Bøger af Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block writes: "As a prelude to the process of republishing The Wife-Swappers, I Googled my way to a textual analysis of Andrew Shaw titles by Lynn Munroe, perhaps the leading scholar of Midcentury Erotica. He says of this particular novel, 'Perhaps the worst-written of the early Shaws (which is saying it's almost unreadable)...' "I'm not sure it's terribly wise of me to quote this observation as a way of introducing a book I'd presumably like you to buy. I have a feeling Lynn's judgment may have been a little harsh, but maybe not. "Regardless, the literary merit or lack thereof of The Wife-Swappers is not what I much feel like writing about. What struck me, and strikes me still, is the fundamental sexism of its title. It is, as you've almost certainly assumed, a book about a group of couples who expand their sexual horizons by systematically exchanging mates--but the titular phrase essentially takes it for granted that the men are the prime movers, and that they are swapping wives as they might trade any chattel or possession. "Like, say, baseball cards: 'I'll give you Carole Anne and Mickey Mantle for Suzie and Ted Williams, plus I'll throw in my Gene Woodling card, because your wife is H-O-T.' "We can't blame Andrew Shaw for the usage. It was how the whole phenomenon of ritualized consensual adultery entered the American language. In time, of course, 'mate swapping' was an acceptable alternative term, and as time passed and the pastime proved more enduring than a mere midcentury fad, 'swinging' entered the lexicon. Couples seeking out this form of recreational sex were swingers, living the swinging lifestyle. "But even in its earliest incarnation, with its undeniably sexist nomenclature, the practice got a lot of ink. It was to be expected that Andrew Shaw would seize upon it as a theme for a book, as all manner of media found excuses to offer up their reports. Like the preacher who spoke on sin--he was against it--most articles deplored the whole business, while including enough detail to keep their clientele reading. "Never mind. The Wife-Swappers was Andrew Shaw's fifth book for Nightstand, written in early 1960 and published that same year. The cover is by Harold W. McCauley, who provided original art for many of those early books; had I not sworn to reserve the word for Greek and Russian religious paintings, I might label his cover for Campus Tramp as 'iconic.' Few would award that designation to his cover for The Wife-Swappers--but it ain't bad. "And that's as much as I have to say about the book. As with most of the volumes in the Collection of Classic Erotica, all I want to do, really, is make it available--and hope you enjoy it."

Lawrence Block remembers: I stopped writing for Nightstand Books when I stopped being a Scott Meredith client in early 1964. Bill Hamling's publishing operation was a closed market, exclusive to the Meredith agency, so it was time for me to give up being Andrew Shaw. I had a wife, I had a mortgaged house in a Buffalo suburb, I had two young daughters-and I had no visible means of support. Well, one finds a way. I established two new writing selves, Jill Emerson and John Warren Wells. And I wrote a final Andrew Shaw type novel, though not as Andrew Shaw, as I recount in my memoir of my beginnings, A Writer Prepares: "A new publisher in Buffalo got in touch with me and wanted me to write a Nightstand-type book for him. If I ever knew who steered him in my direction, I've long since forgotten-nor do I remember the name of the fellow I dealt with, or if I ever knew it in the first place. We settled on a price of $500. I wrote one, turning it out as rapidly as I could type it, and I put a title on it, which I don't begin to recall, and a pen name, which I do. See, I looked down at the box of typing paper I'd used, and I chose the name Howard Bond. "Because neither of us had any reason to trust the other, we met downtown and I gave him the manuscript and he gave me the money. "I went home. A few days later I got a phone call from him. He thought the book I gave him was too short. Was I sure it was long enough? "I suspect it was in fact shorter than what I'd been in the habit of delivering to Hamling, but I certainly wasn't inclined to do anything about it. Just as Abraham Lincoln's legs were long enough to reach from his body to the ground, so was my manuscript long enough to reach from the first page to the last. "So I assured him it was the right length, and he may or may not have been convinced, but that was the last I ever heard from him. I never gave the book another thought, and when I recalled the incident years later I assumed his venture had come to nothing and the book had never been published. "When Terry Zobeck was working away at my bibliography, A Trawl Among the Shelves, I kept recalling books and stories and articles of mine that had slipped my mind, and reporting what I could recall; Terry, apparently indefatigable, would scour the internet until he came up with a copy of the new discovery, add it to his collection, and write it up for the bibliography. "Until finally Howard Bond's effort came to mind, and I wrote about it in the afterword I'd agreed to supply for ATATS. I rather doubted it had ever seen print, and even if it had, how could he possibly turn it up? I couldn't say what I'd called it, or what imprint the publisher might have devised for his venture. All I remembered was my pen name. "And that was evidently enough. Item A66 in A Trawl Among the Shelves reads like so: [Sex Takes a Holiday, 1964. Connoisseur Publications (FN 112); Cleveland, OH; ($0.75); 159 pp.; no statement of printing. As Howard Bond. (PBO; novel)] "Terry has a copy, and so do I. I've flipped through it, and while nothing I've read rings any kind of a bell, I can recognize it as my work. Will ego and avarice render me shameless enough to reissue the thing in my Collection of Classic Erotica?" Evidently...

