who elected Trump “with fierce gladness in their hearts.” Also Armageddon and the great unraveling of America. Plus his and our “imminent mortality.” Penn Cage is dying of the same blood disease that took his mother. And, it should be said (because this book is heavy with it): the same rare cancer that afflicts the author.2
This excellent book picks up 15 years after the violent events of the third book in the “Natchez Burning” trilogy featuring lawyer-author-mayor-badass Penn Cage. This time, Iles is not effing around3… He drops us smack into a mass shooting and the burning of Old South plantation homes and the current presidential election, in which an electrifying third-party candidate rockets into position as a viable and well-funded alternative to Trump. Robert E. Lee White is a son of the South, an ex-sports star and war hero who lost an arm in Afghanistan and whose Tik-Tok videos rack up millions of views. But, of course, nothing about this Golden Boy is what it appears. “Bobby” Lee has secrets, and he has plans. Penn Cage is determined to show the world who this guy really is and what he wants. Looming over it all is the surging threat of another Civil War.
Okay, that’s the summary, but here’s what I really think: this is a horror story, one that feels sadly possible. As Penn Cage puts it, Jefferson Davis may be long dead, “But his ideas live on like an unkillable virus in the American bloodstream.” Speaking of blood, when Cage’s mother dies she leaves behind the manuscript for a book she’d been researching, one that will reveal to Cage just how deeply entwined his own life has been with Davis’s ideals. Hello, DNA surprise.
Since this is the tenth book Penn Cage appears in, there’s a lot of backstory and catching up, context and reminders that can bog things down a bit. But Cage’s backstory is a doozy, as complicated as the history of the South (lots of KKK and Lost Cause evils). As Cage’s ex-lover, the French filmmaker Martine, puts it, “the South seems a particularly brutal and vindictive place.” Says Cage: It can be.
I’d interviewed Iles ten years ago, for Natchez Burning, and this quote has stuck with me: “I’m concerned with evil, and why good people do bad things.” That concern is the burning heart of Southern Man, too.
Don’t Let the Devil Ride, by Ace Atkins — “An ebullient, rollicking ride,” as Megan Abbott blurbed it, from one of my favorite writers. (“Favorite” not just because he interviewed me at the amazing Square Books in his hometown of Oxford two years back4 — it was more the beers he bought me before and after.)
A former journalist (we both worked for Tampa-St. Pete papers), I was first introduced to Atkins (hat tip Megan Abbott) through his true-crime-based novels, like Wicked City and Devil’s Garden, and have since sampled his Quinn Colson and Nick Travers series. I still need to try his Spenser books (Atkins was picked to continue the Robert B. Parker franchise and wrote 10 Spenser novels).
This new one, his first in a while, is a total blast, fast, funny and fun as hell. The kick off is the disappearance of boozy Addison McKellar’s rich husband, Dean, who we soon learn is not really Dean McKellar and is not a Memphis real estate mogul. Addison hires PI Porter Hayes to help find her husband and unravel mounds of secrets and lies. But we’re soon introduced to an over-the-top cast just begging for a TV show: the One-Armed Man, a Russian thug named Zub, a sassy-sexy ex-Elvis co-star, even the Taliban. (I pictured a Lynchian-Scorsese mashup; a quick Google search tells me a TV show is already in the works.)
Everyone’s looking for the mysterious contents of a shipping container, and everyone seems willing to kill for it. As the body count rises a Memphis cop sums up the madness after one bloody shootout: “Russians? In Memphis? Ain’t that some shit.” Memphis shows off it’s gritty best here: bourbon, fried chicken, barbecue, Graceland, the blues… Each sentence is packed with small, smart blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details. I devoured it in three sittings and you should too. Hints of Ellroy, Lehane, and Pelecanos, but wholly original.
