Blood & Whiskey: this month featuring "coast"-themed books, drinks, and music

Blood & Whiskey #28 - featuring new books from Angie Kim, Dwyer Murphy, Ben Fountain, Jeffrey Archer and more. Plus a Jimmy Buffett tribute playlist.

Hello friends and readers,

A punch in the face from Covid and a cross-country move back home to Seattle plus a couple writing deadlines delayed this month’s newsletter a bit. But the Pacific Northwest rainy season has begun here (aka the Big Dark), and I’m eager to dive into primo read-and-drink season and share the results. (Next up: Ben Fountain’s Devil Makes Three and The Hank Show by Mackenzie Funk.)

At the tail end of my summer in Boston, I read two books set on that other coast: The Stolen Coast, by Dwyer Murphy & The Midcoast, by Adam White.

Let’s start with Dwyer, who’s also editor of the fantastic Crime Reads at LitHub. This is Dwyer’s second novel (after last year’s An Honest Living, which I reviewed here), and it was the perfect read during a trip to Cape Cod. Set in the overlooked coastal village of Onset, it’s the story of Jack (no last name), who works for his father, a retired spy, in a murky family business that helps crooks who’ve crossed a line disappear. It’s slow work and not much happens until Jack’s captivating and evasive former lover, Elena, comes to town. Together they plan a diamond heist, but this is both more than (and maybe less than) a typical heist novel. I appreciated the laconic pace, which felt intimate, personal, lived. Murphy is hyper-attuned to the odd particulars of coastal life, the September tourist purge, the beaches and bars, the fish and the boats, the late-summer deer drunk on fermented cranberries — and the humans drunk most of the time.

We don't always see Jack doing his "work." But we know it's not above board, or safe. There’s an undercurrent of unseen threats and dark deeds. Jack is someone who knows off-piste people — a West Virginia inn-keeper, a Miami boat captain. Elena’s edgy humor and sarcasm offset Jack’s ennui. He’s also sad. What does Jack really want? He and Elena are drawn to each other, but it's not love, exactly. They understand each other, but they’re wary. The vibe is taut, tense.

Murphy is a thoughtful, careful, precise writer. Very controlled and capable of some great lines. I especially enjoyed the Kennedy references. (I shit you not, I was reading in an AirBnB not far from the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport when Murphy mentioned Chappaquiddick. I lifted my eyes and saw on a bookshelf the yellow spine and red letters of Chappaquiddick: The Real Story.)

If it felt slow at times, I also didn’t want it to end. The final 50 or so pages were pure joy, every sentence a gem. A beautiful sad and haunting ending.

• For more, check out reviews at NPR and in the New York Times.

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The Midcoast by Adam White was an ideal companion to The Stolen Coast. Set in the small town of Damariscotta on the coast of Maine, Andrew and his wife have returned to his former hometown. In the opening pages we see Andrew reunite at a party with the host, Ed Thatch, the son of his one-time boss, who was a lobsterman when Andrew was a teen, then graduated to thief and then drug runner, but has since become the town big shot. Ed’s married to Steph, the elected town manager. They’ve both grown from poor to prominent, and Steph wants to keep it that way. But Andrew’s curiosity creates problems.

Andrew (like White) was born in Damariscotta and has returned, somewhat reluctantly, to teach English and coach lacrosse. As he reconnects with Ed and Steph — their daughter Allie is a lacrosse standout, now at Amherst — Andrew becomes fixated on the family’s mysterious rise to wealth, an obsession that eventually becomes a book project. In time, Andrew unravels dark secrets about the Thatches and the entangled complicities of family and friends.

I’ve seen the book described as a small-town riff on The Great Gatsby, which both oversells and underserves this nuanced tale of class, jealousy, greed and ambition. Angie Kim (see below) called White’s debut “a suspenseful, funny, and chilling uncovering of small-town secrets within a propulsive family drama.”

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The most intriguing book of recent weeks was Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim, the follow up to her acclaimed 2019 debut, Miracle Creek, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel. The new novel is also a story of family secrets, this time a seemingly close-knit Korean American family in Virginia searching for their mysteriously missing dad. The only family member to witness Adam Parson’s disappearance from a nearby park is his 14-year-old son, Eugene, who suffers from severe autism and a developmental disorder known as Angelman syndrome. Unable to speak, Eugene can’t tell his family what happened.

The sly mystery here isn’t just what happened to Adam (did he have cancer? was he having an affair with Eugene’s doctor?), but really… who is Eugene? And what happened between father and son at the park? The story is told by brilliant, cocky older sister Mia, a driven student and musician who’s home from college due to the Covid pandemic. She and her more likeable twin brother John search for clues in their father’s experiments into happiness, and his notebooks and files lead them to shocking revelations that have more to do with who they are as a family. The book takes on a lot, and detours often into science, immigration, race, language, linguistics, genetics, and especially the nature of disability and how it’s viewed by society — and often misunderstood and mistreated. It’s packed with footnotes and occasional charts and diagrams. There’s also an overzealous cop here, who thinks Eugene may be violent and dangerous. But at its core are questions about family. Do we really know our loved ones?