Ah, yes. THE ADULTERATORS, the thrilling account of a couple of desperadoes whose violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act brought a nauseated nation to its knees, and-Oh, it's THE ADULTERERS? Oh. Well, never mind.THE ADULTERERS was my second effort for Bill Hamling's Nightstand Books. Like its predecessor, CAMPUS TRAMP, its cover was the work of Harold W. McCauley. I wrote the book in the fall of 1959, and it's not hard to find its beginning in my own life a little over a year earlier. In May of 1958 I left the employ of Scott Meredith and went home to Buffalo, where I wrote my first novel, STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE. Then, with my friend and Antioch roommate Steve Schwerner, I headed to Mexico to devote two months to rest and recreation before returning for another year at the college.We flew to Houston, hitchhiked to Laredo-and that last empty stretch of road from Freer to Laredo, where the book begins, bas not faded from memory. We were a long time waiting for a ride, and learned later it was because nobody wanted to pick up a hitchhiker on that stretch of highway; if you did and he put you out of the car, you'd die out there. Well, the guys who picked us up weren't worried. They were Tex-Mex gangsters in a block-long Caddy, and the car's welcome A/C was cool, but they were way cooler.THE ADULTERERS features George and Mona Sutton, a sexually incompatible couple on their way to a Mexican divorce. But they meet a helpful guide named Ernesto, and that changes everything. Now Steve and I had met an Ernesto of our own, and he was helpful enough to steer us to some pot, but this Ernesto took George to a live sex show, and it made an impression on the fellow. And, not too long afterward, Mona drank enough rum and Coca-Cola to float a light cruiser, and wound up as the sex slave of El Tigre, who might have been a narco-trafficker if the career category had existed back then.So it's a story of evolving depravity. And it's dedicated, you'll note, to Steve and Letitia. You already know who Steve is. Letitia was a young woman at work in one of the establishments we visited, and he became quite fond of her. But, you know, those summer romances never work out...

When I decided to reissue my early books in the Collection of Classic Erotica, I did so without realizing what I was getting myself into. I would have to read them again.Or, as in the case of BORN TO BE BAD, I'd have to read them for the first time.I remembered just three things about the book. (1) The title, BORN TO BE BAD. (My mother, on hearing about the novel, suggested that BORN TO BE BANGED might have been a superior choice.) (2) The name of the heroine, Rita Morales. (My mother, bless her heart, thought Rita Immorales might better suit the character.) (3) The circumstances of the writing-that it was the fall of 1958, that I had just returned to Antioch College after a gap year with a literary agency, that I wrote it on an office-model Remington typewriter in the office of the Antioch College Record, where I was serving as Managing Editor prior to assuming the full-time editorship the following semester, and that between the newspaper and the books I was writing, I was devoting precious little time to my classes. When I was supposed to be reading PARADISE LOST, by John Milton, and Roderick Random, by Tobias Smollett, I was instead writing BORN TO BE BAD, by Sheldon Lord.It was my third novel for Harry Shorten at Midwood Books, and you'd think I might have a clearer recollection of the circumstances of writing it, if not of the book itself. At the very least, I'd have expected to have a good number of Oh Yeah moments while reading it. "Oh yeah, I remember that character. Oh yeah, I remember that scene. Oh yeah, I remember cooking up that plot twist."Nope. It was all remarkably new to me-and I drew great comfort from the discovery that it was better than I'd expected. It's the story of the daughter of a Cuban prostitute from the slums of Miami who goes to New York, breaks into show business, moves from a Times Square hotel room to a Greenwich Village apartment, and takes aim at a life of middle-class respectability. She meets some unusual people and does some unusual things, and stuff happens. And you know what? It's not bad.Still, let's keep Rita's bildungsroman in perspective. She's no Becky Sharp, and BORN TO BE BAD's not on the same shelf as Vanity Fair. (Uh, that's be the novel, by William Makepeace Thackeray, not the magazine. But you knew that, right?)Never mind. I can but hope you enjoy BORN TO BE BAD as much in your first reading of it as I did just now, in mine. I should mention that the cover is by the great Paul Rader, who did so many outstanding covers for Midwood? The book sported a different cover in 1962, when Midwood reissued it with the title PUTA. Then, five years later, they trotted it out again with a third cover and its original title restored. So I guess they must have sold a few copies over the years, but I never got anything beyond the original $600 advance. But you know what? I'm okay with it.