Kala, by Colin Walsh — As someone who regularly attends college and high school reunions, and has a deeply nostalgic connection to my hometown, I’m always intrigued by stories about friends who come back to the scene of their youth. In this case, fifteen years after a memorable summer three friends are reunited in the Irish seaside town of Kinlough. As teens they’d been inseparable, but now they’re mostly far flung, experiencing varying degrees of adult success (one is a rock star), except for Mush, who stayed working in his mom’s cafe. Missing from the reunion is Kala, who had been the original group’s “white hot center” but who disappeared. When human remains are found in the woods — and two other girls are reported missing — long-buried secrets are unearthed. Like other great Irish writers, Walsh can turn character descriptions into weird poems; one man had shovel hands and “a cudgeled face, like a heap of salted meat.” Another’s cigarette-stained fingers were like “dirt that had become skin.” These are pages to linger over and admire, and Walsh is a writer to watch.
América del Norte, by Nicolás Medina Mora — During a recent trip with friends to Mexico City, I shared a mescal cocktail with Mark Doten, an editor at Soho Press (and an impressive author in his own) who gifted me a copy of this book. This was a perfect companion for our time in Mexico and our glimpse into expat life and politics during the runup to the historic election of Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, whose campaign signs and billboards were everywhere. (We even got caught in a massive rally downtown near the Palacio de Bellas Artes.) The story follows a young man coming of age in the turbulent city of his youth and his travels to New York City and Iowa City (where the author studied at that city’s storied writers’ program). Very assured, elegant, and imaginative storytelling, strong on voice and humanity, featuring a vivid cast of characters across place and time, tackling class, race, family, immigration, NAFTA, Trump, the Mexican drug wars, Mexican history, and that nation’s complicated relationship with outgoing president Lopez Obrador.
The Demon of Unrest, by Erik Larson— I’ve been a Larson fan since Lethal Passage (30 years ago!) and have read them all. I just found this one in a Little Free Library and am diving in this weekend. It’ll be the perfect complement to Iles and Atkins, since Larson here explores the months leading up to the assault on Fort Sumter that triggered the Civil War. More next time…
Cocktails of the Month
One bourbon, one tequila…
Classic Old Fashioned
2 oz. bourbon
1/4 oz. simple syrup (you can also just use sugar)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Pour ingredients into an ice-filled rocks glass and stir. Garnish with thin-shaved lemon or orange peel.
[For a twist: replace the bourbon with mezcal, the simple syrup with agave syrup or nectar, and the Angostura with something like Mole Bitters.]
La Cigua (Spicy Margarita)
I’d rather drink a tequila on the rocks with lime than a margarita with triple sec (though I can occasionally handle one with Grand Marnier). But this one is a fave, with equal parts tequila and mezcal.
(from Theodora in Brooklyn, via Imbibe magazine, via Instagram…)
1 oz. tequila
1 oz. mezcal
3/4 oz. fresh cucumber juice
3/4 oz. fresh lime juice
1/2 oz. simple syrup
dashes of hot sauce or spicy tincture (to taste)
Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice and shake vigorously. Strain over ice in a glass rimmed with chili salt (1 tsp salt, 1 tsp chipotle, 1 tsp chili powder).
~
Also… since this newsletter is ostensibly whiskey themed, I try to go easy on the amaros, bitters, and other aperitivos that lately comprise the bulk of my (lower ABV) drinking. But if interested, here’s a great primer on the world beyond Campari, from the expert in the field,
().Related: I really liked this Lambrusco Spritz (via NYT Cooking +
whose newsletter, , helped guide us around Mexico City).Playlist of the Month
Last month I mentioned a podcast series I wrote about the Pinkerton Detective Agency for Wondery’s American History Tellers. All three episodes are out now:
Thanks for reading, everyone. Always grateful for your comments, questions, likes, shares, book suggestions, newsletter suggestions, or quick hellos.
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cheers,
-Neal
Find me @ Instagram; sometimes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goodreads
Not that anyone’s keeping track, but I try to send these out between the 15th and 20th of every month. I was raised Catholic, then converted to journalism, so guilt over missed deadlines is in my blood. Speaking of guilt: all male authors this month.
Iles has spoken publicly about the car accident that took his right leg and nearly cost him his life. Penn Cage suffered a similar fate, and the depictions of Cage and his prosthetic are intense. Btw, Iles is also a guitar player and one of The Rockbottom Remainders, with fellow authors Stephen King, Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount Jr., Dave Barry, James McBride, Scott Turow, Matt Groening and other drop-ins.
