Holly Frey and Maria Trimarchi are two podcasters with a show called Criminalia which tries to dig in and take a closer look at some of history’s crimes and criminals from the ancient past, Egyptian times, to the near present. The first year of their podcast covered “female poisoners” and as cocktail lovers they thought, why not enjoy a cocktail in a similar theme to lighten the mood? So this book “Killer Cocktails, Dangerous Drinks Inspired by History’s Most Nefarious Criminals” came into being. Poisoning, by the way, was very common during Roman times when husbands or senators could suddenly pass away.
As they researched for the book and podcast they came across a wide variety of criminals and crimes, beyond female poisoners, which lead to the chapters in this book, such as Imposters, Witches, Pirates, and Body Snatchers, to name a few.
Within each chapter is a short one to two-page description of a person doing something heinous and if they were ever caught or prosecuted, followed by a recipe for a cocktail and a mocktail in that theme. For the Body Snatchers chapter, for example, one of the cocktails and associated mocktails is named “Postmortem“. Fun, eh?
These 80+ short stories are written in a fashion that sound like they are being read on the radio, or a podcast. So no need to dig into dictionaries to find out the meaning of a word. You can stop reading at your leisure as each story is short. No need to keep reading page after page to know if the criminal will be caught.
I enjoyed reading about criminals and crimes that have happened around the world. It was not just about criminals in the USA, for example. There were many European crimes, and even one crime in Canada! There are sometimes in my opinion too many crime stories in each section, so could be trimmed down a bit, or maybe made into a second book.
The cocktails are nearly as intriguing as the number of crimes in this book. There are as many cocktails as crimes, so these authors, who I assume created each cocktail, must have strong constitutions.
If you enjoy reading short, quick-reading stories about crimes, and you enjoy cocktails, this book may be for you.
Where Can I Buy This Book?
You can purchase this book through Barnes and Noble as well as through Amazon.