FOUR LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS is the latest addition to the Classic Crime Library...after a short stay in the Collection of Classic EroticaBack in the late 1950s and early 60s, when I was finding myself as a writer and producing a great quantity of books under pen names, some of the books I wrote were as much crime fiction as they were erotica. Indeed, several of those titles by Andrew Shaw and Sheldon Lord have since been republished under my own name by Hard Case Crime and Subterranean Press-and subsequently astonished me by garnering respectful reviews. BORDERLINE, LUCKY AT CARDS, and A DIET OF TREACLE are examples, and so to a degree is my forthcoming Hard Case title, SINNER MAN. A little light editing made them acceptable crime fiction for a contemporary body of readers.FOUR LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS almost made the cut. After Charles Ardai at Hard Case considered it and ultimately decided against it, I decided to shoehorn it into the Collection of Classic Erotica, but reader reactions have since persuaded me that it's really more a crime novel. A dark, savage tale of an armed robbery gone wrong, It's a better fit in the Classic Crime Library.I did some light editing anyway, much of which consisted of reversing the helpful contributions of some unnamed editor at Nightstand Books. So here's FOUR LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS, available for the first time since its initial appearance in 1962. I can but hope you'll enjoy it

O Rose thou art sick.The invisible worm, That flies in the nightIn the howling storm: Has found out thy bedOf crimson joy: And his dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.Those eight lines constitute the complete text of "The Sick Rose," published by William Blake in SONGS OF EXPERIENCE in 1794. I took to Blake early on, and thought OF CRIMSON JOY would make a dandy title. I accordingly fastened it on this novel when I sent the manuscript to Harry Shorten at Midwood. Someone there changed the title to OF SHAME AND JOY, and while I was a tad annoyed at the time, I have to say they made the right call. OF SHAME AND JOY's not only a better title, it's a damn good one.I remember where and when I wrote the book, although I can't say I recall much of the writing, or indeed of the book itself. It would have been in the late summer or fall of 1959. I'd gone to New York in July, settling in at the Hotel Rio on West 47th Street, planning to stay there until it was time to return to Antioch College for my final year. What I soon learned was that I'd already had my final year at Antioch, at least as far as the school was concerned. I'd written CAMPUS TRAMP, my first book as Andrew Shaw just before they informed me of this decision, and then I went to work on something else, and a bad morning led me to pack a bag and move back to my parents' home at 422 Starin Avenue in Buffalo.("A bad morning." Is that unnecessarily cryptic? Think of the opening scene in AFTER THE FIRST DEATH, but without the dead hooker on the floor. That's the kind of morning it was, and it led me to conclude that New York Wasn't Working Out, and that maybe I'd do better back in Buffalo.)And, back in Buffalo, I set up my typewriter on the little maple desk on which I'd written STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE and CARLA, and resumed writing books for Harry Shorten at Midwood, -and for Bill Hamling at Nightstand, who'd liked CAMPUS TRAMP enough to want more. For the next eight months or so I wrote books on that desk. My routine was an interesting one; I'd join my mother at the kitchen table for a cup of coffee around midnight, then write all night, then have breakfast with my dad around seven-and then go to bed. It worked for me, and I found things to do with the rest of my time; notably, I bought a partnership in a coffeehouse, The Jazz Center, and began keeping company with the woman whose ill fortune it would be to become my first wife.And how did OF SHAME AND JOY fit into all this? Well, the Provincetown setting came from a two-day trip while I was living at the Rio. This girl whom I knew vaguely was going there, and I decided to join her. I remember we took a Greyhound bus, and that her name either was or wasn't Suzy. (But then that's true of almost everyone, isn't it?) We went to P'town, and she had friends there, and I didn't, and I wandered around for an evening and slept on somebody's couch and went back to New York by myself in the morning. I never saw Suzy again, so for all I know she's still there, though it strikes me as doubtful.OF SHAME AND JOY has never been republished since its appearance as a Midwood Book, and I'm glad to be able to bring it out again-not least of all for the opportunity to use the wonderful Paul Rader cover. Isn't it gorge

