Книги автора Block Lawrence

Pulp fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America: Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a beginning, an end, economically-etched characters, but plenty going on, both in terms of action and emotions. Pulp magazines were the TV of their day, plucking readers from drab lives and planting them firmly in thrilling make-believe, successors...

The best-selling mystery writer Lawrence Block proves his point with the twenty outstanding stories he has chosen for this volume. For fans of the traditional mystery, there’s T. Jefferson Parker’s “Easy Street,” in which a brother’s visit uncovers family secrets. In Jeremiah Healy’s “A Book of Kells,” a detective draws on his Irish heritage to solve a crime. And in Clark Howard’s “Under Suspicion,” a detective’s investigation of the murder of his best friend’s daughter hits too close to home.

However, many of the stories are concerned more with the personalities and motives surrounding the crime than with the crime itself. In Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Girl with the Blackened Eye,” we see a crime from the young victim’s point of view. Jennifer Anderson’s “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster” examines the hardships one rookie cop endures while solving her first crime. And in Thomas Lynch’s “Blood Sport,” a young mortician faces the gruesome job of preparing a murdered friend for her funeral.

As Block says: “Three things struck me about the stories in this year’s collection — their range, their variety, and their exceptionally high quality. Crime fiction has always been a broad and inclusive field, but these stories epitomize its breadth, running from the literary to the retro-pulp. The field has always showcased new talent, and a full two thirds of this year’s winners are by writers previously unknown to me. I’ve been reading short crime for half a century, and writing it for almost that long, and I’m still blown away by how very fine these stories are.”

What does it mean to be a father?

What does it mean to be a son?

What does it mean to be a man?

In Men From Boys seventeen masters of crime fiction answer these questions in a multitude of ways. Here are worlds that are instantly recognisable and believable, yet set widely apart. From a deprived London housing estate to the trenches of the First World War, from the claustrophobic confines of a late-night back room poker game to a rundown jazz joint in Manhattan, the writers address just what it means to be a man.

The characters who inhabit these stories strive to determine what is right, what will give them dignity, what will earn them self-respect. Some succeed, some fail: little is perfect.

Gathered together in this anthology are some of the very best names in contemporary crime writing, introduced and edited by John Harvey.

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves.

In depths of despair, the beautiful, lonely Madeline contemplates suicide. She gently strokes an ugly revolver, the sole legacy of an alcoholic father. Holding the barrel to her temple, she pulls the trigger. There is only the click of the hammer on an empty chamber.

The failure of the weapon brings on a rush of joy, and renewed hope for her future. She throws down the gun — and it explodes with deadly fury. The bullet strikes an innocent young woman passing in the street outside, who in the next moment dies in Madeline’s arms.

So begins Into the Night, the quintessential Cornell Woolrich novel, never before published. Although Woolrich worked on it for years, this tale of hatred and passion, of love and suspense, remained unfinished at the time of his death. This undiscovered masterpiece has been completed by Lawrence Block — one of today’s most distinguished mystery writers — to create a work which will stand beside Woolrich’s Rear Window, Phantom Lady, and The Bride Wore Black.

In this volume, guest editor Sue Grafton and series editor Otto Penzler offer up their choices for the best suspense, crime, and mystery stories of the year. Included in these thrilling tales is Scott Bartels’s dark and violent “Swear Not by the Moon,” in which a drug-addicted Creole is caught between good intentions and bad decisions. In Janice Law’s haunting “Secrets,” an Irish immigrant mother and daughter are faced with unexpected cruelties as they try to make a new life for themselves. And in Lawrence Block’s clever Edgar Award-winning story “Keller on the Spot,” a contract killer uncharacteristically saves a life and finds his assignment becoming increasingly complicated.

The diverse styles and themes employed in this collection showcase an impressive array of talent certain to further the popularity of the genre. Already a bestseller in its first year, The Best American Mystery Stories, as evidenced by this year’s edition, promises to keep readers intrigued and coming back for more.

The author of dozens of acclaimed novels including those in the Scudder and Keller series, Lawrence Block has long been recognized as one of the premier crime writers of our time. Now, the breathtaking skill, power, and versatility of this Grand Master are brilliantly displayed once again in a mesmerizing new thriller set on the streets of the city he knows and loves so well.

That was the thing about New York — —if you loved it, if it worked for you, it ruined you for anyplace else in the world.

In this dazzlingly constructed novel, Lawrence Block reveals the secret at the heart of the Big Apple. His glorious metropolis is really a small town, filled with men and women from all walks of life whose aspirations, fears, disappointments, and triumphs are interconnected by bonds as unbreakable as they are unseen. Pulsating with the lives of its denizens — bartenders and hookers, power brokers and politicos, cops and secretaries, editors and dreamers — the city inspires a passion that is universal yet unique in each of its eight million inhabitants, including:

John Blair Creighton, a writer on the verge of a breakthrough;

Francis Buckram, a charismatic ex–police commissioner — and the inside choice for the next mayor — on the verge of a breakdown;

Susan Pomerance, a beautiful, sophisticated folk-art dealer plumbing the depths of her own fierce sexuality;

Maury Winters, a defense attorney who prefers murder trials because there’s one less witness;

Jerry Pankow, an ex-addict who has turned being clean into a living, mopping up after New York’s nightlife;

And, in the shadows of a city reeling from tragedy, an unlikely killing machine who wages a one-man war against them all.

Infused with the raw cadence, stark beauty, and relentless pace of New York City, Small Town is a tour de force Block fans old and new will celebrate.

Por orden médica, Matt Scudder acaba de dejar el alcohol, pero mantenerse sobrio parece más difícil que mantenerse con vida, incluso en una ciudad como Nueva York. Una mole que, como Scudder sabe muy bien, puede aplastar a cualquiera. A pesar de su juventud, Kim también lo sabía, y por so había intentado escapar. Seguro que no merecía la vida de prostituta que el destino le había concedido, y sin duda no merecía la muerte que le tocó, y que Scudder no pudo evitarle. Para redimirse, el ex policía tendrá que encontrar a quien ha convertido a la chica en papilla, y para ello, arriesgar lo que aún queda de sí mismo. Esta novela le valió a Lawrence Block el premio Edgar, y marca un hito en la vida de su gran personaje, Matthew Scudder.

