6/07/2006
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So in my tourist-like dilly dallying I've yet to read a work of Anglo/Irish detective or crime fiction where the plot isn't structured around heavy bouts of drinking. This is consistently the case from Edmund Crispin's The Moving Toy Shop and Kyril Bonfiglioli's Mortdecai Trilogy to Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor novels and Brant novels. In each the hero or anti-hero must pause or stumble between episodes to go for a pint or two, a bottle of whisky or two, or even occasionally a mis en scene shot of tequila but only if the action takes us to the States. Now late last night I fell into reading Charlie Williams's Fags and Lager which given the title functions like a commentary on all those prior. This was meant to be sleepy-time reading, relaxation, summer fun, etc., but instead I was up way past the usual twenty-five minutes and cackling - I'm a cackler - over the opening chapters. A sample paragraph:
The rest of the night were piss easy, Mondays being quiet by tradition and the damp autumn air putting an early stopper on any thoughts of aggro folks might have been harbouring. I sank a pint of lager, chatted to Rache [the barmaid] for a few minutes while sipping on another un, knocked back a couple for the road, says goodbye to Rache, taxed a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar, pulled meself another pint cos it were the end of the barrel, locked up, had one for the road, and got in me car.

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