Hitchock's Rear Window and the Voyeurtini

We continue to celebrate Alfred Hitchcock with a review—and food and drink pairing—of the classic movie Rear Window.

Rear Window (1954) is one of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock films. It doesn’t create new phobias like The Birds and doesn’t scare you away from taking a shower like Psycho. It does contain intrigue and suspense and stars Grace Kelly and James Stewart. It’s a movie about a voyeur who thinks he’s discovered a murder.

Stewart plays professional photographer L. B. “Jeff” Jeffries, who has just injured himself on a photo shoot at a racetrack. He is in a leg cast, complete with wheelchair, recuperating in his NY City apartment, which looks out on a courtyard where he can see all of his neighbors going about their daily business. It’s summer and very hot, so the courtyard is especially busy as everyone tries to avoid their overheated apartments. He names his neighbors as he watches; Miss Torso is a dancer and Miss Lonelyhearts a single woman with the occasional date.

A late night scream draws his attention to a traveling jewelry salesman and his wife. After the scream, Jeff sees the salesman come and go, each time carrying his jewelry case, but never sees his wife again. Jeff also witnesses the salesman tie up a large trunk, which is picked up by movers. He is convinced the man murdered his wife and is disposing of the body.

Grace Kelly plays his beautiful girlfriend Lisa Fremont, who visits him often while he’s recuperating. He also gets frequent visits from a nurse who is monitoring his recovery. Both women are drawn into the intrigue surrounding the missing wife. A police detective friend looks into things and reports that the wife is upstate visiting her parents and tells Jeff to let it go. Of course he can’t do this, and the spying escalates when Fremont decides to break into the salesman’s apartment to look for clues.

This movie isn’t just a great suspense story, the relationship between Stewart and Kelly is wonderful. He is a world traveler and doesn’t want to settle down, even though she seems ready to do just that. There’s a scene where she’s reading a book about travel in the Himalayas and when Stewart falls asleep, she puts it aside and goes back to her fashion magazine. It’s your typical chaste 1954 relationship, but so much fun to watch.

No movie is complete without a snack, but you won’t want to peel your eyes away from the screen for too long or you might miss something out of Jeff’s rear window. Double Chocolate brownies are a perfect snack for the movie, you can eat them without much effort and the double chocolate made me think of double exposure, a play on Jeff’s career as a photographer.

You can also mix up some drinks, and the Voyeurtini below is a great choice. When mixed together, it at first appears clear but is really the perfect amount of blurry. Like looking through a camera lens that isn’t quite in focus.

Double Chocolate Brownies

3/4 cup baking cocoa

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2/3 cup butter, melted

1/2 cup boiling water

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans

2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks

Stir together cocoa and baking soda. Add 1/3 cup of the melted butter and blend. Pour in the boiling water and blend again. Stir in the sugar, the rest of the butter and eggs. Add flour, vanilla, and salt. Once blended, add the pecans and chocolate chunks. Pour into a greased 13x9 pan and bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

Voyeurtini

1 ½ oz Vanilla Vodka

1 ½ oz Crème de Cacao

1 Hershey Kiss

Godiva Liqueur

Fill a cocktail shaker ½ full of ice and add vodka and crème de cacao. Shake and pour into a chilled martini glass. Drop in the Hershey kiss and a tiny splash of Godiva liqueur. 

Can anyone remember Hitchcock's cameo character in this movie?

Happy Birthday Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was known as the "master of suspense." During his career he directed and produced some of the most iconic films of all time. To celebrate his 118th birthday, we're doing a recap of this week's Mystery Playground Hitchcock posts.

Dial M for Murder, which starred Grace Kelly and Ray Milland, is one of the most popular Hitchcock films. Mystery Playground has created lots of ways to pay tribute to the movie and its creator. You can send a friend a note just to say hello with this Dial M for Murder notecard.

Or, if you have a friend who is a Hitchcock fan and you need that perfect gift, you can make these Dial M for Murder earrings.

Dust off the cocktail glasses and invite some friends over for a viewing of the movie. The perfect drink to go with the movie is a very dry gin martini, but don't stir too much or you'll water them down.

Nothing says hello like a notecard devoted to the movie Psycho. 

