# Guess the book **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2000, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004 "2000-11-06T21:03:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/201 "2000-12-09T00:34:40Z")
Yes. That is, I mean NO. Well, no takers, that is. Oh, but it is a good thread, do not let it die a miserable hungry death just yet. When the time comes, I promise, I will accompanyy it to the vet. and allow it to go to sleep peacefully. Hints! Dammit, we want (well, OK, need) hints. Otherwise this fun little thread will be rotting in its grave, alone, unloved, unwanted, (and who will look after its five small children, and starving puppies then, I ask you?) and all because of the terrible paucity of HINTS. And there will be nasty yukiness and maggots too, in this game, unless, of course, some hints should be forthcoming. Soon. Did I perhaps neglect to mention that a desirable time for hints would be soon? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/202 "2000-12-09T01:16:09Z")
Ohh I don’t want to be responsible for someone dying miserable and cold and hungry and dead. So… The book is sort of outdated by our standards- takes place in the fifties. Its by an author who writes suspense books. This book is a suspense book. The author has had a few of his books turned into movies; don’t know if this one was a movie once…This book **doesn’t** involve Satan… ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/203 "2000-12-09T01:39:53Z")
Zoggie – that quote is awful. Is the whole book like that? Now just wait – it’ll probably be a writer I like. Lawrence Sanders? ---
**Author:** ![Jekeira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc29f/32.png) [@Jekeira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jekeira)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/204 "2000-12-09T02:22:43Z")
There’s something John D. McDonald-like about it. Just for laughs, I’ll guess it’s one of the Travis McGee novels. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/205 "2000-12-09T03:02:42Z")
Auntie Pam! No! Don’t be so judgemental. Its a perfectly wonderful book. Sure-- not quite as great as his other books, i think, but its great. Its supposed to be like that…just read the whole thing once I reveal what it is. Or once someone guesses. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/206 "2000-12-09T03:14:10Z")
Well, it’s kinda gushy for noir, but maybe it’s noir. Dashiell Hammitt (sp?) ? A Sam Spade story? ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/207 "2000-12-09T03:21:33Z")
Sorry it’s taken me so long to post a new one, going through end-of-semester hell at the moment. This one seemed appropriate. Have fun. "Rest assured, it was no ordinary ale that they drank by the Ouse while in Westminster crowds thronged, guns fired and the Abbey bells pealed. For when the men of Gildsey jostled into the Pike and Eel and the Jolly Bargeman to be amongst the privileged first one thousand to receive their bottle gratis and to raise their glasses in decent good cheer to toast the King, they discovered that this patriotic liquor hurled them with astonishing rapidity through the normally gradual and containable stages of intoxication: pleasure, satisfaction, well-being, elation, light-headedness, hot-headedness, befuddlement, distraction, delirium, irascibility, pugnaciousness, imbalance, incapacity – all in the gamut of a single bottle. And if a second bottle was broached – Precise accounts of the events of that day are hard to track down. Partly because it was a day that Gildsey wished to forget; partly for the more pertinent reason that many of those who might have acted as reliable witnesses were, at the time, hopelessly drunk." ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/208 "2000-12-09T03:21:52Z")
None of those people. Hint: Two people involved in the making of a movie based on one of his other more well known books… Roman Polanksi… Mia Farrow… Any ideas at all? Finally i’ve come up with a stumper. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/209 "2000-12-09T04:48:58Z")
Legion? ---
**Author:** ![DynoSaur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DynoSaur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DynoSaur)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/210 "2000-12-09T05:48:48Z")
Zog…wild guess here author Ira Levin? Rosemary’s Baby? ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/211 "2000-12-09T05:53:33Z")
I feel like an idiot. And I call myself a horror fan. Mixing up The Exorcist (Friedkin & Blatty) with Rosemary (Levin & Polanski). Duh!! ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/212 "2000-12-09T07:38:08Z")
And if you are correct, Oh, please can we have an easier one next? :)Whinge, whine, self-pity, and further whinge. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/213 "2000-12-09T15:44:52Z")
**Fretful** – do we have t **know** this, or is cheating acceptable? (Cuz I actually bought this book, because it had a beautiful cover, but I didn’t like it at all.) ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/214 "2000-12-09T16:10:25Z")
Well, if you get the right answer, then you _do_ know it, right? Seeing as how I’d never even _heard_ of _The Third Policeman_ until I started reading the blurbs in my anthology of Irish short stories, I’d say anything is acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/215 "2000-12-09T16:20:59Z")
Okay, then – is it Waterland? Graham Swift ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/216 "2000-12-09T16:35:15Z")
Yes. Your turn! ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/217 "2000-12-09T16:53:02Z")
Cool! And thanks for letting me sort of butt in, late to the game and all. Okay, at least one Doper put this writer on their favorite author list: “See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.” ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/218 "2000-12-09T18:32:10Z")
Here’s a hint. It’s a western, but not Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey. This writer recently finished a series of three books, also set in the west, but in a different time period. He’s won some awards. ---
**Author:** ![lurkernomore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@lurkernomore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lurkernomore)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/219 "2000-12-09T19:26:58Z")
first guess on author then is McMurtry, but I don’t know his work well ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/220 "2000-12-09T19:56:11Z")
You have the **Mc** part right. McMurtry’s work isn’t nearly as dark as this guy’s stuff. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004.md?page=12)