“A Chance to Get Even” is a story about a poker game. A friendly game-or at least that's how it starts out. I played in a friendly game for years, and still take a hand now and then, but the evenings I spent at the card table never turned out like this.

And that's probably just as well.

Amazon.com Review

Matt Scudder, the recovering alcoholic private eye from The Devil Knows You're Dead and A Ticket to the Boneyard, embarks on another descent into the nightmarish quarters of New York, this time to investigate the sex-for-sale industry. Hired by the brother of an heiress to investigate her rape and murder, Scudder tails her husband to a boxing match and notices another man whom he saw on video a few months earlier on a different case involving a snuff film. As Scudder calls on old friends for assistance and tours New York's dark physical and social landscapes, Block masterfully builds the pressure that leads Scudder to the violent resolution in this winner of the 1992 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.

From Publishers Weekly

Block masterfully builds the pressure in this Edgar Award winner, as newly sober Manhattan PI Matt Scudder investigates the death of a TV producer's wife.

From Publishers Weekly

The newest Matt Scudder novel by the blessedly prolific Block is right up to his usual standards. It takes a while to set up the situation (someone in an exclusive male dinner club that meets once a year is killing off the members at an alarming rate), but once it's established, Matt gets his man by his usual patient attention to detail and sheer doggedness. He almost misses him, however (giving rise to a matchless last line), and the punishment meted out to the villain is a highly unusual variant on the kind Scudder thinks up when the law, as sometimes happens, is helpless to act. His ex-call girl companion, Elaine, is her usual comforting self, and there's a brilliant portrait of an offbeat New York lawyer, obviously modeled on William Kunstler, who specializes in representing the underdog. The scene where the lawyer and suspicious ex-cop Scudder get to know and like each other is alone worth the price of the book. Those who become impatient with Scudder's determined pursuit of AA meetings-and it's possible to do so-should note his publisher's assertion that he now has a strong following not only among mystery buffs but also in "the recovery community."

It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why-before the police do.

Lawrence Block weaves his spell in this suspenseful taleof a man haunted by murders he hopes he hasn¹tcommitted… It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why? before the police do.

The first Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery. Introducing Bernie Rhodenbarr, N.Y.C.'s prince of thieves – who really should have known better! When the mysterious pear shaped man with a lot of uncomfortably accurate information about Bernie and his career offered him five big ones to liberate a blue leather box – unopened – from an East Side apartment, it would have been a good time to plead a previous engagement…but times were tough. Everything was straightforward – the box was where it should have been but before the liberation took place, two men in blue coats turned up. Still all was not lost, there was always a way to work things out…that was before they discovered the body in the bedroom and Bernie decided to leg it.

The devilish Chip Harrison — young, broke, and girlless — stumbles on a discarded bus ticket and finds himself in South Carolina, where he becomes the local sheriff's protege and falls in love with a preacher's daughter.

Matt Scudder fue policía de Nueva York. Ahora es un detective sin licencia que saca las castañas del fuego a sus amigos. Se divorció de su mujer, y ahora vive en un modesto hotel del West Side. Pero su verdadero hogar se encuentra en cualquiera de los bares de su zona, la clientela habitual forma su familia. Corre el verano de 1975, y Matt anda comprometido con varios favores a amigos. En primer lugar, debe salvar de sospechas a Tommie Tillary, un hombre de negocios de ropas estridentes cuya mujer ha sido asesinada. Matt Scudder no dejará de beber ni un instante, pero se mantendrá lo suficientemente lúcido como para encontrar la solución, hallando la inspiración en el fondo de la botella.

It was a perfect setting for a honeymoon — a charming little cabin in the isolated Pennsylvania woods. It should have been the perfect beginning to a long and happy marriage. Then five shots rang out in the quiet woods and shattered Dave and Jill Wade’s perfect honeymoon. Terror had come crashing through their cabin door, snuffing out all thoughts of love. Now all that Dave and Jill Wade felt was haste — hate and the overwhelming desire for revenge.

Dolly, as you’ll see, is a person who finds it hard to let go of those things she holds dear...

Nobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it also — and she wanted out. Maybe Kim didn't deserve the life fate had dealt her. She surely didn't deserve her death. The alcoholic ex-cop turned p.i. was supposed to protect her, but someone slashed her to ribbons on a crumbling New York City waterfront pier. Now finding Kim's killer will be Scudder's penance. But there are lethal secrets hiding in the slain hooker's past that are far dirtier than her trade. And there are many ways of dying in this cruel and dangerous town — some quick and brutal… and some agonizingly slow.

Lawrence Block's novels win awards, grace bestseller lists, and get made into films. His short fiction is every bit as outstanding, and this complete collection of his short stories establishes the extraordinary skill, power, and versatility of this contemporary Grand Master.

Block's beloved series characters are on hand, including ex-cop Matt Scudder, bookselling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and the disarming duo of Chip Harrison and Leo Haig. Here, too, are Keller, the wistful hit man, and the natty attorney Martin Ehrengraf, who takes criminal cases on a contingency basis and whose clients always turn out to be innocent.

Keeping them company are dozens of other refugees from Block's dazzling imagination — all caught up in more ingenious plots than you can shake a blunt instrument at.

Half a dozen of Block's stories have been shortlisted for the Edgar Award, and three have won it outright. Other stories have been read aloud on BBC Radio, dramatized on American and British television, and adapted for the stage and screen. All the tales in Block's three previous collections are here, along with two dozen new stories. Some will keep you on the edge of the chair. Others will make you roll on the floor laughing. And more than a few of them will give you something to think about. Enough Rope is an essential volume for Lawrence Block fans, and a dazzling introduction for others to the wonderful world of... Block magic!