So you're unemployed, fresh off a construction crew in Albany, and standing on a Thruway ramp trying to thumb a ride, and a babe in a Cadillac convertible stops for you. Hey, these things happen.They never happened to me, but never mind. For you it's different. You're Mark Taggert and you've got the good sense to get in the car, and it changes your life.The girl's Elaine Rice, and she's gorgeous and sexy, and you wind up in her Park Avenue apartment, and you go to bed, and the chemistry is right, and there's only one problem. She's rich.Too rich for you to be comfortable living with her. You're totally lacking in ambition and quite happy drifting, going from town to town and menial job to menial job. It's a life and it's a living and that's enough for you. But if you're going to share Elaine's life, you have to make something of yourself.So you check out the want ads, and you let her buy you a wardrobe, and she fabricates a résumé for you, and you land a job. And you turn out to be remarkably good at it, but she's still got too much money, and you move out. And, you know, stuff happens...Pretty interesting set-up, innit? KEPT was the penultimate book Sheldon Lord wrote for Midwood-CANDY, #2 in the Collection of Classic Erotica, was the last-and it's a shame I stopped there. I understand why I did; I was starting to write crime novels, and didn't want to devote a disproportionate amount of my time to erotica, and Bill Hamling's line, Nightstand Books, was paying me significantly more per book than Harry Shorten at Midwood. Hello, Bill. G'bye, Harry.A pity, though, because Nightstand's artists never came close to the cover art Paul Rader was turning out for Midwood, and his cover for KEPT may be the best of the bunch.

The Criminal Defense Lawyer. Redefined.Martin H. Ehrengraf, dapper and diabolical, may be Lawrence Block's darkest creation. He's the defense attorney who never sees the inside of a courtroom, because all his clients are innocent--no matter how guilty they may seem. Some even believe themselves to be guilty: they remember pulling the trigger, or wiring the dynamite to their spouse's car, or holding the bloody blade. But things have a way of working out when Martin Ehrengraf is on the case. Evidence turns up, incriminating someone else. More murders occur, with the same M.O. And the gate of the jail cell opens, and the accused walks free.But be careful--hiring Martin Ehrengraf comes with a price. A high price, one that comes due even if he appears to have done nothing on your behalf. And you'd better be prepared to pay...Here at last are the complete exploits of Martin Ehrengraf: a dozen delicious tales of vice and villainy including one--''The Ehrengraf Fandango''--that is appearing for the first time anywhere. It's a twelve-course meal of sinister surprises, exquisitely prepared and served simmering hot by the greatest living master of mystery fiction.Says Publishers Weekly: "The clients of Mephistophelean DA Martin Ehrengraf are always innocent, even when they recall committing murder, as shown in this collection of 12 dark, twisted tales from MWA Grand Master Block (Catch and Release). The urbane lawyer charges only if clients are exonerated-and they always are, though his hand is seldom seen. Apparent crimes of passion prove to be serial killings in "The Ehrengraf Defense," which introduces the tie he wears to celebrate victories. Clients who try to renege on payment discover he's a dangerous ally whose sinister ingenuity works as effectively against as for them, as miserly Millard Ravenstock learns in "The Ehrengraf Settlement." In "The Ehrengraf Obligation," the attorney represents penniless poet William Telliford, whose work he admires, but when freedom diminishes William's creative output, the poet finds himself back in prison for murder. While Ehrengraf initially seems amoral, he follows his own code, far from socially sanctioned mores but sacred to him. Sophisticated, surprising, charming, and relentless, he's a compelling antihero."And Thomas Gaughan in Booklist adds: "Block's stellar career has given crime lovers a number of different protagonists: honor-bound PI Matt Scudder, gentleman thief Bernie Rhodenbarr, and Keller, the stamp-collecting hit man, to name just three. Defense attorney Martin Ehrengraf, though less known, is notably darker than Block's other main characters. Ehrengraf represents people in deep trouble with the law and facing damning evidence against them. He works on a contingency basis: his fee is earned only if his client is freed from jail. His fees are exorbitant and he rarely appears in court, but, somehow, when Ehrengraf takes a case, new evidence appears that exonerates his client. All but one of these 12 stories appeared in magazines, beginning in the late 1970s. Ehrengraf is the star of each, a dandy who oozes self-regard, a charming sociopath who will murder to free his client and collect his fee. He never really cops to his methods, except to icily hint at them should a client balk at paying."

