Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle. Jeffrey Round

dark and stormy the world outside. When Dan asked why he wanted to sit there drinking alone, his father replied with all the silence in the world. It was what he did best, after all.

      Now Dan picked up his glass and took a sip. He had a few more to go before he caught up to the old man.

      Even for alcoholics there is a hierarchy of drunkenness: drink, drank, drunk, and drunkard. The tag on the liquor doesn’t count for much. You don’t get there any faster on expensive cognac than on cheap red wine, or even dollar-store cologne if you have the stomach for it, though the first goes down a bit nicer. Put a smelly aquarium in the corner, fill it with bloated carp, and the crowd appeal goes up for some reason known only to God and His Angels. Something to look at other than the waitress’s titties and the busboy’s bottom, maybe.

      It was as if there were two worlds, one for the perfect, privileged people in film and on television, and another for the rest of us who are neither perfect nor privileged enough to matter. But it was when you crossed over the River Merry into the Land of Shame that you knew you’d taken a very wrong turn. Especially if you couldn’t remember how you got there and forgot to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to plot your way back again. Drinking itself wasn’t the problem. The problem, Dan knew, lay in the degree that it took hold of your life and ran you about without your knowing.