Robert McCaw's Off the Grid and the Lava Flow

Robert McCaw joins us today on Drinks with Reads to celebrate his novel, Off The Grid. 

Hilo Hawaii Chief Detective Koa Kāne, the protagonist in Off the Grid, is a cop with a secret. As a teenager, he killed the man responsible for his father’s death and camouflaged the killing as a suicide. And he got away with it! That history creates tension in his character and fuels his life’s ambition—bringing killers to justice. It has also made him suspicious of everyone and paranoid about getting fooled like he himself once deceived the cops. Bottom line—he’s a really good cop.

Koa cools off with a Bikini Blonde Lager or a Paniolo Pale Ale, both local craft beers, as he chows down on his Hawaiian plate lunch—that’s a hamburger patty or a hunk of spam with white rice, brown-gray, macaroni salad, and a fried egg.

Still, local craft beers are a bit light for the heavy lifting Koa confronts in Off the Grid. Called to the scene of a bizarre hit and run accident between a county dump truck and a Honda, he arrives just in time to get knocked down when the burning vehicles explode, incinerating the woman trapped inside. That might call for an Explosion—vodka, Cointreau, lime juice, and sweet pear cider.

The real mystery develops when rangers at the nearby Hawaii Volcanoes National Park discover a tortured body abandoned in an active lava field. After clearing this scene, the chief detective could sure use one of Hawaii’s infamous Lava Flows—a drink with flaming red splashes, the color of Madame Pele’s volcanic fire fountains. (See recipe below.)

The two homicide victims turn out to be loners living together deep in a rain forest far off the grid on property owned by off-shore entities. Koa suspects the pair are fugitives, but no one seems to know their real identities. Enter the CIA and other government agencies and the trail leads to one of the weirdest real-life international events in contemporary history. No spoilers here, but there is a hint for those who know the Bar Blaznavac. No fair resorting to the Internet!

Given the volcanic nature of Hawaii and the many eruptive twist and turns in the story, I’ll have to go with a Lava Flow.

You can find Robert on Facebook.

Lava Flow Recipe

• 1 oz. light rum
• 1 oz. coconut rum 
• 2 oz. strawberries (fresh or frozen) 
• 1 small banana
• 2 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice 
• 2 oz. coconut cream
• Pineapple wedge
• Paper umbrella

Blend both rums with the strawberries to form a paste. Pour into a tall hurricane glass. Separately,  blend the banana, the coconut cream, and the pineapple juice with crushed ice. Slowly, pour the banana-cream-ice mix into the hurricane glass with the strawberry-rum mix and watch the strawberry-rum mix rise to the top along the sides of the glass for a lava effect. Don’t forget to garnish with the pineapple wedge and the paper umbrella.

A Spell of Murder and The Feline Spirit

Clea Simon is matching her book A Spell of Murder today on Drinks with reads and we even have an excerpt of the book. 

In addition to writing the Witch Cats of Cambridge series, she has four other mystery series, a suspense novel and several works of non-fiction. She has a special pairing for us today...

A Spell of Murder is a cozy with a twist – while my protagonist Becca believes she just might be a witch, it is her cats who truly have magical powers. So when Becca – newly single and newly unemployed – sets herself up as a “witch detective,” her cats Clara, Harriet, and Laurel realize they will have to help her out if they want to keep themselves in kibble … and want to keep Becca out of trouble! Since Becca is a bit of an innocent, I’ve given her a drink that can be made with or without alcohol – a fresh, sweet, and fruity concoction I’m calling the Feline Spirit, perfect for midsummer imbibing. Of course, if you want to feel its power, I recommend adding a shot of a good white rum. I like Rhum Barbancourt, from Haiti. And for the cats? Catnip, of course!

- Clea Simon

The Feline Spirit

• 2 cups cubed seedless watermelon, chilled
• 1/4 lime
• 1 T crushed fresh mint leaves
• Sprig of mint for garnish (optional)
• 1 ½ oz white rum (optional)

In a blender, combine cubed watermelon, 1 T of mint, and the juice of the lime wedge until frothy. If adding rum, add and give a final spin. Serve immediately.

