Thicker Than Water

An expanded version appears on my blog, The Irresponsible Reader.
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I'd forgotten how quotable Ford can be in the time between Waterman novels. This description of a lifelong, um, acquaintance and current gun dealer probably beats the competition in this book (by a hair):

Junior Bailey couldn't have been more than a couple of Oreos short of three hundred pounds. A corpulent corpuscle in a hideous purple suit, he looked like a Cuban headwaiter who had been held hostage in a doughnut shop. Except for the rosebud lips, he bore little or no resemblance to his father.