New York’s a tough town. Hard to impress. Shrugs off hype, casts a cold eye on glitz. But once in a blue moon a killer with street smarts and a sense of theater will reach out and take the city by the throat. Maybe he’ll write letters to a popular tabloid columnist, proclaiming himself the answer to a failed criminal justice system. Maybe he’ll point a finger at the kind of villain the law can’t touch. A child killer who got off on a technicality, say. A top mobster with decades of blood on his hands. A rabble-rouser who incites others to murder. Maybe he’ll sign himself “Will,” as in “The Will of the People.” Then suppose he takes aim at a respectable lawyer, a defense attorney with a roster of unpopular clients. Suppose the lawyer’s a friend of Matt Scudder. Scudder is New York to the bone. He’s as tough as the big town itself, as hard to impress. And now he’s up against the self-styled Will of the People in a city with eight million ways to die, a city where not just the good guys but even the wicked get worse than they deserve.

Matthew Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. He's sober, he's married, and the state just gave him a private investigator's license. He's growing older, and he's even getting respectable. Then Scudder signs on to help his closest and most unlikely friend, the larger-than-life Hell's Kitchen hoodlum Mick Ballou. And all hell breaks loose. Scudder finds out he's not so respectable after all. He learns the spruced-up sidewalks of New York are as mean as they ever were, dark and gritty and stained with blood. And he discovers he's living in a world where the past is a minefield, the present is a war zone, and the future's an open question.

SO THIS GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR…

…and when she walks out there's a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better. On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She's been doing this for a while, and she's good at it.

And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her. She starts writing down names. And now she's a girl with a mission. Picking up their trails. Hunting them down. Crossing them off her list…

Keller’s a hit man. For years now he’s had places to go and people to kill.

But enough is enough. He’s got money in the bank and just one last job standing between him and retirement. So he carries it out with his usual professionalism, and he heads home, and guess what?

One more job. Paid in advance, so what’s he going to do? Give the money back? In Des Moines, Keller stalks his designated target and waits for the client to give him the go-ahead. And one fine morning he’s picking out stamps for his collection (Sweden 1–5, the official reprints) at a shop in Urbandale when somebody guns down the charismatic governor of Ohio.

Back at his motel, Keller’s watching TV when they show the killer’s face. And there’s something all too familiar about that face…

Keller calls his associate Dot in White Plains, but there is no answer. He’s stranded halfway across the country, every cop in America’s 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?

Keller is a regular guy, a solid citizen. He goes to the movies, watches the tube, browses the art galleries, and works diligently on his stamp collection. But every now and then a call from the breezily efficient Dot sends him off to kill a total stranger. He takes a plane, rents a car, finds a hotel room, and gets back before the body is cold.

He's a real pro, cool and dispassionate and very good at what he does. Until one day when Dot breaks her own rule and books him for a hit in New York, his home base. She sends him to an art gallery opening, and the girl he gets lucky with steers him to an astrologer.

Then the jobs start to go wrong. Targets die before he can draw a bead on them. The realization is slow in coming, but there's no getting around it: Somebody out there is trying to hit the hit man. Keller, God help him has found his way onto somebody else's hit list.

Amazon.com Review

A man known only as Keller is thinking about Samuel Johnson's famous quote that "'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'… If you looked at it objectively, he had to admit, then he was probably a scoundrel himself. He didn't feel much like a scoundrel. He felt like your basic New York single guy, living alone, eating out or bringing home takeout, schlepping his wash to the Laundromat, doing the Times crossword with his morning coffee… There were eight million stories in the naked city, most of them not very interesting, and his was one of them. Except that every once in a while he got a phone call from a man in White Plains. And packed a bag and caught a plane and killed somebody. Hard to argue the point. Man behaves like that, he's a scoundrel. Case closed." But Lawrence Block is such a delightfully subtle writer, one of the true masters of the mystery genre, that the case is far from closed. In this beautifully linked collection of short stories, we gradually put together such a complete picture of Keller that we don't so much forgive him his occupation as consider it just one more part of his humanity. After watching Keller take on cases that baffle and anger him into actions that fellow members of his hit-man union might well call unprofessional, we're eager to join him as he goes through a spectacularly unsuccessful analysis and gets fooled by a devious intelligence agent. We miss the dog he acquires and loses, along with its attractive walker. Like Richard Stark's Parker, Keller makes us think the unthinkable about criminals: that they might be the guys next door-or even us, under different pressures.

A man named Nicholas Edwards lives in New Orleans renovating houses, doing honest work and making decent money at it. Between his family and his stamp collection, all his spare time is happily accounted for. Sometimes it's hard to remember that he used to kill people for a living.

But when the nation's economy tanks, taking the construction business with it, all it takes is one phone call to drag him back into the game. It may say Nicholas Edwards on his driver's license and credit cards, but he's back to being the man he always was: Keller.

Keller's work takes him to New York, the former home he hasn't dared revisit, where his target is the abbot of a midtown monastery. Another call puts him on a West Indies cruise, with several interesting fellow passengers-the government witness, the incandescent young woman keeping the witness company, and, sharing Keller's cabin, his wife, Julia. But the high drama comes in Cheyenne, where a recent widow is looking to sell her husband's stamp collection...

In HIT ME, legendary Edgar Grandmaster andNew York Timesbestselling author Lawrence Block returns to one of his most beloved characters. Welcome back, Keller. You've been missed.

The New York Times bestselling author and master of the modern mystery returns with a fierce and poignant new novel featuring his acclaimed killer-for-hire, Keller

John Keller is everyone's favorite hit man: a new kind of hero for a new, uncertain age. He's cool. Reliable. A real pro: the hit man's hit man. The inconvenient wife, the aging sports star, the business partner, the retiree with a substantial legacy. He's taken care of them all, quietly and efficiently.

Keller's got a code of honor, though he'd never call it that. And he keeps the job strictly business. "What happens is you wind up thinking of each subject not as a person to be killed but as a problem to be solved. Now there are guys doing this who cope with it by making it personal. They find a reason to hate the guy they have to kill. I don't know what's a sin and what isn't, or if one person deserves to go on living and another deserves to have his life ended. Sometimes I think about stuff like that, but as far as working it all out in my mind, well, I never seem to get anywhere."