Clea Simon can be found: @Clea_Simon (Twitter)

https://www.facebook.com/CleaSimonAuthor/ (Facebook)

cleasimon_author (Instagram)

From A Spell of Murder (Polis Books)

It was Harriet’s fault. It’s always her fault, not that she’ll ever admit it.That was Clara’s first thought as she tried to settle on the sofa, flicking her long, grey tail with annoyance. As a cat, Clara wouldn’t usually have any trouble getting comfortable. That’s one special skill that all felines share. But even as she tried to calm her restive tail, curling it neatly around her snowy front paws, Clara, a petite, if plump, calico, couldn’t stop fretting.Harriet was her oldest sister, a creamsicle-colored longhair with more fur than common sense. Still, despite the fluffy feline’s typical self-absorption, she and Clara and their middle sister, Laurel, had cohabited with a nice enough human for almost two years without any problems, until now. Until Harriet.Yes, Becca, their human, had begun to believe she had psychic powers. Becca, who at twenty-six usually had more sense, was training to be a witch, as if that were something one could learn from books. But to the calico cat who now fumed quietly on the sofa, the petite brunette had always seemed a harmless soul—good with a can opener. Warm. Generous with her lap. And then, last week, Harriet—who cared only for her own comfort—conjured up a pillow.“I was tired,” Harriet said, in that petulant mew that Clara knew so well, when asked why in the name of Bast she’d be so stupid. “Becca wasn’t even looking.”“You could have moved!” her younger sibling hissed back, the grey whorls on her sides heaving with annoyance. “And she was!”Harriet was taking up the sunny spot on the windowsill, as she always did that time of the morning, and Clara narrowed her mysterious green eyes to glare at her sister. Harriet was more than fluffy, she was immense, a pale orange marshmallow of a feline, whose furry bulk and predictable habits prevented her youngest sister from enjoying any of the solar bounty. Still, she probably shouldn’t have hissed. Harriet was Clara’s elder, if merely by a few minutes. As it was, the orange and white cat just shuffled a bit and turned her rounded back on her sister rather than responding.Clara didn’t know why she even bothered asking. She already knew the answer: Harriet didn’t move unless she had to, and on a warm spring day it was easier to conjure a cushion than make the leap from the sun-warmed sill to the sofa, where Clara now fumed. The sofa where, it turned out, Becca had been trying out a summoning spell. And so now, of course, their hapless human believed she had pulled that pillow out of the ether.Which was a problem because Becca belonged to a coven. Had for about three months, ever since she saw a flier in the laundromat advertising an opening for “Witches: New and In Training.” That was the kind of thing that happened here, in Cambridge, where the hippies never really went away. Since then, they’d met every week to drink a foul-smelling herbal concoction and try out various spells. None of which ever produced any magic, of course. None of the humans had the basic powers of a day-old kitten, and certainly nothing like Clara and her sisters shared as the descendants of an old and royal feline line. But now, Clara feared, Becca had become obsessed, spending every waking moment trying to reproduce that one spell, while Harriet, Laurel, and Clara looked on.“Don’t you dare…” Clara muttered in a soft mew as Laurel sashayed into the room, taking in her two sisters with one sweeping gaze. Laurel was the middle one, a troublemaker and as vain as can be. Not simply of her own glossy coat—the cream touched with brown, or, as she called it, café au lait—but of her powers. That she was plotting something, Clara was certain. As Laurel glanced from Harriet back to Clara again, her tail started lashing and her ears stuck out sideways like an owl’s.“Why not?” Laurel had a streak of Siamese in her. It made her chatty, as well as giving her neat dark chocolate booties. “It’ll be fun.”“It’ll bring more people!” Clara felt her fur begin to rise. The idea of her middle sister meddling—and possibly adding more magic to the mix—made her frantic. “Don’t you get it? They’ll never let up.”The black, grey, and orange cat—the smallest of the three sisters—didn’t have to explain who “they” were. That night, Becca’s coven would be meeting again at their place, which, to the three felines, was bad enough. Strangers, six of them, would soon be sitting in all the good seats, with their odd smells and loud voices. What was worse was that Becca would think she had to feed them, as well as brew that horrible tea. And as the cats well knew, Becca had no money, not since she lost her job as a researcher for the local historical society. “Redundant,” her boss had told her. “What with the budget cutbacks and the advances in technology.”“That means they can get an intern to do a Google search.” Becca had sniffled into Clara’s parti-colored fur the day she’d gotten the news. Harriet might be the fluffiest and Laurel the sleekest, but Clara was the one Becca talked to. The one she had confided in months earlier when she found the book that had started her on this whole witchcraft obsession, a spark of excitement lighting up her face. She’d been researching land deeds, the scutwork of history, when she had stumbled on it, her eye caught by a familiar name—some old relative of hers who had been caught up in a witch trial back in the bad old days in Salem. Then, when she’d seen the flier by the coin machine at the Wash ‘N Dry, she’d been so exhilarated, she’d raced back to tell Clara, leaving her sheets in the drier. And now, without the distraction of her job, Becca had thrown herself into the study of magic and sorcery, spending her days in the library or on her computer, trying to track down the full story of that great-great whatever, and sharing her fears and, increasingly, her hopes with Clara.Maybe it was because Clara was a calico that Becca whispered into the black-tipped ears of her littlest cat. Calicos had a reputation for being more intelligent and curious than other felines. Plus, that uneven look—a gray patch over one eye and an orange one over the other—made her appear approachable. Inquisitive. Becca couldn’t know that her youngest cat was often teased for her markings. “Goofy,” her sister Laurel said in her distinctive yowl. “Clara the calico? Clara the clown!” Recently, Harriet had taken up calling her that too.Clara didn’t mind, as long as Becca kept confiding in her. The young woman didn’t really think her cats understood about her being laid off, but, in truth, they were all quite aware of the straitened circumstances. Not that Laurel and Harriet always sympathized. There was that one time three weeks ago that Becca tried cutting back on the cats’ food, getting the generic cans from the market instead of the tiny ones with the pretty labels. After wolfing down hers, Harriet had barfed all over the sofa. She didn’t have to. She was just making a point about what she considered an affront to her dignity.Tonight, when Becca took credit for conjuring that cushion, Clara didn’t know what her haughty sister would do. Interrupt, most likely. Jump onto the table and begin bathing, if she had to, to be the center of attention. If she tried anything further—like pulling more pillows out of the ether—or if Laurel got up to her own tricks, Clara would have to get involved, she vowed with a final flick of the tail. And that, she knew, just wouldn’t end well.

