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THE BREWSUAL SUSPECTS!

April 25, 2025

Daily Express

WE'RE ALL familiar with the stereotypes of crime fiction: the hard-bitten, increasingly world-weary detective searching for the bottle of something strong in the bottom drawer of their desk; or the haggard, haunted street cop sitting at the bar, staring at the bottom of an empty beer glass at the end of another exhausting shift.

Drinking to remember the ones they lost. Drinking to forget the things they've seen. Given what writers put their creations through death, murder and general mayhem it's no surprise some of them need a drink. From Inspector Maigret's frequent cafe stops for a beer or calvados in Georges Simenon's Paris-set series, to Philip Marlowe's gin gimlets (lime juice and gin) in The Long Goodbye, and John Connolly's PI Charlie Parker reaching for a bottle of Brooklyn Lager after another demonically difficult case.

In my new book, The Castle, retired Met officer Tom Jamieson raises a glass of Ballindalloch Speyside Single Malt to his serving colleagues, describing it to them as "the finest damn whisky in the world". It's an affectionate nod to the real place that inspired my fictional setting and to the real whisky distilled on the Ballindalloch Castle Estate.

Here are some of the other great fictional detectives... and their tipples of choice.

VERA STANHOPE

The creation of acclaimed novelist Anne Cleeves, the rumpled-of-appearance but remarkably sharp-of-mind Vera Stanhope made her literary debut in The Crow Trap (Pan Macmillan, 1999). One of crime fiction's most memorable characters inspired by a real-life neighbour of Cleeves's maternal grandmother - Vera has returned in 10 subsequent novels (the eleventh in the series, The Dark Wives, appeared in paperback in March this year) and has been immortalised on screen by Brenda Blethyn.

A DCI in the fictionalised Northumberland & City Police, Vera has a particular taste for whisky, and Highland Park would be her malt of choice.

WYNDHAM & BANERJEE

Speaking of whisky drinkers, Abir Mukherjee first introduced readers to Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee in A Rising Man (Vintage, 2016).