During the Prohibition years from 1920 to 1933, alcoholic beverages were illegal in the United States. But it was still fairly easy to get a drink. One of the easiest ways was to find a speakeasy—a hidden bar that served bootleg liquor and that often required a password to get in. Legend has it that the name speakeasy came from patrons being told to “speak easy,” or softly, so the police wouldn’t hear the party.

When the Volstead Act, which put Prohibition in place, was repealed in 1933, 80 years ago on December 5th, the speakeasies disappeared. But if you want to revisit that time in a new way, you have your chance because modern speakeasies have popped up all over the country. These bars take the mystery and romance of history and create a fun atmosphere.

Hallmarks of the modern speakeasy include:

1) Individually mixed drinks with fresh ingredients, often invented at that bar. We’re talking fresh, muddled fruit and innovative concoctions. A far cry from the quality of spirits found in most speakeasies back in the day. This also means you pay more than you would for an average cocktail, and depending on the city you’re in, it can be a lot more.

2) An unmarked door or a misleading sign. You have to know where the speakeasy is. Most doors are unmarked, but I’ve visited one behind the façade of a Fortune Telling shop and another where you had to go into a restaurant and pick up an antique phone to gain admittance.

3) Reservations are commonly a must, and many times, you’ll need a password. It pays to do your research. I’ve never had trouble getting into a popular place—as long as I made a reservation and knew in advance if I needed a password.  

4) An intimate atmosphere with lots of attention from your bartender to help you get exactly what you want. These places are small (thus the need for reservatinos), and the décor is well planned. Many of the speakeasies even play the music of the time.

Are you ready to go? Some friends and I started visiting these places as we traveled, and we've compiled our Top Ten list from around the country.  So here are my favorites in no particular order:

[Suddenly... so ... thirsty...]

A neuroscientist who had his brain scan handy while reviewing those of various psychopaths, schizophrenics, and even some murderers serendipitously diagnosed his own “low activity in areas of the frontal and temporal lobes linked to empathy, morality and self-control.” See image above. According to Joseph Stromberg's blog post at Smithsonian Magazine:

... when he underwent a series of genetic tests, he got more bad news. “I had all these high-risk alleles for aggression, violence and low empathy,” he says, such as a variant of the MAO-A gene that has been linked with aggressive behavior. Eventually, based on further neurological and behavioral research into psychopathy, he decided he was indeed a psychopath—just a relatively good kind, what he and others call a “pro-social psychopath,” someone who has difficulty feeling true empathy for others but still keeps his behavior roughly within socially-acceptable bounds.

It wasn’t entirely a shock to [James] Fallon, as he’d always been aware that he was someone especially motivated by power and manipulating others, he says. Additionally, his family line included seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden, infamously accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892.

We at Crime HQ tend to take a jaundiced view of the ways some people choose to dispose of their mortal remains, because—let’s face it—those ways can be strange. But we can recognize pretty when we see it, so without a hint of snark we present Shine on Brightly, an Asheville, North Carolina, company that sells cremation urns, grave markers, memory books, memorial jewelry and other keepsakes made by local artists and artisans.

What do President Zachary Taylor and Warren G. (Gamaliel) Harding have in common, other than being president? Yes, both were somewhat heavyset. But more importantly, both of their deaths have stirred the pot of conspiracy.  Taylor, who died in 1850, was believed to have died from overeating in hot weather. Harding officially died of a stroke or heart attack. But were their deaths really natural, or were they murder? In Taylor’s case, the exhumation and forensic exam of his body proved without doubt that he had indeed died of natural causes.  But the whispers of murder still float around Harding. Could the notorious womanizer-in-chief have been murdered? Or were his well-known blood pressure issues really to blame?

Warren G. Harding had his share of enemies, most of whom were self-created .  Elected in 1920 on a platform of returning the nation to “normalcy” after World War I, he packed his government with a mixture of bright administrators and Ohio cronies. His attorney general, Harry Daugherty, fought off a couple of impeachment attempts.  Probably the worst of his appointments was Secretary of the Interior Albert Falls, who accepted bribes in regards to oil rights in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and eventually went to prison.  And most scholars agree that Harding had extramarital affairs with four women, two of them close friends with his wife, Florence.

