Crime, Fowler, and Cosmo’s Factory
Reading Time: 4 minutes.
Crime-fiction lists, cocktails, manners and grammars, and Cosmo’s Factory.
Crime Fiction and Thrillers
From Crime Fiction Lover, the latest crime fiction and mystery news.
From the New York Times, the latest in thrillers (“The editors of The New York Times Book Review bring you the best thrillers of 2024, our latest reviews, the essential Tana French, marriages gone wrong, thrillers set in hard-to-reach locations, the latest series mysteries and more!”).
And finally, from Goodreads, here is a month-by-month guide to 2025 mysteries and thrillers. Be especially on the lookout for the titles by S.A. Cosby and Wes Browne. We will have an interview with Wes Browne in an upcoming White Collar Wire installment.
Cocktails
Some of my own; a 1940s martini; and a bar I would like to visit.
Drinks I Have Been Drinking

Sasha Petraske founded the legendary bar Milk & Honey. This recipe for a “Harvest Sour,” an old-fashioned-ish drink, is taken from a collection in his memory, Regarding Cocktails:
Ingredients 1 white sugar cube A dash of Angostura bitters A dash of Peychaud's bitters A dash of club soda 1 oz. Laird's applejack 1 oz rye whiskey A lemon twist, for garnish An orange twist, for garnish Put the sugar cube in an old-fashioned glass and soak with both bitters. Add club soda and model until a paste forms. Add the brandy and the whiskey. Add one rock of ice that fits in the bottom of the glass. (The ice should not protrude over the lip of the glass.) Stir the drinks slowly nine times (that's what it says, nine) or so to lightly chill. Finished with the lemon and orange twists.
Martini

I have had some some remarkable martinis with Cadenhead’s Old Raj Gin, including the “Old King Cole” from Maison Premiere:
Add 2-3 dashes orange bitters, ¼ ounce dry vermouth and 3 ounces Old Raj Gin into a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with skewered Castelvetrano olives and a lemon twist.
Here is a nice video about the drink’s construction: The Old King Cole Martini.
Bars
I have never been, but The Aladdin Sane in Detroit looks very cool.
Manners and Grammar: Emily Post and Fowler

Manners are not for other people. Rather, they are for you. They reveal to other people what you think of yourself. A sure guide is Emily Post’s Guide to Table Manners (1955):
ON THE SUBJECT OF ELBOWS ON THE TABLE
Although elbows on the table are seen constantly in highest fashionable circles, a whole table’s length of elbows, planted like clothes-poles, and hands waving glasses or forks about in between is certainly not an attractive dinner-table picture. And yet there are some situations when elbows are not only permitted but are actually necessary – especially on tables in restaurants when people are lunching or dining at a small table of two or four, and it is impossible to make oneself heard above music, and at the same time not be heard at other tables nearby, without leaning far forward. And in leaning forward, a woman’s figure makes a more graceful outline supported on her elbows than doubled forward over her hands in her lap as though she were in pain! At home, when there is no reason for leaning across the table, there is no reason for elbows. And at a dinner of ceremony, elbows on the table are rarely if ever seen, except perhaps at the ends of the table, where again one has to lean forward in order to talk to a companion at a distance across the table corner.
Elbows are never put on the table while one is eating. To sit with the left elbow propped on the table while eating with the right hand or to prop the right one on the table while lifting fork or glass to the mouth must be avoided.
Emily Post, Etiquette (1955)
Like manners, grammar (and good writing style) provide clarity where there is otherwise uncertainty. I recently bought a new copy of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage. This is the classic first edition, with an introduction by David Crystal:
No book had more influence on twentieth-century attitudes to the English language in Britain than Henry Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Within a few years, people no longer felt it necessary even to mention the title and talked simply of ‘Fowler.’ Adjectives soon followed—Fowlerian, Fowlerish, Fowleresque—and he eventually received the ultimate linguistic accolade, of being turned into a common noun. The practice continues. In February 2008 William F Buckley wrote a piece for the United Press Syndicate on the verbal traps used by Obama and Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination: it was entitled ‘A Fowler’s of Politics.’
Here is a short video of Crystal discussing Fowler’s relevance:
Music

And finally, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s take on “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Their cover version was an 11-minute effort on their July 1970 album Cosmo’s Factory. The clip below is not 11 minutes.