CJ Box Signed Bag & ARC #GIVEAWAY

To celebrate the release of CJ Box's new book today, Paradise Valley, we are giving away this pencil bag signed by CJ and an advance reader copy (ARC) of Paradise Valley. To enter just put your name and email address below (US residents only). We'll keep the giveaway open until next Tuesday, and announce the winner next week. 

Happy Birthday Raymond Chandler

Today would have been Raymond Chandler's 129th birthday. 

I thought we'd celebrate by featuring some quotes from his books. See how many of these you can work into your conversations today. 


From The Big Sleep

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.” 

“It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.” 

“I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintace. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.” 

“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.” 

“You're broke, eh?"

I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.” 

From The Long Goodbye

“To say goodbye is to die a little.” 

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.” 

“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.” 

“The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.” 

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.” 

From Farewell, My Lovely

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” 

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.” 

“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.” 

From Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.” 

Here's a great article in the Los Angeles Times about Raymond Chandler.

Gin Iced Tea and A Good Book

Today we're featuring another vintage Drinks with Reads. Up this week is Laura Brennan, who runs the excellent Destination Mystery podcast site where she interviews mystery authors. 

In her Drinks with Reads post she matched Susanna Calkins book, A Death Among the River Fleet, with the perfect drink - Gin Iced Tea.

Noir at the Salad Bar with the Perfect Drink

Today on Drinks with Reads, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Verena Rose, and Harriette Sackler, the editors behind Noir at the Salad Bar, Culinary Tales with a Bite, join us to match their short story compilation with the perfect drink. The book is published by Level Best Books. 

About the Book:
When the Dames of Detection, also known as Verena Rose, Harriette Sackler, and Shawn Reilly Simmons, took over Level Best Books, we did so with the understanding that in addition to continuing to publish the Best New England Crime Stories in time for the New England Crime Bake each year, we would also publish additional anthologies, and eventually select novels. 

Noir at the Salad Bar is our second non-New England anthology, and we are so pleased with the result. We had over one hundred and twenty submissions, from all over the country, and we received a large number of international submissions as well. Each story was read blindly, and we chose our favorite thirty to include in the anthology. 
So many culinary anthologies fall under the label of "Cozy," and we really wanted to take this book in a new direction. We put out a call for grittier stories that had an element of food and drink involved. The result is a wide array of stories, all falling closer to the Noir end of the spectrum.  And from those international submissions, included are three authors from England, one from France, and one from Israel. And for the Americans, the writers hail from all over including Utah, Texas, the South, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic. 
We created a drink, inspired by Noir at the Salad Bar, Culinary Tales with a Bite called a Bloody Noir (our spin on the traditional Bloody Mary). 

The Bloody Noir

1 C tomato juice & 1/2 C liquified veggies ( like ones you find on a salad bar)
1 shot of Tequila
Blair’s Jalapeno Death Sauce (or your favorite hot sauce that makes you sit up and say hello)
Season with S&P, rim your glass with salt if desired
Garnish with a chili pepper, olives, and a celery stalk to cool your mouth down
Enjoy!

The stories and contributing authors for Noir at the Salad Bar:
“Lobster Tank” by E.A. Aymar
“Smoked” by Michael Bracken
“Harvey House Homicide” by Joyce Ann Brown
“A Murder of Crows” by Mara Buck
“The Hearts of Men” by Karen Cantwell
“With Great Relish” by John R. Clark
“Buena Vista Sandwich Club” by Frank Collia
“Cole Slaughter” by Sheila Connolly
“Black Coffee in Bed” by Sharon Daynard
“Petunia at the Tip Top” by Jenny Drummey
“Consuming Passion” by Martin Edwards
“Sleeping Beauty” by Gerald Elias
“The Sandman” by John M Floyd
“Bases Looted” by Jason Half
“Candy” by Isobel Horsburgh
“Beef Stew” by E L Johnson
“The Curse of the Apertured Apiculturist” by Larry Lefkowitz
“A Murder in Montreaux” by Michael Allan Mallory
“Deadly Dinner” by LD Masterson
“Antipastdead” by Lorraine Sharma Nelson
“Togas and Toques” by Alan Orloff
“Grab-N-Go” by Adele Polomski
“Ragbones and the Case of the Christmas Goose” by Rima Perlstein Riedel
“Death at the Hands of Le Fée Verte” by Verena Rose
“Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody” by Barbara Ross
“Family Business” by Harriette Sackler
“Humble Pie” by Shawn Reilly Simmons
“Fed Up” by Louise Taylor
“Playing Games” by Elaine Togneri
“My Life in Killer Recipes” by Leslie Wheeler