[So what else is new?]

Existentially speaking, Alan Slater isn’t exactly moving mountains. At age 32, he’s a home windows salesman who drinks too much, smokes too much, and has such an anger management problem that he’s stooped to using a self-help method of counting dolphins to try and keep his head together during his many flare-ups. His boss seems to get a kick out of sending him on false sales leads, and while his 21-year old girlfriend is sexy and smart, their relationship brings him as much aggravation as it does satisfaction.

All of that notwithstanding, if it wasn’t for Slater’s friendship with his co-worker Les Beale, he would be just another regular bloke plodding his way along. If Slater’s a guy whose self-actualization process could use an overhaul, Beale is just a flat-out loser. But he’s worse than that, because he’s also dangerous. Beale abuses substances and he also abuses people. He’s a bully, a user, a boor, a racist, a gambling addict, and he’s the worst kind of ne’er-do-well: the kind who always thinks he’s just on the verge of hitting his big stroke of good fortune. Slater’s relationship with his girlfriend might be troubled, but at least he has a girl; Beale’s wife, fed up with his ways, left him some time ago, and took their daughter along with her. Beale’s the kind of shit that, when he goes down he has no qualms about taking others with him. Beale is Slater’s albatross. But he’s also Slater’s only friend.

As Slater, the narrator of the novel under discussion here—Ray Banks’s The Big Blind—describes his troublesome pal in an early part of the tale:

Beale’s a man that most people have trouble spending an hour with, me included. This is why I drink so much.

[With friends like this...]

We love a good villain. Villains with complex characters, mysterious motivations, and great resourcefulness are the best. The hero needs to be challenged, right? The better the villain, the greater the hero’s triumph will be at the end. (Going by movies such as Thor and The Avengers, Loki hits pretty high on the villain scale. This is a character that challenged not only one hero, but an entire group. Even Holmes had his Moriarty, a villain so great that they both went over Reichenbach Falls.)

When villains are emotionally sympathetic, we even like to cheer for them at least a little bit; however, appreciating them as characters is not the same thing as wanting them to win entirely. When it comes to criminal stories, we can’t allow the villain to truly win. It’s not in our nature. By the end of the book, movie, or episode we want, even demand the resolution that allows the villain to be brought to justice. In those rare instances where the villain gets away, it is only because at some later date the villain will return and have to face justice then.

But what if that’s not the case? Rereading the story of Jason and Medea got me thinking about how she got away in the end. She murdered her children, Jason’s fiancée Glauce, and Glauce’s father Creon, and then set fire to a city before disappearing completely. She got away. She never faced justice.

Okay, some may say that what she did actually balanced justice. Jason betrayed her, first, and she responded as was befitting (I won’t debate whether acts of murder and arson are equal to casting Medea aside.)

What about a villain who was not wronged first? Shakespeare’s play Othello has a lot in common with Medea's story, especially concerning the villain Iago.

[Some bad just goes bone-deep...]

Chewing like this guy, you'll always notice the difference, not to mention avoiding a holiday Heimlich marathon.

Knitting artist and rescue enthusiast Katie Bradley of Vancouver, Washington has made over 800 delightful tortoise cozies, such as the helpful reminder above.

On this Thanksgiving, all of us at Crime HQ are grateful for you, even if you are prone to the most sinister thoughts.

H/T: Telegraph.

I think Altman's rendition of The Long Goodbye gets a bad rap.

Fans of Raymond Chandler's poetic novels and Bogart's iconic portrayal find Elliot Gould as a smart-ass, sleepy “Rip Van Marlowe” too much of a change in character. Gould's Marlowe is a man who fell asleep in the '40s and woke up to the hedonistic, nihilistic '70s.

