C&C 30: All Good People

The latest from Swierczynski, Marshall, and Iverson

2024 is off to a rousing start, with excellent pieces of work from—full disclosure—friends of mine. I can’t help it if I know the right people.

California Bear (2024) is everything I’ve come to expect from a Duane Swierczynski novel. It’s a wild ride packed with twists and supercharged with heart. Musician Jack Queen has recently been sprung from prison on a murder charge thanks to crusading ex-cop Cato Hightower. Problem #1: Jack actually did it. Problem #2: Hightower knows it and doesn’t care, because he wants to rope Jack into another scheme. Bringing us to Problem #3: the titular serial killer, lumbering out a long hibernation to strike again. But Jack is distracted by the biggest problem of all: his brilliant fifteen-year-old daughter, dedicated to proving her old man’s innocence, has been diagnosed with leukemia.

Duane takes aim at a deserving target, the true-crime industrial complex. He does so in a tale steeped in L.A. atmosphere and bristling with “Wait, WHAT?” moments. More impressively, Duane created this book out of a heartbreaking loss, which he writes about movingly in the afterword. California Bear makes for an unlikely and winning tribute.

A lifetime ago, when I was inexplicably working at a video game start-up, I hired a college student whose writing sample was dazzling. Kate Alice Marshall has since become an acclaimed YA author who is now conquering crime fiction. In her latest crackerjack thriller, No One Can Know (2024), Emma Palmer learns that she’s pregnant on the same day her husband Nathan loses his job. Desperate to keep a roof over their heads, Emma reveals that she still owns the house where she grew up—and where her parents died. She also reveals that her parents were murdered, and that she was, and remains, a suspect. Once Emma reunites with her two sisters, also shadowed by suspicion, even more secrets will come to light.

A pair of ex-video game hacks talking shop

Kate invited me to interview her at a prelaunch event at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company on January 22, and we had a lot of fun discussing the power of trios in fiction, writing while raising small children, and the lessons we learned toiling on a video game that never launched. She’s on tour for the rest of the month. Look for her at a bookstore near you.

Next, for your listening pleasure, it’s Technically Acceptable (2024), Ethan Iverson’s latest album for Blue Note. The jazz pianist, composer, Substacker supreme, and crime fiction authority is at his best here, on a record that includes the theme song for a non-existent game show (“Conundrum”), a rendition of “Round Midnight” featuring a theremin solo by Rob Schwimmer, a full piano sonata, and a cover of “Killing Me Softly with His Song” that will tear your heart out. Ethan’s playing at New York’s Village Vanguard through January 28 with Thomas Morgan and Kush Abadey. Here he is in conversation with Nate Chinen.

What I’m Drinking

Speaking of friends, bartender extraordinaire Chris Elford highly recommended Classic Cocktails: A Modern Shake (2006) by Mark Kingwell, designed and illustrated by the cartoonist Seth, so I tracked down a copy over the holidays. Kingwell, a philosophy professor and critic, writes about cocktails with verve and acuity, weaving literary and cinematic references throughout. The book has its quirks. A proud Canadian, Kingwell touts his homeland’s whiskey, although to be fair at the time American ryes had yet to come into their own. He loathes bourbon. And he insists on shaking every damn drink, even his Manhattans, which he wants tossed around so vigorously “that platelets of ice float on top.” The general rule: shake if it’s got citrus, otherwise, stir.

One cocktail Kingwell endorses that you can absolutely shake is the Shanghai. The one with whiskey, not rum. The recipe he cites is apparently from the 1953 book The ABC of Cocktails. Below is the version I’ve been making.

The Shanghai

• 2 oz. rye

• ¾ oz. sweet vermouth

• ½ oz. lime juice

• ¼ oz. Cointreau

Shake. Strain.

What (Else) I’m Reading

Ghostwriters spill the tea, in New York and in Los Angeles.