Blood & Whiskey #8

Year-end rounds ups, a Michael Connelly Q&A, a guest drink from Rosie Schaap

Dear friends and readers…

I do love me a good book list, but at this time of year I find the best-of-the-year tallies a bit shame inducing, reminding me of all the books I didn’t read.

I won't pummel you with another list, though I did enjoy seeing some Blood & Whiskey books on the year-end collections of Barack Obama, the New York Times, Time, Crime Reads, Amazon, Goodreads, Apple, and others. Including: Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot, Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle, S.A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears, Chris Whitaker's We Begin At The End, Naomi Hirihara’s Clark & Division, Megan Abbott’s The Turnout, Laura Lippman’s Dream Girl, Jane Harper’s The Survivors, Stuart Neville’s The House of Ashes. And I was especially pleased to see a few nods for Percival Everett’s The Trees. Also making a few lists are two of this month’s books: Michael Connelly's The Dark Hours (see my mini Q&A below) and Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me.

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The Last Thing He Told Me (Simon & Schuster) — Laura Dave

“When Owen smiled. It was like the title of a bad pop song.” Not actually sure what it means, but I liked that line and liked much of this page-turner about a husband (Owen) who suddenly disappears, leaving his wife with a cryptic note, a duffel bag of cash, and a pissed-off teenage daughter. Hannah Hall must piece together the clues of her husband’s role in a tech firm under investigation, the truth behind her stepdaughter’s mother’s death, and just who is this missing guy she married. I can sometimes be a jerk of a reader, looking for cracks in the story, but Dave kept me hooked throughout and I only rolled my eyes once or twice. Dave managed to nicely balance a twisty mystery against a tale of family, love, trust, marriage, commitment, and the complexities of a pieced-together family.

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The Dark Hours (Little, Brown), by Michael Connelly

My relationship with Connelly’s books has changed in recent years. It’s impossible now not to see/hear Titus Welliver (star of the TV series, Bosch), instead of picturing my own Harry Bosch. The show’s great, don’t get me wrong. Still, it’s nice to have a new character I can imagine all on my own. In this (his millionth book) Connelly reunites Bosch and Renee Ballard — “the prodigal detective,” Bosch teases. This is the first book I’ve read in Connelly’s four-book series featuring Ballard, who is based on a real-life female LAPD detective. It feels like a smart, fresh path, especially as Bosch is, like, a hundred years old. (He’s actually 71.) The Dark Hours is a fast-paced tick-tocker, starting at midnight on New Year’s Eve, 2021, and quickly bringing Ballard and Bosch together to pursue two serial rapists, a murderer, and interconnected older cases. Ballard also battles LAPD colleagues demoralized by protests and the pandemic, giving the book a fresh and timely (and bummer) feel. Connelly hasn’t slowed a beat, and this book (his 37th, actually) has him at the absolute top of his game.

I reached out to ask Connelly a few quickie questions:

• Origins: A retired detective told me about a murder case in which a doctor made a high interest loan to a music entrepreneur and protected his investment with an insurance policy. He later hired a hitman to kill the entrepreneur so he could collect the insurance and own the business. This became the basis for the case Bosch worked a decade earlier and that Ballard connected her present-day case to.

• Mood: It’s a murder mystery but also a story of a detective’s perseverance in the dark hours of American policing.

• Secret weapon: Detective Mitzi Roberts, who Ballard is inspired by. Roberts helps me get Ballard and her world right.

• Risk: Not becoming preachy or didactic about the pandemic or the apathy in the police department. Keeping in mind that this is a crime novel.

• Fuel: Writing is sedentary work. My dog Pinto — yes, Ballard’s dog too — requires frequent walks and those were good for exercise and thinking about the story.

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Our Country Friends (Random House) — Gary Shteyngart

Hardly crime fiction (except for some bad driving and heavy drinking), but I had to carve out time for this one, Shteyngart as Chekhov. A group of friends escapes New York to quarantine at the country estate of author and “landowner,” Sasha Senderovsky. The group dynamic shifts when a movie star known as the Actor arrives, and for a single-setting story (upstate New York) the tale covers tons of ground: class, race, immigration, privilege, infidelity, plus good food and books and heavy doses of naughty. It’s funny, edgy, super smart, relevant, sweet, sad, sexy… all the feels. Loved it.