Thisbe the cat, a frequent muse for Clea Simon 

Watermelon Margaritas and the Trouble with Talent

Our guest today on Drinks with Reads is Kathy Krevat is the author of the Gourmet Cat Mystery series by Kensington/Lyrical and the Chocolate Covered Mystery series by Berkley Prime Crime. She’s also on the board of Partners in Crime – the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime, on the board of Playwrights Project, a nonprofit that teaches literacy through playwriting, and an advisor to the CCA Writers’ Conference, the only free writing conference for high school students in the US. 

Colbie Summers, star of the Gourmet Cat Mystery series, loves Pico’s Restaurant, set in the fictional town of Sunnyside, California. She often meets her friends there to enjoy spicy burritos and tangy margaritas while solving her latest mystery. 

In THE TROUBLE WITH TALENT, Colbie is forced to find a new restaurant when Pico’s is closed due to an unusual situation – an infestation of crickets. She has no idea that someone deliberately set the insects loose to get her out of her comfort zone. 

She’s too busy to go far. Her Meowio Batali Gourmet Cat Food business is growing and her business partner is the prime suspect in a murder. Sunnyside’s most gifted students have been at the mercy of a shadowy network of college fixers—including an abusive oboe teacher whose recommendation is necessary to get into a college conservatory and a school secretary who alters grades for cash. When they turn up dead, Colbie has to untangle a cat’s cradle of suspects and motivations—from livid parents and students whose dreams have been crushed to an entire secret Facebook group of spurned lovers.

With the big re-order now on hold and the real killer still at large, Colbie discovers that someone has been grading on a very dangerous curve—and it will take all her newfound sleuthing talent to land safely on her feet.

*****
 

With the summer heat upon us, I know Colbie and her friends would love the cool taste of Watermelon Margaritas:

1 cup of ice

2/3 cup of diced fresh watermelon

1-1/2 oz tequila

1/2 oz triple sec

2 TB agave or simple syrup

Lime juice squeezed from half a lime 

Blend it all in together until smooth and serve immediately.

Heart of Barkness and the La Paloma

Dog lovers rejoice! Today our guest on Drinks with Reads is Spencer Quinn, author of the Chet and Bernie mysteries featuring...you guessed it. He's paired his most recent book with the La Paloma. Curious about both, well read on...

Heart of Barkness is a Chet and Bernie mystery. Bernie is the detective and Chet, his pal, narrates the story – think Holmes and Watson. But don’t overdo the comparison. Chet is a dog. Not a talking dog! Not a human in a dog suit! He’s a narrating dog and as purely canine as I can make him.

The case concerns a country singer named Lotty Pilgrim, who was somewhat famous long ago. Something dreadful went wrong in those early years, a violent, crushing event Lotty has misunderstood all her life. Chet and Bernie start looking into her past, an investigation that takes them down to the Arizona/Mexico border. This is a beautiful, harsh country, full of sunshine but somehow not sunny, and very hot for much of the year. So how about a tequila drink of the non-sweet kind to cool one down? The La Paloma is nice, especially if you like grapefruit, which I do. Paloma is the dove, symbol of peace, in this case, the peace Chet and Bernie try to bring to Lotty’s life – and indeed into the lives of all their clients. The tequila drink is for Bernie, of course. Chet’s drink, as he points out from time to time, is water, preferably cold and fresh, so I’ve added some ice cubes to his bowl.