Im sechzehnten Roman seiner preisgekrönten Matthew-Scudder-Serie hat sich Bestseller-Autor Lawrence Block in Sachen Spannungsaufbau und Figurenzeichnung wieder einmal selbst übertroffen. In Weiterführung des Erfolgs, den Der zweite Tod bei Kritikern wie Leserschaft hatte, führt Block seinen Helden Scudder - und den Leser - an den Rand des Abgrunds.Privatdetektiv und Ex-Polizist Scudder ist eine vielschichtige, auch in Echtzeit gealterte und gewachsene Persönlichkeit, die sich hier nicht nur der unausweichlichen Herausforderung der Sterblichkeit, sondern auch einem unerbittlichen, vor nichts zurückschreckenden Gegner stellen muss, der in seiner Eiseskälte und Durchtriebenheit die unvergesslichste Figur sein dürfte, die Block je geschaffen hat.In einem Gefängnis in Virginia wartet ein Mann auf seine Hinrichtung, doch entgegen der erdrückenden Beweislast behauptet er bis zuletzt, die drei brutalen Morde, derentwegen er zum Tode verurteilt worden ist, nicht begangen zu haben. Ein Psychologe, der vorgibt, an seine Unschuld zu glauben, besucht ihn in den Tagen vor der Vollstreckung des Urteils mehrere Male im Todestrakt und nimmt schließlich als Zuschauer sogar an der Hinrichtung teil. Anschließend kehrt der Psychologe nach New York City zurück, um sich dort einer anderen Aufgabe zu widmen.Währenddessen hat sich Scudder bereit erklärt, Nachforschungen über den geheimnisumwitterten Liebhaber einer Bekannten anzustellen, den diese über eine Partnerbörse im Internet kennengelernt hat. Das scheint ein relativ einfacher Auftrag zu sein. Zunächst. Doch als im persönlichen Umfeld Scudders immer mehr Morde passieren und er selbst ins Schussfeld gerät, wird klar, dass hier ein extrem gefährlicher Killer am Werk ist. Und dessen Hauptaugenmerk scheint Matt und Elaine Scudder zu gelten.Die Spannung ist atemberaubend, der Ausgang bis zum Schluss ungewiss. Eine Serie, die mit unzähligen Preisen überhäuft wurde - Edgar, Shamus, Philip Marlow, Maltese Falcon -, hat sich zu einem neuen Höhepunkt aufgeschwungen. Lawrence Block, der von der Crime Writers Association des United Kingdom für sein Lebenswerk mit dem Diamond Dagger ausgezeichnet worden ist, zeigt sich in diesem Buch in Höchstform.Audiofile MagazineMit einem Titel, der dem alten Folksong "Danny Boy" entnommen ist, zeigt sich Lawrence Blocks sechzehnter Roman mit Matt Scudder von seiner düstersten Seite. Als Scudder von einer Frau, die er von den Treffen der Anonymen Alkoholiker kennt, gebeten wird, diskrete Nachforschungen über ihren neuen Liebhaber anzustellen, muss er feststellen, dass er ins Visier eines extrem durchtriebenen Serienkillers geraten ist, der seine Vorgehensweise ständig ändert und keinerlei Hinweise auf seine Identität hinterlässt.

The Sins of the Fathers introduces Matthew Scudder, the New York ex-policeman now working as an unlicensed private detective. Recently brought to life on screen by Liam Neeson in A Walk Among the Tombstones, Scudder's debut finds him hired by the father of a free-spirited young woman murdered by her male roommate, who has since hanged himself in prison. At least that's what seems to be the case-but things are seldom as they seem in Scudder's world... Superbly translated by Ishan and Alka Shrivedi, both longtime fans of the Matthew Scudder series, this is the first Lawrence Block novel to appear in Hindi. Be on the lookout for subsequent volumes, as both the author and the translators are eager to continue. Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His most recent novels are THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; HIT ME, featuring philatelist and assassin Keller; and A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF, featuring Matthew Scudder, who will be played by Liam Neeson in the forthcoming film, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES. Several of his other books have also been filmed, although not terribly well. He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic TELLING LIES FOR FUN & PROFIT, and THE LIAR'S BIBLE. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (TILT!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note. Translators: Ishan Shrivedi: A graduate from National School of Drama, he is a film maker and a screenplay writer, based in Mumbai, India. Alka Shrivedi: A graduate from National School of Drama, she has appeared in many Hindi films and TV series for film makers like Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani.

Here's CHIP HARRISON-the second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES...How can a series predicated on the hero's sexual innocence survive past a second book? How can our Chip remain the same age forever? Simple, Block decided, and put our Lecher in the Wry to work for a private detective, the remarkable Leo Haig. Haig believes that Nero Wolfe really exists, and that if he distinguishes himself professionally he may one day be invited to dine at the Great Man's table. And Chip hires on as Haig's eyes and ears-if not his nose and throat. Haig's client in THE TOPLESS TULIP CAPER is Thelma Wolinsky, known to Leo Haig as a distinguished amateur breeder of tropical fish, and to the world as topless dancer Tulip Willing. It sounds like just the sort of case for Chip, doesn't it? You bet it does.

