ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

Hardboiled Crime Fiction

Book Reviews

  • On the Art of Rereading

    “Rereading, not reading, is what counts,” ~ Jorge Luis Borges.  “When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before,” ~ Cliff Fadiman.  ““If a book isn’t worth reading over and over again, it isn’t worth reading at all.” ~ Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Tabloid

    In the joint at the corner I had coffee and eggs and looked at the papers. One of them was the tabloid I had telephoned the day before. When I picked it up, I felt a sudden, lunging fear. But there was no banner headline. I got brave and turned to the inside. (cf. Dewey, Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Waiting

    Joe drank two cups of coffee. It was hot and strong, the way it always tasted best to him. He sat back in his chair, his fingers toying first with his spoon, then drumming noiselessly on the table. But he couldn’t sit still very long, and he arose, rinsed his cup and left it standing Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Scenery

    I found Big John and Doc on a small flagstone patio that opened off the kitchen. They were seated at a large glass topped, wrought iron table and there was a huge pot of coffee on a hot plate at Big John’s elbow. The view from the patio was of the tumbled mountain range north Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Manners

    I was about to apologize for having disturbed him in the middle of the night, then decided it would be better to play it tough. Big John had said I had “manners.” A certain amount of manners would be okay. But guys just didn’t come real polite in the heavy rackets and courtesy could be Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee On the House

    “You want a cup of coffee?” “I wouldn’t mind.” Phoebe returned to the urns and drew a cup and brought it back. Purvy watched her broad hips going and coming under the white uniform, but he didn’t get the pleasure out of it that most fellows would have got. He stuck his nose into the Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Shock

    In the kitchen, she found the note on the table and read it several times, as if it were in code and had to be deciphered. Finally, she left it where she had found it and went outside. She was gone a long rime. When she came back to the kitchen, she read the note Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee & Steak

    I didn’t get out of town the next day until ten o’clock. It was three hundred fifty miles by highway to Amity. In my old clunker, allowing time for a couple of stops, I did well to average forty miles an hour. Figure it for yourself. It was almost exactly eight and a half hours Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: Reviewing Ross Macdonald

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on April 23, 2014 “(The) American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald” — New York Times Book Review “… the Archer books, the finest series of detective novels ever Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Shakes

    I stopped at the corner drugstore and had a fifth cup of coffee. Marge, the blonde waitress, glanced sharply at me. “You look shaky, Mr. Caldwell,” she said. “Anybody’d think you was plannin’ to rob the bank.” It was a standard gag. I grinned. “Got a headache, I guess.” I left there, went across to Read more