I like Robert Altman's films, especially his experiments with genre such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which goes beyond even revisionist Western, or his classic M*A*S*H, the war movie that's not a war movie. His famous ensemble pieces such as Nashville leave me a bit uninterested, though the excellent Short Cuts, built on a framework of Raymond Carver's touching and painful stories, works especially well. In The Long Goodbye, he plays with point of view; the shots and cinematography are all based on not what Marlowe sees, but how he sees it. He's always outside a window peering in, the vision distorted by the glass. They famously exposed the film to light to dull all the colors in the first two acts, so it feels as if Marlowe has awakened from a long sleep, and his perception is fuzzy until the mystery becomes clear, and  he sees what must be done.

Gould is sort of a post-hippie P.I., whose favorite line is “it's alright with me,” and it's a surprise that Cole Porter's song of the same name isn't in the soundtrack. There is only one song repeated in many variations throughout, “The Long Goodbye,” by John Williams and Johnny Mercer. At first a Tom Waits-like gravelly voice sings it, then a woman, and the motif is even repeated by a Mariachi band when they head to Mexico. The bookends are “Hooray for Hollywood,” for a bitter dash of irony.

When we meet Marlowe, he is trying to get his cat to eat cottage cheese so he doesn't have to buy cat food; he relents, heads out, and slowly gets embroiled in the story.

[And people say there are no cats in neo-noir...]

Using a valid U.S. address (and for a small fee), Died in House instantly searches millions of records to determine if a death has occurred at that location, and if so, will try to retrieve who, when, what caused it, not to mention the “vitality status” of previous residents. From co-founder Roy Condrey's Lapham's Quarterly interview with Bess Lovejoy:

Most people could be comfortable with a peaceful death, I think, but not a suicide. Some people don’t want any deaths in the place where they live. Everyone has their own opinion about this stuff. The real estate industry says that death is not a material fact, like a water leak or an aged roof. But you can fix a leak or a roof, you can never remove a death. You can never remove the fact that John Wayne Gacy murdering and then burying twenty-six young men in his crawl space, or Ronnie DeFeo murdering six family members in the Amityville house. These homes hold the stigma and in time become the haunted houses that we are all familiar with. I think deaths in the home should be disclosed...

A death in a home, especially a violent one, can depreciate a property’s value up to 25% and take 50% longer to sell than a comparable home.

Would you want to know?

We're giving thanks for the opportunity to do a Sweeeeeepstakes of six great e-books!

Click here to enter for a chance to win!

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[Read More about all the titles...]

The Missing Dough by Chris Cavender is the sixth installment of the Pizza Lovers Mystery series featuring Eleanor Swift, who faces the skewering of a former brother-in-law during the Founders Day Festival (available November 26, 2013).

Eleanor Swift is expecting a normal day at her pizzeria, A Slice of Delight. She goes in, makes dough, preps her station, and hangs out with her sister, Maddy. Ten minutes after opening, however, her ex-brother-in-law come barging in the door to harass Maddy, begging her to give him a second chance.

Seeing as how Grant was a cheating, stealing, drinking thug, and seeing as how she’s already seeing another guy, Maddy resists his current crazy charms. Eleanor and Maddy escort Grant out of the pizzeria with the business end of a baseball bat. However, that’s not the last the ladies see of Grant that day. Later, Eleanor and Maddy are enjoying the Founders Day Festival with their significant others when Grant comes at them again. Bob, Maddy’s new man, goes after Grant, but is held back by his friends.

So, later that night, it’s not a crazy supposition for Police Chief Hurley to suspect Bob when Grant is murdered—killed by a barbecue skewer to the heart.

[For most ex-brothers-in-law, that fate remains fantasy only.]

We all know that Sherlock lives, but the biggest mystery is why that caterpillar calmly resting upon John's upper lip how? It looks like Sherlock doesn't care what the affect his apparent death has had on his friends, but he is more than happy to share with the world that he is indeed living, much the same way he let the city of London's press know that Lestrade was all wrong.  What are you looking forward to in the upcoming season?

