by Miami Blues
Pastry for a nine-inch crust
1 cup seedless raisins, all chopped up
¼ cup soft butter
2 cups sugar (granulated)
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon allspice
4 eggs, large, separated
3 tablespoons 5 percent vinegar
1 pinch of salt
Cream the butter well with sugar. Add spices and blend well. Beat in yolks with a beater till smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped raisins with a wooden spoon. Beat egg whites with a dash of salt until they are soft, then slide onto sugar mixture. Cut and fold lightly but well. Turn into pastry-lined pan. Bake fifteen minutes in preheated 425°F. oven. Reduce heat to 300°F. and bake for twenty minutes longer, or until top is beautifully browned and center of filling is jellylike. Cool on a rack for two or three hours before cutting.
When Mrs. Mansfield was handed the prize by the judges (a $50 US Savings Bond), she said, “I never met a man yet that didn’t like my pie.”
ALSO BY CHARLES WILLEFORD
“A relentless crime-comedy, New Hope for the Dead is a must-read for any mystery fan.”
—Midwest Book Review
NEW HOPE FOR THE DEAD
Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley is called to a posh neighborhood to investigate a lethal overdose. There he meets the alluring stepmother of the decedent, and begins to wonder about dating a witness. Meanwhile, he has been threatened with suspension by his ambitious new chief unless he leaves his beloved, if squalid, suite at the El Dorado Hotel and moves downtown. With free housing hard to come by, Hoke is desperate to find a new place to live. His difficulties are only amplified by an assignment to reinvestigate fifty unsolved murders, the unexpected arrival of his two teenaged daughters, and a partner struggling with an unwanted pregnancy. With few options and even fewer dollars, he decides that the stepmother of the dead junkie might be the solution to all his problems.
Crime Fiction/1-4000-3249-0
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
Copyright © 1984 by Charles Willeford
Introduction copyright © 1996 by Elmore Leonard
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, New York, in 1984.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file
at the Library of Congress.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48821-3
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.0