My sister Maura had Down syndrome and our family experienced the many challenges that come with outsiders’ fears of (and, at times, cruel mockery of) an intellectually disabled person. Those reactions can affect family members differently and Kim captures those tricky dynamics well. I give her credit for making Eugene such a fully-formed and complex character.

For more: here’s a review in the NY Times; and Goodreads interview.

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I’ll be interviewing Angie Kim and Edan Lepucki (Time’s Mouth) onstage at the Portland Book Festival in November. If you missed my recent Q&A with Edan, check it out in the Interrogations section of Blood & Whiskey: HERE.

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Up Next:

I mentioned up top journalist Mackenzie Funk’s The Hank Show, out Tues (10/3), which you can get a taste of in this New York Times excerpt. It’s the story of Hank Asher, drug smuggler and DEA informant turned computer programmer and data-tracking billionaire. He’s described as “the most important person you’ve never heard of,” and his influence affects all of our lives, every day.

Last month I forgot to mention Seattle author Garth Stein’s latest work, The Cloven: Book 2, the next in his graphic novel mystery series about Tuck, the genetically modified human/goat hybrid. Erik Larson calls it “wildly, dizzyingly imaginative, and grimly allegorical …. and the art is spectacular.” It’s drawn by Matthew Southworth (co-creator of the comic book series Stumptown).

Also aim to get to: Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek and Edan Lepucki’s California (both debuts); Distant Sons, by Tim Johnson and The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron; but not before Ben Fountain’s long-awaited second novel, Devil Makes Three. (His debut, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, is one of my favorite books.)

Also: Traitors Gate, by Jeffrey Archer — this London-based jewel-heist mystery is book #30 from 83-year-old Archer, who I’ve not read before am curious to try. (Here’s a story about Archer’s views on writing and AI, in Australia’s Sky News.)

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Watching: NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts. I dip into these now and then, and recently enjoyed the surprisingly intimate and sweet show by Post Malone. These stripped-down shows at NPR’s DC office let you really see the talent and the joy. (The show’s creator, Bob Boilen, has said he’ll soon retire.) I’m also hooked on the Otherppl podcast by

Brad Listi

, who manages to interview everyone.

Drinking: The apartment we stayed in this summer had no coffee maker - the first time in my adult life I’ve lived in a place without one. Instead, they had a fancy espresso maker. Initially miffed, we became espresso converts. We just bought a starter espresso maker at home. (Americanos for me, lattes for Mary.)

Disagreeing with: I've been on both sides of the blurb machine, giver and receiver. I thought this piece in Esquire (“Book Publishing's Broken Blurb System”) was too full of doom-snark. I actually like being asked to endorse someone's book, and love to be endorsed. I’ve made and sustained friendships through blurb swaps. And I always read blurbs to help me decide what to buy and read, albeit with healthy skepticism and bullshit detector on high.

Seething over: Facebook/Meta/Zuck’s use of pirated books (including three of mine) to train AI. Read The Atlantic’s expose HERE and HERE. Writers, sign the Author’s Guild petition HERE and learn more HERE.

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Cocktail of the Month

This summer, I kept things simple and forced myself not to load up on too many bottles that I’d just have to transport back home to Seattle. This is about as simple as it gets:

Classic Tom Collins

• 2 ounces gin (I used Old Tom gin from Hayman’s)

• 1 ounce fresh lemon juice

• ½ ounce simple syrup (optional — I skipped it)

• splash of club soda

• Maraschino cherry, to garnish

Shake gin, lemon juice and simple syrup in cocktail shaker; pour over ice in a tall Collins glass; top with soda, stir, garnish with cherry.

Also, in honor of the passing of Jimmy Buffett and all things beachy (also in memory of the devastating Maui fires), I share Susan Orleans’ New Yorker story about Harry Yee, The Bartender Behind the Blue Hawaiian. Also, my aunt Carolyn sent me this story about Hawaiian rum distilleries.

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Playlist of the Month

"I wish I had a pencil-thin mustache so I could solve some mysteries, too."

— Jimmy Buffett

I spent a lot of time with Jimmy Buffett’s songs, learning some in my attic bedroom in high school, playing some with my buddies in our acoustic trio during college. Still, I was surprised at how sad I felt when Buffett died. I spent an afternoon drinking Tom Collinses and listening to these two dozen favorites:

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Blood & Whiskey is reader-supported, gluten and dairy free, and very well intentioned. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, or share with friends, click the “like” button, and definitely buy some of the books listed above.

Until next month…

-Neal

www.NealThompson.com

Find me @ Instagram; sometimes Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads.