Ok, I am drifting far away from the intended topic: My point was that whisky, unless it is mixed with coke and being gulped down by the numbers, is considered to be a drink for thinkers, which brings me to the core of this chapter; the fictive detectives and their booze.
Over and over in the world of crime literature and pictures, you run in to the (male) drinking detective.
Time and time again, it hits me that even if some of these guys are actually drinking good stuff, they rarely ever drink because they are longing for the soul and the complexity of the dram, but for other reasons indeed.
One example is Peter Robinson´s hero DCI Alan Banks. Apart from being somewhat of a sanctimonious man, casting judging eyes on the masses from his high horse of moral standards, DCI Banks is also a try connoisseur of the good things in life. He enjoys high quality opera, intellectual pop, literature, and of course, high quality wine. And whisky.
Banks likes to sit back in a comfortable chair in his isolated cottage, eyes closed, proper grapes in the goblet, accompanied by an aria blasting in the background, while he solves the mystery.
One event that stands out as particularly symptomatic to me is when Banks is left by his wife, and at the same time, other dark clouds of doom are towering on the horizon.
Banks´s solution? Pardon me for not reciting this a 100% accurately, but almost: "He did what any real man would do in a situation like this; he played Mozart´s requiem as loud as he could possibly bear, and got drunk out of his mind." Drunk on Laphroaig, I might add. Of course, Mr Robinsons text could be dripping of irony, but in that case it is lost on me.
Another whisky lovers is DI John Rebus. Rebus could be called a number of things, but probably not sanctimonious. He does like a glass once in a while though.
Rebus roams the cobblestones of Edinburgh, making enemies, and battling his inner demons, of which the longing to get hammered is the strongest one.
Rebus like a nice pint of IPA, is also fond of whisky. If an enemy, or someone else is buying, he likes them as expensive as possible, but is not too picky about the brand. I have actually caught him gulping down Bell´s in a book or two.
Taste aside, like Banks, Rebus likes to drink. But where Banks drinks to think, Rebus drinks not to think, and in the end, they catch the villain.
In Sweden, we have something like 1 famous fictive detective per capita, and if the detective is a man, then you can be sure he likes a drink:
Erik Winter sits in a comfy chair, looking out over Gothenburg, while smoking a cigarillo and twisting a tumbler of Ardbeg in his hand. Thinking.
Martin Beck likes to digest a rough day of crimestopping by standing on his balcony, glaring at Stockholm City, while enjoying a glass of Calvados, while Kurt Wallander prefers to handle his problems with a glass of wine, while staring at the foamy waves rolling in over the bank near his Österlen beach house. Wallander, by the way, likes opera too, and often forgets to shave in the morning.
Of course, I should let these quiet heroes fight crime and drink just like they want. And I will. But still, my theory is that if these guys paid a little more attention to what was in the glass, instead of using it as a portal for all sorts of other stuff, then maybe they would be happier. They all seem quite sulky from time to time.
When I drink whisky, or wine for that matter, I tend to think about the look of the drink, the nose, the mouthfeel and taste on the palate, the finish, and of course, how truly sophisticated I look with a Copita glass in my hand.
If I was a detective, and was trying to solve murder mysteries at the same time as drinking whisky, then Sweden would have a serious problem with murderers roaming freely.
Oh, Sherlock Holmes did drugs, by the way. And wore a great hat.
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