If you want to have a Hitchcock movie party, you can follow these suggestions for a viewing of The Birds, complete with decorations, food, and drink pairings.

We've got lots more Hitchcock for you on Mystery Playground, so stay tuned for next week's posts.

Adopt A Black Cat Day

This Thursday, August 17th is Adopt a Black Cat Day, and Caspian (seen above reading one of the Star Wars Legends books) wants us all to know how wonderful it is to have a black cat. 

Black cats are often adopted last, but they are so loving and wonderful. I have two black cats myself and my sister has one as well. 

If you're thinking about adopting a cat, don't rule out these wonderful and beautiful cats. 

Photos taken by Danny and Will. 

Cypress Cove #Sangria & Ripe For Murder

Carlene O'Neil is whipping up sangria to pair with her excellent winery mystery, Ripe For Murder. Carlene is a former television writer who comes from wine country originally. Her Cypress Cove Mystery Series is set along the Central California Coast, and she says that the similarities between her fictional town of Cypress Cove and the real town of Carmel or no accident. And neither are the murders in her series...

As a winery owner, you’d think I might be a wine purist. Not at all. Wine can be enjoyed many different ways, and if you like it with fruit and sparkling water, even better. Take Sangria. There’s a reason why Sangria is the perfect drink for summer.  It’s lighter, and doesn’t have as much alcohol as other drinks, so it’s refreshing. It’s been a favorite in America since the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. Spain's sponsored pavilion featured the drink, and American have been thirsty for sangria ever since.  

Colorful, fun, and fruity, it's the perfect afternoon drink on a hot summer day. It’s a party in a glass. But before we get to the recipe, here's a little bit about the book:

Penny Lively is searching for a way to grow the family winery when she’s approached to invest in a new train line through wine country. If she invests a small plot of unused land, a train full of thirsty tourists are practically dropped steps from the winery’s tasting room. It sounds perfect, especially when Penny and her intoxicating winery manager, Connor, are invited to a lavish resort to hear the details. Relaxing with Connor, review the operation, and meeting the other investors. What could go wrong?

Almost everything, and it starts before Penny even leaves Cypress Cove. Chantal, the voluptuous flirt from the winery next door, is also in attendance, swirling up trouble by flirting with the male investors – and Connor too. When one of the investors  is murdered, Chantal, who was seen fighting with the victim, is the prime suspect. Chantal may be a sour grape, but she’s no killer. So Penny, who’s become a sleuthing connoisseur, starts sniffing out the real suspect, and discovers that her fellow investors have been savoring more than their share of deadly secrets…

And now for our beverage:

Cypress Cover Sangria

Ingredients

• 1 bottle white wine – Pinot Grigio is my favorite for this
• 1 lemon, thinly sliced
• 1 lime, thinly sliced
• ½ small cucumber, thinly slices
• 8-10 mint leaves
• 4 Tbsp sugar, or to taste

Instructions

1. Prepare simple syrup by mixing 2 Tablespoons of sugar and 2 Tablespoons of water in a small dish and microwaving for 30-second increments until sugar is dissolved. Alternatively, prepare a large batch on the stovetop using a 1:1 sugar-water ratio and reserve for later use.

2. Once simple syrup is ready, add 1 Tablespoon to each wine glass. Then add mint leaves and rough them up a little bit. Next add several slices each of lemon, lime, and cucumber

3. Top off with wine and let set for a few minutes so the flavors can meld together. Top off with more wine and citrus as needed.

Enjoy!

Alfred Hitchcock Notecard: Dial M For Murder

Lorraine Masonheimer has created a series of Hitchcock-themed blank notecards to celebrate the master of suspense and the books that inspired him. The five piece set includes Rear Window, The Birds, To Catch a Thief, Dial M for Murder and Psycho. Today’s card is Dial M for Murder. 

Supplies:

8 1/2” x 11” cream cardstock

Scrap cardstock

Dark solid color paper

Red marker

Tiny hole punch

Letter M stamp

Red inkpad

Book page

6 ½” x 6 ½” envelope

Glue dots

Scissors

X-acto blade

Step One: Card Base

Cut an 8 ½” x 11” cardstock to 5 ½” x 11”. Score at 5 ½” and fold in half. Cut the dark solid paper to 5” x 5” and glue to the front of the card leaving an equal border.

