By Max Eastern

The classic noir detective is a drinker. Hard stuff usually, and lots of it. The world of crime and detectives is sordid and you tend to see the worst in humanity. The detective needs some kind of support, and a therapist just won’t do. That’s where whisky and vodka and rum come in.

And gin.

In Raymond Chandler’s 1953 noir mystery, The Long Goodbye, detective Philip Marlowe has something of what we would now call a bromance with an enigmatic Englishman named Terry Lennox. At Victor’s, a Los Angeles bar, Lennox is very particular about how he likes to drink his gin, and it isn’t in a martini:

We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor’s and drank gimlets. “They don’t know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Roses Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”

Later, when Lennox is long gone, Marlowe finds himself back in Victor’s with a lady named Linda Loring, drinking gimlets again:

The bartender set the drink in front of me. With the lime juice it has a sort of pale greenish yellowish misty look. I tasted it. It was both sweet and sharp at the same time.

All of this made me curious about where the drink came from. It seems the gimlet may have been invented by a 19th century British naval surgeon, Dr. Thomas Gimlette, to combat scurvy, the disease caused by a lack of vitamin C that plagued Royal Navy sailors. An allotment of gin was already being served to the men, but combining lime juice with it would provide the vitamin C. Rose’s Lime Juice was developed around the same time by a Scotsman from Edinburgh named Lachlan Rose as a means of preserving citrus fruit juice.

To see the status of the classic drink in the 21st century, I went on a gimlet tasting tour myself in Manhattan, a city with its own noir status.

The first stop was the Gin Parlour, inside the Intercontinental Hotel on East 48th between Park and Lexington. Just off the lobby, it has an old-school atmosphere where Marlowe himself would’ve been at home, listening to the Ella Fitzgerald score.

The gimlet itself was the classic, just as Terry Lennox demanded and just as Marlowe described it, though with maybe more gin and less lime juice. Edinburgh Cannonball Navy Strength Gin, which the bartender employed, is mixed with house-made lime cordial: sweet and sharp at the same time, crisp, perfect for spring. Navy strength, with the higher proof, provided a real buzz.

Second stop was the Flatiron Room on West 26th between Sixth and Broadway. Bottles of whisky and brandy and every conceivable booze stood behind the bar, lining the walls, in cabinets behind the booths, up to the ceiling, everywhere. Here, listening to live bluegrass at a wooden bar, I had a variation on the classic. Bulldog Gin with house-made blackberry juice and lime juice. It was a beautiful drink, not sweet, a subtle blackberry taste, but thick, and red like blood.

From there I headed down to the Lower East Side to Beauty & Essex, a hip gathering ground behind a door at the back of pawnshop on Essex Street between Stanton and Rivington. Diverging even further from the original gimlet, they call their drink the Emerald Gimlet because along with the Belvedere Vodka (not gin this time) and the lime juice, they add a squirt of basil.

The drink is a beauty to behold, and refreshing, and the pesto flavor gives it a nice, spicy kick. It went pretty well with a half dozen raw oysters.

To round out my departure from the classic, I ended up in Jewel Bako, an absolutely top-rated Japanese restaurant, one of the best in the city, specializing in sushi and sashimi. The Spring Moon cocktail offers fresh lime but it leaves out the gin and vodka altogether. Instead, it’s Sake with black currant cassis.

The drink is light, complex, refreshing, a slice of lime floating in the drink like a spring moon in a sunset. It’s also something that Philip Marlowe’s friend Terry Lennox would never have approved of, but so what? In the end, Lennox didn’t really treat Marlowe all that well anyway.

Max Eastern is the author of The Gods Who Walk Among Us, a modern noir thriller set in New York City. For more information, go here.