Hostage by Kay Hooper is the sequel to 2012's Haven, featuring Bishop and the Special Crimes Unit, using psychic gifts to hunt a dangerously unstable felon through the Appalachian wilderness (available November 26, 2013).

I am fascinated by Kay Hooper’s FBI agents that have special abilities and the way she uses these abilities to help them catch criminals. Bishop’s Special Crimes Unit is back in this book and better than ever. I give it extra stars because it’s set in the mountains of Tennessee, a place very close to my heart with a town aptly named Devil’s Gap.

Two sets of agents are the focus of this book, and it’s a story that might keep you up at night if you scare easily. Get ready for demons, ghosts, and, of course, bad guys!

Luther Brinkman is a Haven agent sent to find escaped bank robber, Cole Jacoby. Luther is hampered by the steep slopes of the Appalachian Mountains. He finds the felon, but is badly wounded and left to die. He’s rescued by Callie Davis, an agent for the SCU, who was put in place by Noah Bishop. The wily director of the SCU/Haven uses his agents with the finesse of a champion chess player.

The problem the agents have with Jacoby is more than his weapons and his dogs, there’s something evil that bars their movements and keeps them trapped in Callie’s cabin, cut off from the help they need. Then they become the hunter’s prey.

[Something wicked lurks in these woods...]

Back in September, I wrote about five new crime TV shows  that I was excited to watch. Of those five: Ironsides was cancelled, Dracula was a disappointment (although I am still watching it) and I like Almost Human, but we haven’t seen much of it yet. There are only two shows of the original five that are absolute DVR Keepers: The Blacklist and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. (This post is about The Blacklist, so you’ll just have to set your DVR for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and prepare to laugh really, really hard. You can watch full eposodes of The Blacklist online at NBC, too.)

So, why do I love The Blacklist? Let me count the ways and in the process tell you everything you need to know—without spoilers—to get you up to speed. (I like to do these countdowns in reverse order for maximum dramatic impact.)

Number 5 – The characters:

Red Reddingon, played by James Spader. Red is a Whitey Bulger-esque bad guy who turns himself in to help turn in other bad guys. Red mockingly calls his own super-bad guy list, The Blacklist. And that’s where the show gets its name. Red is a man who gets what he wants even when he turns himself in. He will only cooperate if he gets to work with….

Elizabeth Keen played by Megan Boone, also known as Lizzie by Red. Elizabeth is literally on her first day of work as a super-secret badass special agent profiler when super-criminal and bad guy, Red, turns himself in and asks for her. She has no idea why… but she has her suspicions. Everything is suspect in her life, even her husband…

Tom Keen, played by Ryan Eggold. Red conveniently tells Elizabeth that her husband is more than he seems. Elizabeth doesn’t believe him, or does she?  One person who is quick to check out any irregularity in Elizabeth’s life is her work partner…

Donald Ressler played by Diego Klattenhoff. Donald is your typical follow-the-rules, there is no-grey-in-my-world, lawman. We have no idea what he is really thinking behind that square jaw, only the overt rule following that he shows us.

[And that's just the beginning...]

The City of Lost Dreams by Magnus Flyte is the second adventurous mystery set in  a Europe where magic, science, and alchemy are all valid. In it, musicologist Sarah Weston and her friends—drunken dwarf Nico Petusato and her former lover Prince Max—will chase a villain through history and fight even death itself (available November 26th, 2013).

The City of Lost Dreams was my first taste of author Magnus Flyte, and now that I’ve sampled, I find myself asking for seconds. That really doesn’t accurately explain my reaction—I loved it. The crisp writing, fast and neatly-trimmed sentences that tumbled one after another without too much fluff or unnecessarily pretentious words kept my attention throughout the book. Also noted, I read this one in a little over a day, only putting it down for sleepy time and the unavoidable daily routine. Yes, it was that good.

