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Murderer Vine
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Tangled in Crime
Private eye Joe Dunne is wasting away in Puerto Lagarto. The local cantina has the only refrigerator in town, and the owner packs it full of beer every morning. “I drink my way from the front to the back of the refrigerator and look at the bay,” Dunne tells a visiting priest. “No one else visits. No tourists. No ruins to look at, no hotels, no airports. If someone came here by mistake, he wouldn’t like the food or the damp heat or the hammocks or the people. I don’t like them either. But there’s one big advantage living here. They don’t extradite.”
From that hard-boiled beginning, local author Shepard Rifkin backs into a detective novel that the New York Times has hailed for its “savagery and insight, in full-color dimensions.” Originally published in 1970, “The Murderer Vine” was recently reissued in both paperback and Kindle versions. The story ricochets off the real-life disappearance of three civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer of 1964. The father of one of the young men hires Dunne to go to Mississippi and investigate. “I know they’re dead,” he says, “But I think you know what justice is. And if it doesn’t exist, then you make it. I want my boy’s body. And I want justice.”
“The Murderer Vine” is tough, smart and unsentimental in its depiction of racism and bigotry at a painful time in our history. It’s also a heck of a good read. But if crime noir fiction isn’t on your summer reading list, you can still enjoy Shepard Rifkin’s books. The prolific author has written a dozen other novels, including an award-winning Western called “King Fisher’s Road.” And under the pseudonym Jake Logan, he has also penned more than 40 of the Slocum Westerns, the longest running series of the genre ever written.
Rifkin, now 90, lives in DC and takes a bus every day to his favorite coffee shop near Eastern Market, where Hill Rag reporter Maggie Hall “discovered” him. His long career has included stints as a cab driver, gardener, editor, cocktail lounge manager, cook, tugboat captain and manager of the first paperback bookstore in the United States. He once told an interviewer that he wrote his first novel while driving an ambulance in East Harlem, working nights on his research and writing, then getting back behind the wheel again after just a few hours sleep. “Whenever I meet people who put in 40 hours a week at some well-paying job who tell me it’s hard to write,” he said, “I am intolerant.”
“The Murderer Vine” is now widely available, and you can find other of Rifkin’s titles in used book stores and under the “used and new” section of amazon.com, which connects you to booksellers all over the country.
It’s Not Easy Being Bronze
Ready, sculpture lovers? OK, let’s have a scavenger hunt! You all know where on Capitol Hill to find statues of Puck, John Philip Sousa, Neptune and Mary McLeod Bethune.* But here’s a poser for you: where is the bronze sculpture of a girl holding a boy aloft by his hands, with a top hat and cat perched on his bent knees? Give up? If you had a copy of James M. Goode’s “Washington Sculpture: A Cultural History of Outdoor Sculpture in the Nation’s Capital,” you’d know that “Balance” is located at the corner of 13th Street, Constitution Avenue and Tennessee Avenue NE.
A comprehensive compendium of outdoor art in and around the DC area, Goode’s book surveys more than 500 sculptures, complete with photographs, information about the artists and subjects, and discussions of the works’ historical significance. Arranged by geographical area, each chapter is preceded by an annotated map. All the grand edifices and iconic monuments of the nation’s capital are exhaustively represented, of course, but it’s the smaller, more intimate sculptures that make this a great book for browsing. Check out the owls and lynxes on the roof of the National Science Foundation Building, the Maine Lobsterman at Southwest Waterfront Park, or the George Washington weathervane atop a building at GWU. And don’t miss the charming sculpture of Jim Henson and Kermit on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland, the Muppeteer’s alma mater.
“Washington Sculpture” had its genesis in 1970 when Goode, then on staff at the Smithsonian, was asked to give an outdoor sculpture tour for the Smithsonian Associates. His talk proved so popular that he was inspired to produce a pamphlet, which eventually grew into a book called “The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, D.C.” His recent book is an outgrowth of that 1974 volume, with new images, updated information and a scope that extends into suburban Virginia and Maryland. A historian of the art and architecture of DC, Goode has published two other books: “A Cultural History of Washington’s Destroyed Buildings” and “Best Addresses: A Century of Washington’s Distinguished Apartment Houses.”
*Cheater alert: They’re at Folger Shakespeare Library, the Marine Barracks Annex, the Library of Congress and Lincoln Park.
Road Trip
Move over, Inn at Little Washington. There’s another good reason for a culinary pilgrimage to Rappahannock County, Virginia. John McPherson, chef and co-owner with wife Diane of the Foster Harris House in Washington, Virginia, has just published a cookbook of his guests’ favorite dishes that will have local epicures packing their overnight bags.
Designed to showcase fresh, local ingredients, McPherson’s recipes are page-long nuggets that feature simple but creative preparations. From kid-friendly favorites like pizza and meatballs to more sophisticated entrees like spiced quail with cranberries or cashew herb crusted leg of lamb, each recipe is presented with a minimum of fuss and a set of instructions so clear that even the most inexperienced cook can play.
In addition to more than 80 recipes, “The Foster Harris House Cookbook” features a chronological and pictorial history of the house and an introduction that describes how the McPhersons came to establish their B&B there. Full-page photographs by John Spalding border on food porn: if the crumbling cornbread, oozing crepes, and glistening ribs don’t make your mouth water, check your pulse. This guy can make a fried egg look alluring.
“The Foster Harris House Cookbook” is available from www.fosterharris.com or by calling 800-666-0153. |