Here’s a simple recipe for La Paloma:

Ingredients

•  2 oz. tequila
• one half ounce lime juice
• pinch of salt
• grapefruit soda

Pour the mixture in a tall glass, add ice, stir, drink. Repeat.

Strangled Eggs and Ham and A Bourbon Lemonade

Our guest today on Drinks with Reads is Maddie Day and if you comment on your favorite drink in sweltering weather below you can be entered to win a copy of Maddie's new book (US Resident only). 

Maddie Day writes the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. As Edith Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, the Local Foods Mysteries, and award-winning short crime fiction. With seventeen novels in print and five more in production, Maxwell has been nominated for an Agatha Award six times. She lives north of Boston with her beau and two elderly cats, and gardens and cooks when she isn’t killing people on the page or wasting time on Facebook.

In my Country Store Mysteries, proprietor Robbie Jordan and her seventy-something Aunt Adele are both fond of a taste of Four Roses bourbon. Strangled Eggs and Ham takes place during a steamy southern Indiana August, and Robbie can’t always take time for a dip in Lake Lemon to cool off.

Here’s what the story is about: While Robbie scrambles through breakfast orders in South Lick, tempers run as high as the sticky August heat. A developer’s plans to build a luxury resort atop one of the most scenic hills in Brown County infuriates opponents, who concoct protests and road blockades. When tensions boil over and a vocal protester is silenced forever at the resort site, Robbie ditches the griddle to catch the killer. But if slashed tires are any indication, she’ll need to crack this case before her own aunt gets served something deadly next.  

While Robbie usually takes her whiskey neat, over ice, or in hot tea, she might well enjoy this refreshing summer concoction. 

Bourbon Lemonade

Note: You can make this simply by combining lemonade and bourbon, but I felt it needed a punch-up.

Strip six or eight mint leaves off their stem into a flat bottomed glass. Crush with a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice and a tablespoon of sugar. Add three ounces pink lemonade and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Strain into another glass filled with ice, add two ounces bourbon (Four Roses or your favorite), and stir. Garnish with a sprig of mint and a slice of lemon and enjoy a great mystery.

Please find her at edithmaxwell.com, at the Wicked Authors blog, and elsewhere:

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Readers: What’s your favorite refreshing drink in sweltering weather?

Chai Another Day and The Pink Lady

Leslie Budewitz, our guest today on Drinks with Reads, blends her passion for food, great mysteries, and the Northwest in two cozy mystery series. CHAI ANOTHER DAY, her fourth Spice Shop Mystery, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, was published on June 11. DEATH AL DENTE, first in the Food Lovers' Village Mysteries, set in Jewel Bay, Montana, won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. “All God’s Sparrows,” her first historical fiction, won the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Short Story; she also won the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction. A past president of Sisters in Crime and a current board member of Mystery Writers of America, she lives and cooks in NW Montana. You can find her on Facebook.

“Welcome to the new Seattle, where climate is the only thing changing faster than the city’s skyline.”

So says Pepper Reece, owner of Seattle Spice in the famed Pike Place Market, and the main character in my Spice Shop mysteries. In Chai Another Day, the 4^th in the series (Seventh St. Books, June 11, 2019), Pepper and her pals attend a memorial service for Joelle Chapman, a friend who was stabbed to death in the vintage and antique shop where she worked. Afterwards, the three women go out for a drink. Though Pepper favors wine at home, she enjoys the occasional nip of something stronger when she’s out and about. And the reaction of Joelle’s friends and family, all dressed in bright florals and shades of pink, acting like they’re celebrating a gallery opening rather than mourning the loss of a woman they loved, definitely calls for something stronger. 

The Pink Lady, a classic cocktail of the pre-war club era, is just right. The egg white smooths out the sharpness of the gin, and combines with the grenadine to make a lovely drink in shades of pink, topped with a light layer of froth. Joelle would have loved it. 

From CHAI ANOTHER DAY, Ch. 15

“I don’t care what the gallery owner says, that was not Joelle’s favorite champagne,” Kristen said. “Her taste was waaay more expensive.” 

“Where to?” I said. “For a real drink.”

We were standing on the sidewalk outside the gallery. Seattle summer evenings were never this hot. What was going on?

The theme of my life these days. 