But while Keller might be a pragmatic and crack assassin, he's also prone to doubts and loneliness just like everybody else. There was a psychotherapist once. A dog. Even a woman. And though he's got Dot, his wisecracking contact and sometimes confidante, and his precious stamp collection, these days, it doesn't seem to be enough.

Keller's been at this business a long while. Just maybe it's time to pack it in and find a nice little house in the desert. Only problem is, retirement takes money. And to get money, he's got to go to work…

Hit Parade, the third novel featuring the fascinating Keller, displays the hallmarks that distinguish Lawrence Block's award-winning fiction: the intelligence, the clever plotting, the humor, the tricky twists and ironic turns, the darkness and emotional complexity – and, above all else, the humanity.

Unlicensed PI Matthew Scudder returns after a three-year absence to investigate the murder of a wealthy couple savagely slain in their Manhattan townhouse. Matt's now 62, and his age shows in this relatively sedate outing. There's less violence than in many cases past, and the urban melancholy that pervaded his earlier tales has dissipated, replaced by a mature reckoning with the unending cycle of life and death. The mystery elements are strong. To the cops, the case is open-and-shut: the perps have been found dead, murder/suicide, in Brooklyn, with loot from the townhouse in their possession. Matt enters the scene when his assistant, TJ, introduces him to the cousin of the dead couple's daughter; the cousin suspects the daughter of having engineered the killings for the inheritance. At loose ends, Matt digs in, quickly rejecting the daughter as a suspect but uncovering evidence pointing to a mastermind behind the murders. Block sounds numerous obligatory notes from Scudder tales past the AA meetings, the tithing of Matt's income, cameo appearances by Matt's love interest, Elaine, and his friend, Irish mobster Mick Ballou and he adds texture with some familial drama involving Matt's sons and ex-wife. His prose is as smooth as aged whiskey, as always, and the story flows across its pages. It lacks the visceral edge and heightened emotion of many previous Scudders, however, and the ending seems patly aimed at a sequel. This is a solid mystery, a fine Block, but less than exceptional. (Nov.)Forecast: All Blocks sell and Scudder's return will do particularly well, especially with the attendant major ad/promo, including a 17-city author tour.

This anthology was edited by Michael Connelly. His essay is called "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary."

A collection of stories by thriller master Edgar Allan Poe with essays by beloved and bestselling writers, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth. Authors involved include Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Nelson DeMille, Tess Gerritsen, Sue Grafton, Stephen King, Lisa Scottoline, Laura Lippman, and twelve others.

***

Few have crafted stories as haunting as those by Edgar Allan Poe. Collected here to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth are sixteen of his best tales accompanied by twenty essays from beloved authors, including T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, and Joseph Wambaugh, among others, on how Poe has changed their life and work.

Michael Connelly recounts the inspiration he drew from Poe's poetry while researching one of his books. Stephen King reflects on Poe's insight into humanity's dark side in "The Genius of 'The Tell-Tale Heart.'" Jan Burke recalls her childhood terror during late-night reading sessions. Tess Gerritsen, Nelson DeMille, and others remember the classic B-movie adaptations of Poe's tales. And in "The Thief," Laurie R. King complains about how Poe stole all the good ideas… or maybe he just thought of them first.

Powerful and timeless, In the Shadow of the Master is a celebration of one of the greatest literary minds of all time.

The Mystery Writers of America, founded in 1945, is the foremost organization for mystery writers and other professionals dedicated to the field of crime writing.

The sharpest, most stylized, and ambitious anthology of Native American literature ever published. Readers enter into a welter of troubled history throughout the Americans where the heritage of violence meets the ferocity of intent.

When you’ve already got blood on your hands, what’s a little more?

Turner needs to start a new life and that means he needs cash… fast. So the twenty thousand he’s offered for a job sounds pretty good, even if it means killing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. And he’s not alone. There are four other men—killers, idealists, mercenaries—all with the same target. Can they band together to overthrow Castro and get Turner his chance at a new life?

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from his personal collection, and a new afterword written by the author.

Rockstar Games has partnered with Mulholland Books to publish a collection of short fiction expanding the world of the newest groundbreaking achievement in storytelling: the interactive crime thriller L.A. Noire.

1940s Hollywood, murder, deception and mystery take center stage as readers reintroduce themselves to characters seen in L.A. Noire. Explore the lives of actresses desperate for the Hollywood spotlight; heroes turned defeated men; and classic Noir villains. Readers will come across not only familiar faces, but familiar cases from the game that take on a new spin to tell the tales of emotionally torn protagonists, depraved schemers and their ill-fated victims.

With original short fiction by Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Duane Swierczynski and Andrew Vachss, L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories breathes new life into a time-honored American tradition, in an exciting anthology that will appeal to fans of suspense and gamers everywhere.

Una joven prostituta aparece asesinada en un apartamento de Greenwich Village. El principal sospechoso acaba de suicidarse en la cárcel. La policía de Nueva York ha cerrado el caso, pero el padre de la víctima quiere reabrirlo. Y nadie mejor que Matthew Scudder para buscar respuestas en un entorno sórdido de perversión y placeres… Un mundo donde los hijos se ven abocados a morir para expiar los pecados más secretos de sus padres.

La novela negra norteamericana tiene tres grandes autores: los clásicos son Dashiell Hammett y Raymond Chandler. El tercero se llama Lawrence Block.

Brand-new stories by: Jeffery Deaver, Lawrence Block, Charles Ardai, Carol Lea Benjamin, Thomas H. Cook, Jim Fusilli, Robert Knightly, John Lutz, Liz Martínez, Maan Meyers, Martin Meyers, S.J. Rozan, Justin Scott, C.J. Sullivan, and Xu Xi.

Following the commercial success of the original Manhattan Noir, mystery titan Lawrence Block explores the historic literary roots of this dark island.

Featuring stories by: Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Susan Isaacs.

A walk on the wild side! In this series of collections of gritty Noir and Hardboiled stories, you’ll find some of the best writers of the craft writing in their prime.