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Lemon (Other Press) — Kwon Yeo-sun

This slim, quirky murder mystery by an award-winning Korean writer (her first published in English) caught my eye during a visit to the awesome Munro’s Books in Victoria, BC (to see our kid for Thanksgiving). It’s as much a study of class and grief as it is a whodunnit, and it was an odd reading experience: moody, unpredictable, circular, spooky, eccentric. I can’t say I loved it, but this is a writer to watch, capable of beautiful sentences and some impressively eerie moments… “And so began the revenge of the yellow angel. Lemon, I muttered. Like a chant of revenge, I muttered: Lemon, lemon, lemon.”

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And what are YOU reading? — I had asked last month for your suggestions, and here are a few Blood & Whiskey reader favorites of 2021...

• The War for Gloria, by Atticus Lish — “It's a powerful story and the writing is fabulous.” —from uncle Jan

• Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where are You? (“incredible”); Matrix, by Lauren Groff (“such astonishing writing); and Rabih Alameddine's The Wrong End of the Telescope (“A beautiful, moving, easy read, despite the subject matter”) —from Lisa Loop

• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty — “one of the best non-fiction book’s I’ve ever read” —from bro-in-law Chris

• Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke and The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville (“read it six times over the past decade”) —from Jeanne Gerulskis

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Cocktail of the Month…

This month’s guest mixologist is Rosie Schaap, former "Drink" columnist for The New York Times Magazine and author of Drinking with Men and Becoming a Sommelier. Her next book — The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country, about moving to Northern Ireland after dual tragedies — is coming in August. (If you want to sample her wit and style, read this: “How I Learned to Love Vegetables—by Following the Grateful Dead.”) I asked Rosie to share a drink for winter, and was psyched to receive her take on a personal favorite of mine…

Thanks to the book club in my village, I'm currently reading John Banville’s novel, Snow. So far, it’s very good—but isn’t Banville always very good? Snow, of course, puts me very much in mind of the Irish winter that is just now closing in on me here on the Antrim Coast, a good distance north of County Wexford, where the Banville book is set. The days are short, the wind frequently fierce, the chill in the air has a determinedly damp, Irish cast about it. And this is when, if I feel like bundling up for the very short walk to my local, I’m likelier to order a hot whiskey than my usual pint of Guinness. It’s the simplest thing—but these are the proportions that please me most.

Hot Whiskey

• 1 tsp. Demerara sugar

• 2 ounces Irish whiskey (I prefer Paddy or Powers for this)

• 3 ounces water, just off the boil

• 1 lemon wedge, studded with three cloves

• In a heatproof glass, stir the sugar and the whiskey together. Add the hot water and stir again. Garnish with the lemon wedge.

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Playlist of the Month…

We’ve had this “Folksy Christmas” Spotify collection on shuffle + repeat for days, and it’s become the first mix to rival my other holiday go-tos (Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas; Yule Struttin’: A Blue Note Christmas; The Chieftans’ The Bells of Dublin; and the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack).

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My newsletter pace might slow a bit in 2022, with my next book, The First Kennedys, coming to a bookstore near you on Feb. 22. I’ll be hitting the road around that time and will share updates in the new year.

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Thanks everyone for reading Blood & Whiskey this past year. Please continue to drop me a note with feedback or just a hello. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year. Read a book. Sip some whiskey.

Till next month….

-Neal

At Tofino, BC — one of my favorite places on the planet.

www.NealThompson.com

Find me on Instagram; sometimes on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goodreads

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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”

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(*) Books mentioned in Blood & Whiskey can be found at Bookshop.org (which shares a cut of each sale with independent bookstores) or Amazon.com — I keep a list at both. But I encourage you to shop local. You can find a store near you with Bookshop’s store locator tool (HERE) or the IndieBound store finder (HERE).