Murder on the Orient Express - Pocket Watch Ornament

Every Thursday in July we are making a new ornament for our Murder on the Orient Express Christmas tree. This week we're featuring the pocket watch ornament. The pocket watch represents another clue left at the scene, but looks great on a tree so deserves to be an ornament of its own. We added the gold button that was also a clue found at the scene, just to give it a little more flair.

Materials:

Pocket Watch (preferably with movable hands)

Gold button

Ribbon

Scissors

Glue

Step One: Attach Your Ribbon Hanger

Cut your ribbon to the size you need and loop it through the gold button and the top of the pocket watch. Tie a knot in the end and position your gold button so it shows from the front.

Step Two: Set and Glue Watch Hands

If your pocket watches have hands, set them so that the time is 1:15, which is the time shown on the broken pocket watch in the book. Put a dab of glue under each hand so that the time stays at 1:15 and doesn’t move when you’re packing and unpacking your tree ornaments each year. The ornament pictured here shows what happens if you don’t glue the hands, our watch isn’t showing the correct time.

If your watch doesn’t have hands, you can use black paint to paint them to the time, then you won’t need to glue anything. You can also glue fake hands to the watch face, using a sliver of black or gold paper or wire.

Here is the ornament on the tree next to last week's project, the clues ornament. 

Speakeasy Cleveland: Quintana's Barber & Dream Spa

At Mystery Playground we love modern speakeasy bars that capture the mystery and romance of the old speakeasies from the era of Prohibition without the grit. Kerry Hammond has found another great one in Cleveland, Ohio.

One of the first things I do when I visit a new city is an internet search. I don’t search for restaurants or hotels, though, I search for Speakeasies. Even if I’ve been to a city before, I never know if a new one has popped up since my last visit; a quick search ensures that I’m not missing anything.

I was pleasantly surprised when I planned a recent trip to Cleveland and my Speakeasy search came up with not only a new-to-me location, but the Speakeasy in question was holding a mixology class. My friends and I signed up for the fun at Quintana’s Barber & Dream Spa, located in Cleveland Heights.

The Speakeasy is located inside a barbershop. There is a staircase in back and when you walk to the top you are faced with a beautiful bookcase. We were pretty stumped, but were soon rescued when another couple came up the stairs to join us. They had been to the place before and gave us a little hint, in the form of a book title: Daughter of Fortune.

One look at the bookshelf and we spotted the book. When we opened the cover we found a button inside. One press of the button unlatched the bookcase and we were able to swing it open and enter. Inside, the bar was decorated with framed Prohibition photos and the seating was comfortable and full of the wood trim and dark colors that make speakeasy visitors feel like they’ve gone back in time.

Our mixology class was one of the best I’ve taken. The two drinks we made were the bartender’s own concoctions, using a traditional base and adding his own flair. They provided fresh ingredients and all of the tools we needed to make two of the tastiest cocktails I’ve had in a long time.

Our instructor even gave us a couple of tips that I will remember whenever I mix a drink:

1) Always start with the cheapest ingredients and end with the most expensive. If you put in the lemon juice and simple syrup, then realize that your quantities are wrong, you can always throw them away and start over without losing much. If you start with the gin, it’s a more painful mistake.

2) Don’t fill the shaker with ice and then start adding your ingredients. Put all the ingredients in first, then add the ice and shake. That way, if you get a phone call, the doorbell rings, or anything else interrupts your masterpiece, your drink doesn’t sit in your shaker and get watered down.

You can always find Mystery Playground on Twitter @mysteryplaygrnd and on Facebook. You can also follow the blog by clicking the link on the upper right-hand corner of this webpage.