It’s a jungle out there. Literally. At least for Evan Tanner, eternally sleepless sometime superspy, who finds himself in Africa on the trail of the AWOL ruler of tiny Modonoland. It seems the petty despot’s gone missing, and he’s taken the state treasury along with him. No stranger to impossible missions and international peril, Tanner’s been in over his head before. This time, however, he’s in imminent danger of being buried alive. And it all has to do with the CIA, white supremacists, moderate revolutionaries… and a blond jungle bombshell named (no joke!) Sheena. Tanner’s always been a sucker for a pretty face and a curvaceous body, especially one that’s wrapped in leopard skin. But this red hot renegade daughter of a local missionary is a man-eater. Which means this time Tanner’s goose is well and truly cooked.

You’ve seen the headlines. On the court they brawl with opponents, fight with fans, and attack their own coach. Off the court they get drunk, grope women, and, sometimes, get tried for murder. Now these all-star bad boys from the ranks of today’s pro basketball provide easy layup material for the fictional imaginations of our finest contemporary mystery writers. Refereed by prizewinning editor Otto Penzler, this anthology collects fourteen dazzling, original tales of buzzer-beating suspense and postgame mayhem.

In “Keller’s Double Dribble,” Lawrence Block tails a clueless hitman with courtside tickets to unplanned bloodshed… Jeffery Deaver’s power guard summons his formidable game instincts to thwart a pack of scammers in “Nothing but Net”… a flagrant foul and a cruel betrayal send a star player crashing in Mike Lupica’s “Mrs. Cash”… George Pelecanos’s “String Music” traces the dangerous escalation of a playground beef… and in “Galahad, Inc.,” by Joan H. Parker and Robert B. Parker, a college prodigy seeks unlikely defensive help against a sorority party sex rap.

Other literary slam-dunk tales ask just how hard a former Olympic medalist will fight to get back his old glory… what hustle will win you the dunk-or-die prison matchup… and why the pride of the Knicks will never live to see the playoffs. You’ll find all the answers inside these pages from acclaimed storytellers Sue DeNymme, Brendan DuBois, Parnell Hall, Laurie R. King, Michael Malone, R. D. Rosen, S. J. Rozan, Justin Scott, and Stephen Solomita. There’s the whistle. Here’s the tip-off. Let these great clutch shot-makers put you in the zone.

An anthology of stories edited by Otto Penzler

This is a collection of 12 original stories by such crime writers as Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, Thomas H. Cook, Eric Lustbader, Philip Margolin, David Morrell, Joyce Carol Oates and Peter Straub.

Hoping to win over the beautiful Francine, Chip Harrison is astonished when an attempt is made on his life, an event that places him at the forefront of a fast-paced investigation.

You think you’ve got problems?

Well, how would you like to get a letter from your ex-wife’s lawyer threatening a lawsuit over a measly few months’ alimony? And then be fired from your job as editor of Ronald Rabbit’s Magazine for Boys and Girls simply because the magazine had ceased publication six month ago? And then go home to find your wife has run off with your best friend — and your bank account? And that you are being evicted from your apartment?

What do you do then, when you are left with nothing but your lurid memories, your itchy libido and an unemployed typewriter?

If you are Laurence Clarke, our trepid hero and the world’s most cunning linguist, you immediately plunge into not one but seven simultaneous and overlapping love affairs that would boggle a satyr. And you set into motion the most outrageous, insanely complicated and deviously horny series of interlocking plots and counterplots since Machiavelli began his nursery school.

How did these maniacal manipulations bring together the erstwhile publisher of Ronald Rabbit’s his depraved but virginal secretary, six little schoolgirls who should have had Polly Adler for a housemother, two ex-wives who were usually too prone to argue, one landlord, two law firms, various bystanders, and a partridge in a pear tree?

You’ll have to read the incredible letters of Laurence Clarke to find out, but we will admit to one thing:

We lied about the partridge.

From the revered New York Times bestselling author comes a touching, insightful, and humorous memoir of an unlikely racewalker and world traveler.

Cold War superspy Evan Tanner lost the ability to sleep on a battlefield in Korea. So where the heck has he been since the ’70s? Frozen. Cryogenically. A Tanner-sicle. Which he never thought would happen when he walked into a basement in Union City, New Jersey, more than a quarter century ago. Now he’s unthawed and ready to rumble, and his somewhat addled, former super-secret boss, “the Chief,” is glad his favorite operative’s active again. Tanner awoke to a different world, though some bad things have remained the same… or gotten worse. Even before he can fully acclimate himself to this perplexing future, Tanner’s off to Burma (which isn’t really Burma anymore) to pose as a monk, destabilize the government, dodge a lethal double-cross, and rescue a beautiful prisoner. The world’s still full of conspiracy, corruption, greed, political chicanery – and beautiful women. So Tanner’s back with a vengeance, with a lot of lost time to make up for.

The Cold War’s boiling over. Global tensions are near the breaking point. So what’s the perfect assignment for a super-spy who hasn't slept since the Korean conflict? A fun-filled trip to the Montreal World’s Fair! The adorable little girl he's escorting – who, under different circumstances, would be sitting on the Lithuanian throne – can hardly contain her excitement, but it isn’t all playtime for Evan Tanner. Some mysterious disappearances, apparently linked to the fair’s Cuban exhibition, need to be looked into. Keeping his mind on business, however, won’t be easy after an insatiable lovely in a tiger skin falls into Tanner’s arms, and a mother lode of dangerous drugs falls into his lap. But the biggest, deadliest surprise is the terrorist plot Tanner’s tumbling into, and he’ll have to think and act quickly to prevent the visiting queen of England from being blown to smithereens.

Sometime spy Evan Tanner has accepted impossible assignments for many reasons: money, thrills, to have something to occupy his waking hours (twenty-four of them every day, in fact, since battlefield shrapnel obliterated his brain’s sleep center). But this might be the first time he’s put his life on the line… for love. Tanner’s agreed to smuggle a sexy Latvian gymnast – the lost lady love of a heart-sick friend – out of Russia. With the Cold War at its chilliest and the Iron Curtain slammed shut, this will not be easy, especially since everybody in Eastern Europe, it seems, wants to tag along, including a subversive Slav author and the six-year-old heir to the nonexistent Lithuanian throne. But that’s not the biggest hurdle. The gymnast refuses to budge unless Tanner rescues her eleven delightfully limber teammates as well – and that might be raising the bar too lethally high for even the ever-resourceful Evan Tanner to clear.