The name Magnus Flyte is really a pen name for authors Meg Howrey and Christina Lynch, two talented ladies who bring a style to their writing that is fast, clear and concise, yet employs an entertaining flair and, at times, a perfect balance of whimsy. Their ability to spin a yarn that pulls the reader along on a flying carpet ride of mystery, comed,y and romance is top0notch. Some of the elements included in the book: a galleon automaton that sprays wicked drugs in the face of unsuspecting victims, alchemy and an immortal dwarf, a race to find The Fleece—a book that holds the answers to everlasting life and the ability to cure afflictions, hell portals, a complicated love triangle and Mesmerism, just to name a few. This thing employs a mystery that deepens like the sudden drop off of a sandbar.

[Into the deeps we go...]

Many people take every opportunity they can to have some fun at a statues expense. A recent group of Reddit users compiled some statue shenanigans at their finest.

See any statues you recognize?

Death Comes to the Village by Catherine Lloyd is the debut of a Regency historical mystery series featuring rector's daughter Lucy Harrington and the wounded Major Robert Kurlan (available November 26, 2013).

First in a new series of Regency-set mysteries, Death Comes to the Village by Catherine Lloyd offers a historical twist on cozies. After raising her own siblings, Lucy Harrington is facing a lifetime of housekeeping and charitable visits while her widowed father, the rector of the village, indulges his passion for both horses and their ill-tempered cook. Therefore, when wounded Major Robert Kurland sees suspicious activity from his window at night, she welcomes the distraction from her domestic woes. Meanwhile, Major Kurland is glad to be diverted from the pain and frustration of his shattered leg, as well as the fear that he will never walk or ride again.

I particularly enjoyed how the barriers Lucy faces are tied into the expectations of the historical society in which she lives. That bodes well for the series, as these issues will not go away, and will provide ongoing and hopefully evolving character tension to go along with the mystery plots. Chief among her issues is whether she will remain a spinster, caring for her father and his house, or if she will be able to go to London in search of a husband.

“I feel like a child when you treat me like one, and refuse to back my authority.”

“Don’t be silly. Didn’t I just tell Mrs. Fielding to obey your orders?”

“With the proviso that I have to listen to her about what she cooks, which defeats the whole purpose of this conversation!”

The rector sat down again and looked at her over the top of his spectacles. “I do not appreciate your tone or your anger, neither of which are appropriate for a gently born female.”

[Ah, the lacy shackles of appropriateness...]

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files: Ghoul Goblin by Jim Butcher, Mark Powers, and Joseph Cooper is a graphic novel based on a new, original story that takes place within the Dresden Files universe (available December 3, 2013).

Fresh on the heels of the events of Fool Moon (Dresden Files, Book 2), our hero, wizard Harry Dresden, finds himself underwater, battling a powerful creature he’s never seen before. He wounds the monster, saving himself from a watery grave, but allowing it to escape in the process. Having caught only a persistent cold for his troubles, he fruitlessly continues his search for the creature over the next few days. Thus, he isn’t entirely unhappy for the distraction when another case shows up on his doorstep with the arrival of Prescott Tremaine, deputy sheriff of the small town of Boone Mill, Missouri. Several odd deaths have hit the town, and Pres, as he prefers to be called, has taken it upon himself to consult with an outsider whose area of expertise could help uncover the true circumstances of these deaths.

Dresden is somewhat reluctant to leave Chicago to investigate, till Pres explains that the family seemingly targeted, the Talbots, lost their parents at a very young age. Staring at the photos Pres brought with him, Dresden reflects:

A family of orphans... Given my own family history, I can't help but sympathize. My mother had died in childbirth, and I lost my father six years later to an aneurysm. I know what it is to be alone and vulnerable, to need to trust someone... and to have that trust betrayed, to have it ripped away like an old sheet covering something rotten and grotesque. I know what it's like to lose everything… and I know what it is to be responsible for loss.

Once in Boone Mill, Dresden is taken aback by the lackadaisical attitude of Sheriff Daggett, who’s ready to write off the deaths as being coincidental. Knowing that no help will be forthcoming from that direction, Pres and Dresden hatch a plan to attend the funeral of the latest victim the next day, under the assumption that the killer will likely be unable to resist attending as well.

[You know what assumptions make of you and me...]