While my first visit to New York was with my father in 1948, it wasn't until the summer of 1956 that I actually lived in the city. I'd completed my first year at Antioch College and was to spend August through October in the mailroom at Pines Publications on East 40th Street. (They had a paperback line-Popular Library-and a string of magazines, ranging from surviving pulps like Ranch Romances to movie magazines and a Readers Digest imitation.) I'd arranged to room with two other Antiochians, Paul Grillo and Fred Anliot, and we spent the first week on the top floor at 147 W 14th, the second on the ground floor at 108 W 12th (that building's gone now), and then found a first-floor one-bedroom apartment at 54 Barrow Street, where we stayed through October before passing the place on to another Antioch contingent. It was a wonderful apartment in a perfect location, and for a while it was where the folksinger crowd assembled on Sunday evenings after the singing in Washington Square shut down for the night. (Then the crowd outgrew the space, and moved to somebody's loft on Spring Street.) It was in the kitchen at 54 Barrow Street that I wrote the first story I ever sold, published in Manhunt as You Can't Lose.A year later I was back in New York; I'd found an editorial job at a literary agency and liked it it enough to drop out of school to keep it. I shared an apartment at the Hotel Alexandria on West 103rd Street with Bob Aronson until the Army took him, at which time the hotel let me move to a single room a few floors below. While I lived on 103rd, I spent most of my time in the Village.By the fall of 1958 I was back at Antioch, more focused on writing than classwork. I'd begun selling magazine stories whileI was at the literary agency, and began writing novels once I'd left, and Harry Shorten was eager to publish them at his new venture, Midwood Tower Books. My third book for Harry, following CARLA and A STRANGE KIND OF LIVE, was 69 BARROW STREET.I'd had the idea of a novel set at a multiple dwelling-in this case, a Village brownstone-with the characters interacting and living their lives. One model for it would have been 79 PARK AVENUE, an early work of Harold Robbins, when A STONE FOR DANNY FISHER let the world take him seriously as a writer of American realistic fiction. (Then he wrote THE CARPETBAGGERS, and that was the end of that.) I decided-nudge nudge, wink wink-that 69 BARROW STREET would be an appropriately suggestive title.Jesus, 54 Barrow Street. Fred Alliot and Bob Aronson, both of whom I'd run into now and then over the years, are gone now. Paul Grillo and I lost touch with each other fifty-plus years ago...Years and years later, I found out that 69 PARK AVENUE had been Harold Robbins' original title. His publishers made him change it. My publishers had no such compunctions, and 69 BARROW STREET it was and shall remain. And now it's back in print, and graced once again by Paul Rader's magnificent cover art.

A NEW HAT.FOR A NEW HIT.Happily retired, living under a new name with his wife and daughter, Keller thought he was out of the murder-for-hire business. Until he got the call from his old employer, asking him to tackle the most unusual assignment of his career. The client's wife is having an affair, and Keller's been hired to get rid of her lover. But who is this mysterious lover? The husband doesn't know-he only knows that she has one, and he wants the man dead.It's an opportunity for Keller to try his hand at the private eye game, investigating the adulterous spouse. And yes, he does buy himself a new hat for the occasion, a fedora worthy of any film noir detective. But in this puzzling situation, with more than one potential lover in the picture and more than one potential solution, is Keller going to be a black hat or a white hat-or something in between...?One of MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block's greatest creations, Keller is the two-time Edgar Award-winning star of Hit Man, Hit List, Hit Parade, Hit and Run, and Hit Me. "Keller's Fedora" is the first new Keller story in more than three years.