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.

In its brief existence, THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES has established itself as a peerless suspense anthology. Compiled by the best-selling mystery novelist Ed McBain, this year’s edition boasts nineteen outstanding tales by such masters as John Updike, Lawrence Block, Jeffery Deaver, and Joyce Carol Oates as well as stories by rising stars such as Edgar Award winners Tom Franklin and Thomas H. Cook. The 1999 volume is a spectacular showcase for the high quality and broad diversity of the year’s finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

An anthology of stories edited by Harlan Coben and Otto Penzler

Best-selling novelist Harlan Coben, a master of suspense and creator of the critically-acclaimed Myron Bolitar series, edits this latest collection of the must-reads in mysteries from the past year.

In his introduction to the The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, 'noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It's the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.' Offering the best examples of literary sure things gone bad, this collection ensures that nowhere else can readers find a darker, more thorough distillation of American noir fiction.

James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, series editor of the annual The Best American Mystery Stories, mined one hundred years of writing - 1910-2010 - to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories. From noir's twenties-era infancy come gems like James M. Cain's 'Pastorale,' and its post-war heyday boasts giants like Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter. Packing an undeniable punch, diverse contemporary incarnations include Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, and William Gay, with many page-turners appearing in the last decade.

The thing about being a burglar is it’s a secret best kept to yourself. Bernie Rhodenbarr discovers that his dentist knows he’s a burglar and it seems that Dr. Sheldrake needs a burglar to steal back some valuable diamonds from his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Crystal. Bernie’s visit to the Sheldrake home is thwarted by a visitor, so he hides in the closet. When Bernie emerges he finds Crystal lying dead on the floor – a dental instrument the apparent murder weapon – and the diamonds gone.

What's Bernie Rhodenbarr doing in the country? He is a New York kind of guy, an urbane antiquarian bookseller who moonlights as a buttoned down burglar. Until an impossibly rare Raymond Chandler novel dedicated to Dashiell Hammett lures him and his buddy, Carolyn, from their own turf to the hills of Western Massachusetts. Before they knows it, they're smack in the middle of Agatha Christie country and you know what that means. A classic English country house. A guest list awash in eccentricity. And the snow keeps falling. And the bridge is out. And the phone lines are cut. And, one by one, somebody's killing off the guests. And…shhhh! There's a burglar in the library!

Amazon.com Review

Lawrence Block is such a gifted writer that even a native New Yorker will be fooled into thinking that the Paddington Hotel, described in the opening pages of Burglar in the Rye, is a real institution. Block's descriptions of this enclave of artists, writers, and rock musicians is thoroughly convincing-although in actuality, the Paddington is a combination of the real-life Chelsea Hotel and Block's outrageous imagination.

This is Bernie Rhodenbarr's ninth heist. Bernie is a gentleman burglar who runs a used bookstore in between criminal acts, steals mostly from the rich, and only hurts people when it becomes absolutely necessary.

The Paddington is where Bernie goes to liberate the letters of a reclusive writer named Gulliver Fairborn from a literary agent. Fairborn 's resemblance to J.D. Salinger and, of course, the fact that the woman who hired Bernie to steal the letters had an affair with Fairborn when she was a teenager, no doubt lend the book its title. But by the time Bernie gets to the Paddington, the agent has been shot, the letters already liberated-and a cop in the lobby recognizes our favorite burglar from a previous encounter.

Now all Bernie has to do is find out who else wanted those letters badly enough to kill for them. In typical Rhodenbarr tradition, the plot is less interesting than the trappings: the books Bernie reads, the fascinating

Library Journal

After Small Town, Block's very dark standalone novel about the aftermath of 9/11, his new Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery comes as comic relief. This time the antiquarian book dealer/burglar is asked by a friend to burgle the home of the man who stole the friend's girlfriend. But a few days before the scheduled break-in, Bernie begins to feel itchy and decides to go on the prowl: "Walking the dark streets, gloves in one pocket, tools in the other, risking life and liberty for no good reason. I knew what I was doing, and I damned well should have known better." His little misadventure leads him to an encounter with a date rapist, accusations of murder, and the burglary of his own home. While the book sinks at the end with an overly convoluted drawing room scene, Block keeps the reader entertained throughout with his charming, eccentric characters and trade-mark humor. (One running gag: Bernie keeps trying to read the latest John Sandford best seller, Lettuce Prey, about a serial killer of vegetarians, but is continually interruped.) For most mystery collections.

Bookseller, thief – Bernie Rhodenbarr can't resist the lure or a long lost Kipling poem, even if it is locked inside a millionaire's high security library. So Bernie goes browsing and sure enough he liberates the object in question…but also finds a dead redhead and is caught with the proverbial smoking gun by those boys in blue, who are ready to book Bernie for Murder One!

Amazon.com Review

If the only side of Lawrence Block you know is the dark and gloomy Matt Scudder books, such as the noir classic When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, then you might be surprised to hear that he's also one of the most delightfully droll writers in the mystery business.

"I hurried uptown and changed into chinos and a short-sleeved shirt that would have been an Alligator except that the embroidered device on the breast was not that reptile but a bird in flight. I guess it was supposed to be a swallow, either winging its way back to Capistrano or not quite making a summer, because the brand name was Swallowtail. It had never quite caught on and I can understand why." That's Bernie Rhodenbarr, used book dealer and gentleman burglar, making a literary fashion statement in this latest return to print of one of Block's best books about him.

In the realm of larceny, there's no one quite like Bernie Rhodenbarr. A gentleman, a bookseller, and a thief, Bernie steals with style. But now Lawrence Block's beloved criminal has discovered one of the abiding truths about the burglary business: Two's company. Three is definitely a crowd. The second burglars were Bernie and his dog grooming partner, Carolyn. They came to rob the Colcannons' West Side brownstone while the couple was out of town having their own personal burglar alarm – a Bouvier named Astrid – bred. But when Bernie and Carolyn break in they discover that they've already been beaten to the punch. Fortunately for Bernie, the first burglars left behind some decent goods, including a pair of emerald earrings, a fine Piaget watch, and a valuable coin that could just be too hot to handle. But of course he takes it anyway. The Colcannon home, though, still has a busy night ahead, and the next morning one person is dead. And when the next murder strikes uncomfortably close to home, it's time for Bernie to go to work. Because somewhere between a bungled burglary, a nasty case of double homicide, and a rare nickel is a case that makes little sense.