Kristen steered us to a newish spot in the next block where she and Eric had gone for Date Night. The three of us snuggled into a booth for two and grabbed menus. 

“Hmm. I had my taste buds set on a Cosmo, but a Pink Lady sounds good. In Joelle’s honor,” I said. 

Seetha read the ingredients. “Gin, grenadine, and egg white? That’s raw egg. You could get salmonella.”

“The alcohol will kill the germs,” I said. Her mouth fell open. “I’m joking. I’m sure they use pasteurized eggs. The risk is minimal.”

We ordered drinks and Kristen chose appetizers to share. I sat back, my eyes stinging with the emotion of the day. 

“Remember when you were a kid,” I said, trusting that my friends had felt much the way I had, “and you thought when you were twenty-five, you’d have life all figured out and you’d just live it and there wouldn’t be any problems. Gad, I wish that were true.”

“It’s not?” Kristen said. I stuck out my tongue.

“I thought it was just me,” Seetha said. “That things were coming together late because my upbringing was a mix of so many cultures.”

“Then you hit forty,” I said, “and realize everybody’s always trying to figure it out. Even those people in their flowery outfits, pretending to enjoy cheap champagne.” 

“They were there for the art,” Kristen said, and we all giggled. “I swear, sometimes the pretension makes me want to gag. I miss funky Seattle. I miss when Northwest fashion meant the latest in plaid flannel and the hot new Gore-Tex rain jackets.” 

“As if,” I said. “You haven’t worn plaid flannel since we went camping at La Push in, what, 1997? It rained all weekend. A forest of Gore-Tex wouldn’t have kept us dry.”

She had a point, though. Natives and long-time residents do sometimes feel like the city’s gotten too big for its britches, believing the hype and overindulging in pseudo-sophistication. 

But I didn’t want to go all cranky over that right now. I had enough other reasons to feel cranky.

Our server set our drinks on the table. Mine was frothy and pretty, the pale pink deepening to dark rose near the bottom of the martini glass. I touched my tongue to the icy surface. “Delish.” 

Pink Lady 

For each drink:

1/2 ounce grenadine

1 egg white

1-1/2 ounces gin

Add all ingredients to a shaker with cracked ice. Shake well—when your hands are chilled, so is the drink—then strain into a martini or cocktail glass. 

(Excerpt and recipe from CHAI ANOTHER DAY, Seventh St. Books, June 2019)

About CHAI ANOTHER DAY:

Seattle Spice Shop owner Pepper Reece probes murder while juggling a troubled employee, her mother's house hunt, and a fisherman who's set his hook for her.

As owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's famed Pike Place Market, Pepper Reece is always on the go. Between conjuring up new spice blends and serving iced spice tea to customers looking to beat the summer heat, she finally takes a break for a massage. But the Zen moment is shattered when she overhears an argument in her friend Aimee's vintage home decor shop that ends in murder. 

Wracked by guilt over her failure to intervene, Pepper investigates, only to discover a web of deadly connections that could ensnare a friend - and Pepper herself.

Not Bad People and Passionfruit Mimosas

Brandy Scott is here on Drinks with Reads today to celebrate her new novel...Not Bad People.

Not Bad People is set in the vineyards of Victoria, Australia – where my characters often have a glass in hand. And they need it! The book kicks off on New Year’s Eve, with a pinot-fueled bad idea to have a letting-go ceremony, where Aimee, Melinda and Lou tie their resolutions to sky lanterns and let them off the balcony. Just minutes later, there’s a flash in the sky – and the next morning, it’s reported that a small plane crashed in the same area. 

Did they cause the accident? Aimee is convinced they’re responsible, and finds herself unable to stay away from the crash site and the family involved. Melinda knows they didn’t, but Aimee’s very public paranoia is putting her business and adoption plans at risk. While Lou has her own family problems to deal with – problems that become increasingly intertwined with the accident that has taken over all their lives. 

It’s a toxic recipe for anxiety, guilt trips, shame, obsession and power games. And also for cocktails! I bought some fantastic prosecco while researching this novel in Victoria, and I’ve used that as a base for a passionfruit mimosa – just the thing for plotting revenge on a hot Australian summer’s afternoon. 

PASSIONFRUIT POWER GAME MIMOSAS 

(makes six)

One bottle of Prosecco

One passionfruit per person

Carton of passionfruit juice

Mint to garnish

Incredibly simple: place a mint leaf in the base of the glass, pour two-thirds full with prosecco, then top up with juice. (Or not, if you like something a little stronger.) Carefully scoop the passionfruit in at the end – it will froth in outrage at this stage. Try not to choke on the mint while feuding with your oldest friends.