Lawrence Block on GIRLS ON THE PROWL: "GIRLS ON THE PROWL was first published by Nightstand Books in 1961, with Andrew Shaw credited as author. Harold W. McCauley provided the cover art. The principal characters-one hesitates to characterize them as titular-are Saundra, Marilyn, and Joan. (Joan is the lesbian.)"A mere forty-three years later, THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL was first published by William Morrow in 2004, with Lawrence Block credited as author. Amy King provided the jacket design, Paul Oakley the jacket illustration, while the author photograph was the work of Athena Gassoumis. The eponymous burglar-no need to call him titular-is Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr, and he's aided and abetted by police officer Ray Kirschmann and dog groomer Carolyn Kaiser. (Carolyn is the lesbian.)"There is, as far as I can determine, no other connection whatsoever between GIRLS ON THE PROWL and THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL. No connection with THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (Rona Jaffe) or THE GROUP (MaryMcCarthy) either. Or PEYTON PLACE (Grace Metalious)."But, duh, I could be wrong..."#Here's a taste of GIRLS ON THE PROWL: THE CABDRIVER'S NAME was Rick Noscaasi. He was a short, stubby man with strong arms and bandy legs. He was on the wrong side of forty by a year or two and his hair was beginning to go.Rick Noscaasi did not mind the slowness of the evening any more than he minded the hectic aspect of the earlier rush hour. As far as he was concerned, he had the best shift of the three conventional shifts. Tips were heavy and traffic was well-nigh non-existent. But it also had its bad points-too many long hauls and too little turnover, and, most important of all, too much chance of a knife in the chest. The number of cabbies with knives in their chests was a little alarming, even to an easy-going guy like Noscaasi.So to hell with that. Noscaasi had two kids at home who were nuts enough to think he was the greatest thing since Captain Marvel, and a wife who was equally nuts, convinced that he was the finest lover since Valentino kicked off. And his wife, for that matter, was a pretty fine woman. She, too, was on the wrong side of forty, and this took a little of the shine out of her. But she was his wife and he loved her.Still, a man is only human. There were times when Rick Noscaasi saw the young girls with their big breasts, the young girls in their summer dresses and high heels, the young girls with the long legs and the blonde hair and the fresh faces. And, like any man with blood flowing in his veins and an aging wife back in the apartment in Parkchester, Noscaasi would think what it would be like with those girls...He was human.But he was a good man, in the full sense of the word, and thinking was as far as it ever went. Perhaps this is not so much a tribute to his husbandly qualities as it might be, for, to tell the absolute truth, Rick Noscaasi was not the type of man who too often had the temptations of the pleasures of the flesh thrust into his face. Women did not fawn over him. Girls did not run after him, begging for his attentions. He was not chased, and, to his credit, he did not chase. That's about it.Then there was this night in June.There he was, cruising north, when a girl hailed his cab.She was not an ordinary girl. This much should be obvious. If an ordinary girl hailed an ordinary taxicab on an ordinary June night in New York City, only a complete dolt would write a book about it. She was a pretty special girl...She leaned back lazily in the seat and spoke in a quiet, well-modulated voice."Central Park," she sai

Here's CHIP HARRISON-the second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES...How can a series predicated on the hero's sexual innocence survive past a second book? How can our Chip remain the same age forever? Simple, Block decided, and put our Lecher in the Wry to work for a private detective, the remarkable Leo Haig. Haig believes that Nero Wolfe really exists, and that if he distinguishes himself professionally he may one day be invited to dine at the Great Man's table. And Chip hires on as Haig's eyes and ears-if not his nose and throat. MAKE OUT WITH MURDER is at once a tightly plotted murder mystery, a Nero Wolfe pastiche, and a wildly funny and erotic romp featuring five beautiful sisters and some rare coins. Trust me, you'll love it.

"Bernie Rhodenbarr may be New York's most charming bookseller (by day) and its most skillful burglar (by night), but the modern world isn't kind to either of his vocations. How is a bookseller supposed to make ends meet in a world where Amazon will deliver any title right to your doorstep? And how is a burglar to ply his trade in a city filled with security cameras and unpickable electronic locks? The answer, as Bernie will discover in the pages of this wildly imaginative new novel--the twelfth in MWA Grandmaster Lawrence Block's acclaimed series, and the first in a nearly a decade--is that the world can sometimes change in the most unexpected ways"--

"The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder takes us back to the very beginning, long before the books began, and gives us our first glimpse of Scudder's childhood, his family tragedies, his upbringing--and a powerful new perspective on how he first got drawn to police work and how, eventually, painfully, he left it. Even longtime readers who think they know Scudder's story will be startled by how much they don't and powerfully moved as the aging Scudder reflects on his life from the vantage point of a man drawing ever nearer to the end."--

"Since the 1970s, Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning novels and short fiction featuring Matthew Scudder. Now, with both himself and his detective half a century older, the author found himself charged with writing a book about his protagonist. And he decided he wasn't the right person for the job. LB: "What was Matt's family like? How did he spend his childhood? What steered him toward the NYPD, and how did he get all the way from the Police Academy to a detective's gold shield? Who were the influences and what were the experiences that made him the man we've come to know? These were important questions. There were certainly stories to be told, but that didn't mean I was the person to tell them. If Matt Scudder was to have a memoir, he ought to write it himself." So Block passed on the assignment to his most enduring fictional character, and the result-The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder-is a remarkable document, at once a convincing Bildungsroman and the indispensable capstone of an outstanding series."--Provided by publisher.