Bernie Rhodenbarr – a romantic? Hey, even burglars fall in love and in this case it's Bernie doing the falling, with the lovely and alluring Ilona. Night after night, sharing popcorn in the flickering shadow of a Bogie movie, Bernie finds himself tongue-tied – sometimes literally. It would appear Ilona's now doing all the stealing. Well, not really. Bernie's been approached by the oddly named Hugo Candlemas to pilfer a posh East Side apartment, make off with the portfolio and collect a fast, easy sum. A reasonable enough request for a trained burglar, sure, but just when things are going well, things turn bad.

For nearly a year Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone straight…well of a fashion. But Bernie has a new landlord for his Greenwich Village bookstore — Bernie Stoppelagard — not a nice man, who wants to increase his rent by 10,000 dollars…a month! Desperate times call for desperate measures. So Bernie is back to work burgling an apartment of a couple on a European tour of untraceable cash. There is only one problem — the naked man in the bathroom — and the fact that he is deceased. At the same time the apartment of Stoppelgard's brother-in-law has been relieved of a million dollar baseball card collection and somehow Bernie is being blamed (read: framed) for that crime. Mix in a mysterious woman and a crotchety old New York policeman and Bernie seems in big trouble. So what's the answer…Find the baseball cards…and steal them back.

Evan Tanner ran head-first into a piece of shrapnel in Korea, and now he can’t sleep. Ever. Which can be an asset for a dedicated linguist, term paper forger, thief, lost cause enthusiast… Spy. Tanner takes on jobs for a covert intelligence organization so secret that even those who work for it have no idea who they’re working for. Now his nameless supervisor wants him to sneak behind the Iron Curtain, storm an impregnable castle in Prague (alone!), and rescue an old Slovak who’s got a pressing date with a hangman’s noose. The trouble is the prisoner is an unrepentant Nazi who makes Goering look like Mister Rogers. Tanner hates Nazis. If he’s caught (which is likely) the U.S. will deny that they know him. And Tanner will be executed. After being tortured, no doubt. All in all, there are many excellent reasons why Tanner should refuse this assignment. So, naturally, he says yes.

The Ehrengraf Alternative is the seventh of ten stories about the little lawyer whose resourcefulness on behalf of an innocent client is unparalleled.

It seems to me that a couple of real-life cases inspired this story, but I find I can’t call them to mind; the story seems to have outlived its inspiration. Ehrengraf would probably quote Hippocrates. “Ars longa, vita brevis,” he would remark, smiling his little smile.

This is the fourth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, the dapper little lawyer whose clients always turn out to be innocent. Unlike Perry Mason, Ehrengraf rarely sees the inside of a courtroom, but like that fellow, he never loses a case.

Ehrengraf charges high fees, and has the good sense to represent individuals able to pay them. But in the present story he accepts a court appointment to defend a hapless indigent who has evidently beaten his wife to death in a drunken argument.

A fellow attorney assumes Ehrengraf will have his client plead guilty to manslaughter, accept his $175 fee, and go on to other matters. But how could Ehrengraf allow an innocent man to plead guilty? And why should he be content with $175, when there are other ways to make a case profitable?

Martin Ehrengraf, the criminal defense attorney who takes cases on a contingency basis, made his debut in 1978; by 2003 he’d successfully demonstrated the innocence of ten clients. Now he’s back for the first time in almost a decade, in The Ehrengraf Settlement.

A pillar of the community, a rich man with a trophy wife, exceeds his authority as a leader of the local Vigilance Commission and shoots a man down on a neighbor’s lawn. Ehrengraf, convinced of his client’s innocence, works his subtle magic, and charges are dropped. But the client makes a fatal mistake: he pays Ehrengraf only a tenth of the agreed-upon fee.

And Ehrengraf realizes that he himself has made a tragic mistake. The client he presumed innocent must have been guilty all along...

This is the third story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, the diminutive defense attorney who rarely sees the inside of a courtroom. In the preceding story, The Ehrengraf Presumption, he spells out his core principle thus:

“The Ehrengraf Presumption. Any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf is presumed by Ehrengraf to be innocent, which presumption is invariably confirmed in due course, the preconceptions of the client himself notwithstanding.”

In his first two appearances, Ehrengraf would certainly appear to have been saddled with clients who in fact committed the crimes of which they stood accused. But in Grantham Beale, the little lawyer is cursed with a genuinely innocent client, innocent not only of the murder for which he has been convicted but hopelessly innocent in the ways of the world.

It’s a challenge for Ehrengraf, and one to which he rises with zeal and dispatch.

This is the sixth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, diminutive attorney who represents criminal defendants on a contingency basis. In earlier appearances, the little lawyer has quoted William Blake, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Thomas Hood, and Andrew Marvell, so it’s clear that he sees poetry as a sacred calling.

However vile the crime, however damning the evidence, Ehrengraf knows with utter certainty that young William Telliford is innocent. And nothing can keep him from establishing that innocence beyond dispute.

Then again, circumstances alter cases, don’t they?

When I finished writing The Ehrengraf Defense in 1976, I knew I had found a character I’d like to revisit. But it was Frederic Dannay’s immediate enthusiasm for Ehrengraf that made me write one story after another about the diminutive attorney. Fred, of course, was one of the pair of cousins who wrote the Ellery Queen mysteries, and it was Fred who edited Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and he snapped up the stories as quickly as I wrote them.

Ehrengraf’s debut grew out of a plot device; in the course of my writing the story, Martin Ehrengraf came into being. In his second appearance, we see him more fully realized, tailoring his approach to the case to suit circumstances, and altering them to his purposes.

