Good Guys & Better Coffee

The old Pulp magazines offered everything from a gritty back street world of violence to the unimaginable planets of the far stars. Pulp fiction was the people’s stories. And because of this the everyday miseries and joys followed.  There was crime, and hunger, and fear, but there was also adventure, love and romance, and best of all, coffee.

When one thinks of the hard-drinking private eye of Black Mask fame, you don’t immediately think of coffee, but bourbon in a desk drawer or gin from a speakeasy. But far more often coffee is mentioned than booze. Think about it. That PI’s got to get up after a hard night to find the clues that lead to the Maltese Falcon or Rusty Regan or whatever. And to do that, he almost always resorts to black coffee.

Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was one of the originals. His morning routine: “I got up at nine, drank three cups of black coffee, bathed the back of my head with ice-water and read the two morning papers that had been thrown against the apartment door. …I dressed and ate two soft-boiled eggs and drank a fourth cup of coffee and looked myself over in the mirror. I still looked a little shadowy under the eyes.” (Farewell, My Lovely, 1940)

Chandler inspired a lot of other detectives.  The redheaded Mike Shayne loved cognac but drank a lot of coffee too, whether at home or in a diner. “Ordering bacon and eggs, buttered toast, and lots of coffee, he spread the newspaper out with his left hand and began to catch up on the events of last night.” and “Shayne drank his coffee with the healthy appreciation of a strong man for strong coffee.” (Dividend on Death, 1939) Ah, that old Pulp machismo. “Let me see how much coffee you’ve got in there,” he growled. “Most women treat coffee as though it was more precious than diamonds.” (The Private Practice of Mike Shayne, 1940) And sexism.

Most detectives mention coffee on a fairly regular basis. If you are meeting clients at a restaurant–coffee. Staying up late on a stakeout–coffee. Even after a case well-solved– why not, coffee. Dashiell Hammett was known for his tough guys but he also created Nick and Nora Charles, richie-rich detectives in The Thin Man (1934). That novel mentions champagne three times but coffee fourteen times. Whether it’s Simon Templar as the Saint or Nero Wolfe after one of Fritz’s amazing dinners, it’s coffee time.

In Erle Stanley Gardner’s very first Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933), Gardner writes over four hundred words about coffee as it serves Perry well as an opportunity to observe his client’s house staff. Perry’s relationship with the police wasn’t always friendly but in this novel he makes coffee for Sergeant Bill Hoffman “and the boys upstairs”: “Perry Mason poured some of the coffee into the cups, and then poured it back through the coffee container in the percolator. When he had poured it through the second time, it was black and steaming.”

All these coffee drinking detectives aren’t that surprising but what may be is that the original detective himself, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was too, not a tea drinker but a coffee guy. “A bath at Baker Street and a complete change freshened me up wonderfully. When I came down to our room I found the breakfast laid and Homes pouring out the coffee.” The Sign of Four (1890).

Holmes is never one to miss utilizing a tool for observation. In a very famous scene in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), Holmes explains all he knows about their client in superb detail. Watson is amazed (even though he should know better by now). Sherlock declares his secret mirror: “I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me” said he. 

Holmes is also quite aware of coffee’s effect but so is Dr. Watson, a medical man. In “Wisteria Lodge” (1908): “We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug…”

Almost as obvious as detective fiction is the Western, featuring the coffee drinking cowboy. In Louis L’Amour’s The Daybreakers (1960), Tyrel Sackett explains cowboy coffee: “The cook brought me a plate of grub and it smelled so good I didn’t even look up until I’d emptied that plate and another, and swallowed three cups of hot black coffee. Up in the hills we like our coffee strong but this here would make bobwire grow on a man’s chest in the place of hair.”

Westerners enjoy coffee but they also like action. Shorty knows his priorities:

He opened the door and a bullet slammed the door jamb within inches of his face. Shorty hit the steps on his belly, then scrambled back into the room. He got to his feet and glanced sheepishly at Laurie. “Looks like I won’t get my coffee,” he said. (Kilkenny, 1963)

Science Fiction came out of the Pulps. I don’t know if Hugo Gernsback drank coffee, (He probably did. He was from Luxembourg.) but some great SF characters did. Of course you can’t just drank ordinary coffee: “After assuring himself that the highly inimical brain would not be able to function normally for a long time to come, the Lensman made his way to the galley. He could walk without staggering already—fine! There he fried himself a big, thick, rare steak—his never-failing remedy for all the ills to which flesh is heir—and brewed a pot of Thralian coffee; making it viciously, almost corrosively strong. And as he ate and drank his head cleared magically. Strength flowed back into him in waves. His Lens flamed into its normal splendor. He stretched prodigiously; inhaled gratefully a few deep breaths. He was QX.” (E. E. Smith’s Second Stage Lensman, 1953)

Now don’t think this all started in 1926. Arthur Conan Doyle again in 1913 from his SF masterpiece, The Lost World:” In the morning, after a frugal breakfast of coffee and manioc–we had to be economical of our stores–we held a council of war as to the best method of ascending to the plateau above us.” Even intrepid dinosaur hunters need their brew.

Henry Kuttner was more down-to-earth. He created an inventor named Gallagher, who was brilliant but only when he drank alcohol. When he woke up from his drinking he never could remember what he had invented. Sounds like a job for coffee: “Feeling less woozy, he returned to the lab with a gigantic cup full of steaming coffee. He perched on Bubbles and gulped the liquid…”

Isaac Asimov is perhaps the best-known Science Fiction author these days. He also loved Mystery fiction and wrote a series of short stories for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine called The Black Widowers. Guests to a club told of impossible crimes, which Henry the butler always solved, but not before: “When Henry was pouring out the coffee and it came time for the game of placing the guest on the griddle…”

Of course, Asimov had no problem creating coffee-drinking heroes in his Science Fiction either. One of these is Lij Baley, a human partnered with a robot, R. Daneel: “Baley woke up, disturbed. He let the robots serve breakfast and did not speak to Daneel. He said nothing, asked nothing, downed excellent coffee without tasting it.”  (The Naked Sun, 1956)

If Asimov is the most famous author, the most famous book has to be Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965). A space opera in the old Pulp style it is also filled with coffee drinkers. This surprised me as anyone who knows Dune knows that the spice mélange (worm poo) is central to the story. “…coffee with melange (a rich cinnamon odor from the spice wafted across the table)…” When Paul Atreides kills a Fremen warrior he inherits his wealth: “He returned his attention to Paul. “Usul, it’s our way that you’ve now the responsibility for Jamis’ woman here and for his two sons. His yali … his quarters, are yours. His coffee service is yours … and this, his woman.”

See how that coffee pot ranks in importance! We learn more:

“Paul’s coffee service, the fluted alloy of silver and jasmium that he had inherited from Jamis, rested on a low table to her right. She stared at it, thinking of how many hands had touched that metal. Chani had served Paul from it within the month.” A good Arrakian woman knows how much coffee means: “She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.”

Now these are just small servings of good Pulp brew. I am sure there are plenty more out there. Find a good book and pull up a chair, place your coffee close at hand… and enjoy finding the rest.

This piece was written for the Pulp Fiction Coffee House in Kelowna, British Columbia. Could you think of a better combo than great coffee, old Pulps and used books? When I go, bury my ashes under a stack of old Weird Tales.