"Suppose you're Bernie Rhodenbarr. You've got a dream job, running your own cozy secondhand bookstore, complete with Raffles, your caudally challenged cat. It's in Greenwich Village, and your best friend's dog grooming salon is two doors away, and the two of you lunch together and meet for drinks after work. And you've got another way to make a buck. Every once in a while you put your conscience on the shelf and let yourself into someone else's residence, and you leave with more than you came with. You're a burglar, and you know it's wrong, but you And you're good at it. You've got two ways to make a living, one larcenous, the other literary and legitimate, and you're good at both of them. Until the 21st Century pulls the rug out from under you. All of a sudden the streets of your city are so overpopulated with security cameras and closed-circuit TV that you have to lock yourself in the bathroom to have an undocumented moment. And locks, which used to provide the recreational pleasure of a moderately challenging crossword puzzle, have become genuinely pickproof."--

The newest novel in the long out-of-print Evan Tanner series finds the former thief and secret agent returning to the world after being on ice for 25 years. Tanner is about to embark on a new covert assignment that will take him to the exotic Far East, where mystery and menace are a way of life. A Mystery Guild selection.

The CIA, the FBI, the KGB, Interpol--not one of the world's premier intelligence organizations knows quite what to make of Evan Michael Tanner. Is he a spy, a mercenary, a footloose adventurer, or simply a screwball sucker for hopeless causes?(Actually he's a little bit of all of the above. Plus he never sleeps. Ever.)One thing's for sure: Tanner's a true romantic, which is why he can't refuse a distraught mother who begs him to rescue her lost, pure-as-driven-snow daughter. Phaedra Harrow (nee Deborah Horowitz) once shared Tanner's apartment but not his bed. And now the virginal beauty's been abducted by white slavers in the Afghan wilderness.Finding Phaedra will be difficult enough. Bringing her back alive and unmolested may be impossible. And first Tanner will have to swim the English Channel, survive trigger-happy Russian terrorists . . . and maybe pull off a timely assassination or two.

A collection of afterwords from New York Times bestselling author Lawrence Block, a Grand Masater of the Mystery Writers of America.In a career spanning more than fifty years, Lawrence Block has produced more than one hundred books, ranging in genre from hard-boiled detective stories to pseudonymous erotica. Collected here for the first time are more than forty-five afterwords from the works that made him a master of modern fiction.Each afterword is an insightful reflection on the experiences that have brought Block's fiction to life, from the lessons he learned as a reader at a literary agency to the unlikelyand semi-autobiographicalorigins of the acclaimed Matthew Scudder series. Witty and inspiring, Afterthoughts is a must-read for Block fans and mystery lovers alike.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's personal collection.

AT CARDS AND WITH WOMEN, BILL MAYNARD KNEW HOW TO CHEAT On the mend after getting run out of Chicago, professional cardsharp Bill Maynard is hungry for some action--but not nearly as hungry as Joyce Rogers, the tantalizing wife of Bill's latest mark. Together they hatch an ingenious scheme to get rid of her husband. But in life as in poker, the other player sometimes has an ace up his sleeve...

For years now Keller's had places to go and people to kill.But enough is enough. Just one more jobpaid in advanceand he's going to retire. Waiting in Des Moines for the client's go-ahead, Keller's picking out stamps for his collection at a shop in Urbandale when somebody guns down the charismatic governor of Ohio. Back at his motel, Keller sees the killer's face broadcast on TV. A face he's seen quite often. Every morning. In the mirror.Keller calls his associate Dot in White Plains, but there's no answer. He's stranded halfway across the country, and every cop in America has just seen his picture. His ID and credit cards are no longer good, and he just spent almost all of his cash on the stamps.Now what?

Before Lawrence Block was the author of bestselling novels featuring unforgettable characters such as hit man Keller, private investigator Matthew Scudder, burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and time traveler Evan Tanner, he was a walker. As a child he walked home from school, as a college student he walked until he was able to buy his first car, and, as an adult, he ran marathons until he discovered the sport of racewalking. Through the lens of his walking adventures?in 24-hour races, on a pilgrimage through Spain, and just about everywhere you can imagine?Block shares his heartwarming personal story about life's trials and tribulations, discomforts and successes, that truly lets readers walk a mile in the master of mystery's shoes.