Step Two: Create Templates

Using scrap cardstock, draw a 1 ¾” x 4 ½” Hitchcock. Draw a 1” x 2 ¼” key. If desired, place your cursor over this image, right click, scroll to "Save Image As" and place it onto your computer desktop. Open a word document, create a textbox, insert the image to size, print and cut. Keep the Hitchcock outline to make the complete set of 5 notecards.

Step Three: Trace, Stamp & Cut

Take a page or copy of a page from a book (1954 play Dial “M” for Murder by Frederick Knott would be even better selecting just the right words) and trace the outline of Hitchcock and the key as shown. Using the x-acto blade, cut the two images from the text taking care to accentuate Hitchcock’s double chin. If desired, cut the images with the type at an angle. Using a dot sized round punch, punch 9 holes to create the telephone dial. Stamp, color and cut out a small M.

Step Four: Assemble & Embellish

Glue Hitchcock to the lower right side and the key to the upper left side. Glue the red M to the 6th telephone dial. Either leave the inside blank for writing a note or add “it’s murder not keeping in touch.”

Step Five: Envelope

Glue a 5 ½” x 2” scrap of the dark colored paper to the inside flap of the envelope. Take a 5 ½” x 2” piece of left over book page, tear along the top and glue to the dark paper for a custom envelope.

Postage is extra.

Q&A with Karin Slaughter

Karin Slaughter is the author of the newest thriller The Good Daughter and critics are saying it's her best book yet. Kerry Hammond caught up with the author to find out some inside information about the book and the inspiration behind it.\

What was your inspiration for The Good Daughter?

I really enjoyed writing about the sister relationship in Pretty Girls, my last standalone, and I wanted to do something more in that vein.  I’m the youngest of three girls, and my parents loved me the most because I was the smartest and prettiest, but an author’s job is to get in the heads of every character they write about.

The point of writing a lot of books is to do something different each time, so when I thought of Charlie and Sam, it was almost in opposition to Claire and Lydia.  I wanted Charlie to be a character I haven’t written about before.  She’s highly competent, well-liked, and she makes mistakes, sometimes really stupid mistakes, but instead of trying to weasel around them, she owns them.  Actually, she almost wears them as a badge of honor.  That’s an interesting way to control the bad things that happen, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the best way.  Sam, on the other hand, lives every single moment of her life in stark relief to the “what could have been.”  She works very hard to define herself as having moved on, but everything she does is in opposition to that goal.  Both sisters try to control things in their own way, and both fail in their own way, which is always fascinating to me.  You know people by how they respond to adversity.

Both of the sisters in The Good Daughter are incredibly tough in their own way, how important is it for you to tell stories with strong female voices?

I write the voices that I hear in my everyday life.  It’s funny, because I grew up in the south surrounded by incredibly strong women who, in some cases, were beaten down almost every day of their lives, yet they still got up every morning and made sure there was food on the table and clothes on their kids’ backs. This was the reality.  The perception, though, was that women were the weaker sex, that they should defer to men, that they should be feminine and quiet and not run and play and jump around because the boys don’t like that, and God forbid boys didn’t like you, because then you would end up destitute and broken.  Almost every spoken message I got was to be demure and obsequious, but in practice, all the women were doing the exact opposite.  I don’t know if that’s a brand of hypocrisy particular to the American South, but there’s a saying that I think sums it up well: Southern women are like swans—graceful and gliding effortlessly across the water, but you don’t see that underneath, their feet are peddling furiously to keep that forward momentum. 

Who would you like to play Samantha and Charlotte Quinn in a movie adaptation of The Good Daughter?

This is a really hard one.  I’m always loathe to say because readers have such firm opinions about who a character is in their heads, and if I said “Nicole Kidman,” they’d likely scream very loudly (though, now that I think about it, Nicole Kidman is fantastic…)  Anyway, I think I’ll keep silent on this one and let others let their imaginations run rampant.  Except for Ben, because he’s totally Adam Scott).

Read a review of The Good Daughter here, and read about Mystery Playground Recommends Karin Slaughter here.