“The Ehrengraf Presumption. Any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf is presumed by Ehrengraf to be innocent, which presumption is invariably confirmed in due course, the preconceptions of the client himself notwithstanding.”

Words to live by...

The Ehrengraf Reverse is the last of ten stories about the dapper little defense attorney who rarely sees the inside of a courtroom because he never is encumbered with a guilty client. It was requested by Otto Penzler for an anthology of football stories; for all the weekend afternoons I spend in front of the TV, this would seem to be the only story of mine with a gridiron setting.

The difficulty, with Ehrengraf, is finding appropriate variations on the theme. I’m pleased with the one that shaped up for this story, and hope you enjoy it.

This, the fifth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, presents the criminous criminal lawyer with a different sort of problem. He’s engaged to defend a man who anticipates being charged with homicide. But no one has been murdered.

Yet.

In the beleaguered but resourceful Ethan Crowe, Ehrengraf has a client who sees the wisdom of hedging his bets before he places them. In Terence Reginald Mayhew, the little lawyer has an adversary with the terrifying power of madness housed in the body of a housebound cripple.

Ehrengraf, a great fan of poetry, has cited William Blake and Winthrop Mackworth Praed in earlier stories; in Riposte he finds the opportunity to quote two of his favorites, Christopher Smart and Thomas Hood.

In the depths of her blue eyes, he glimpsed... murder.

Cashed out from the NYPD after 24 years, Doak Miller operates as a private eye in steamy small-town Florida, doing jobs for the local police. Like posing as a hit man and wearing a wire to incriminate a local wife who’s looking to get rid of her husband. But when he sees the wife, when he looks into her deep blue eyes...

He falls — and falls hard. Soon he’s working with her, against his employer, plotting a devious plan that could get her free from her husband and put millions in her bank account. But can they do it without landing in jail? And once heХs kindled his taste for killing... will he be able to stop at one?

Even before he invented Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr, Block was writing terrific thrillers such as this.

Johnny Hayden and his partner had the perfect scam selling worthless Canadian land to marks. The scam just has to work, because at stake is Evvie — the girl with the long green heart.

An anthology of stories

A new anthology of twenty-nine short stories features an array of baffling locked-room mysteries by Michael Collins, Bill Pronzini, Susanna Gregory, H. R. F. Keating, Peter Lovesey, Kate Ellis, and Lawrence Block, among others.

Evan Tanner can’t sleep. Ever. Which gives him plenty of free time to get involved in lots of interesting endeavors in all sorts of exotic locales. Now Tanner’s in Thailand with a partially baked plan and a butterfly net, hoping to snare a beautiful missing chanteuse who’s metamorphosed into an international jewel thief. Tanner hopes everyone will buy his disguise as a rare butterfly researcher. And everyone does… Except the guerilla band holding him captive. They intend to remove his head when the sun rises, so Tanner must put his fate in the hands of a randy Thai youth who will do anything for a woman, even set a suspected spy free. Soon they’re running through the jungle together, chased by bandits, soldiers, and yellow fever, and racing headlong into the heart of darkness – and into the flames of war.

This time it started with a call girl.

She came running to Eddie Manso scared stiff. A bad scene with some sadistic hood. The guy had told the girl he was a rich banker. That's what interested Eddie. The guy had said he owned the banks.

A hood who owned banks?

Eddie called the colonel and the colonel called the others...

There were six of them. Specialists. Ex-soldiers, each with a unique talent. There game was getting to a special kind of vermin, the kind that preyed on innocents... the kind the law never seemed to be able to grab.

There was always trouble, but this one was going to be really rough. The "banker" was no ordinary hood. And he had his own army of specialists.

From Library Journal

Block introduced Evan Tanner, specialist in lost political causes, in this rousing, often comic 1966 yarn. Unable to sleep for 15 years following a Korean War head wound, Tanner devotes his considerable free time to reading, learning languages, and turning his affliction into a livelihood by writing theses and dissertations for graduate students in New York. Then he learns of hidden Armenian gold in Turkey and sets off on an unlikely adventure that makes him the most wanted fugitive in the world as well as the accidental leader of a Macedonian revolt. Block's tale gets off to an engaging start, sags in the middle partly because of some bone-jarring violence, and recovers neatly at the end. Nick Sullivan handles the characters' many accents quite well. Highly recommended.

El crimen es el crimen, pero el asesinato es algo mayor, diferente. Nadie tiene derecho a arrojar al río la cabeza de un pequeño ladrón y chantajista. Por lo menos según el codigo de honor de Matt Scudder…

Giros Jablon, un delincuente de poca monta, acude a donde un antiguo policía al que respetaba, Matt Sudder, para entregarle un sobre que debe abrir tan sólo si muere violentamente. Cuando es asesinado Scudder lo abre y averigua que estaba chantajeando a tres personas importantes una de las cuales, con casi total seguridad, es el responsable de su asesinato.

Matt Scudder ha pasado muchos de sus días sumergido en el alcohol, dejándose el alma en cada rincón de la Gran Manzana. Hace tiempo perteneció al Departamento de Policía de Nueva York, pero todo aquello ya quedó atrás. Ahora es un detective sin licencia, perseverante y de mente afilada, y no deja que sus obsesiones enturbien la investigación.

Lo acaban de contratar para que demuestre una sospecha: que Richard Thurman, personaje influyente de la vida pública, planeó el brutal asesinato de su esposa, estando ella embarazada. En medio de la investigación aparecerán pistas desconcertantes, aparentemente desligadas del caso, pero todos los misterios acabarán confluyendo para enseñar al detective que una vida joven e inocente puede ser comprada, corrompida y aniquilada.

`Un baile en el matadero` recibió el premio Edgar 1992.

`Un millón de dolares en efectivo o matamos a tu mujer`. Los traficantes de drogas son presa fácil de la extorsión y, por razones obvias, no pueden acudir a la policía. Kenan Khoury recibió el mensaje, pero vaciló frente al precio del rescate: no volvió a ver a su mujer con vida. Ahora sólo piensa en vengar su muerte. Para ello contrata los servicios de Matt Scudder, un detective privado sin apenas trabajo y que sufre algún que otro problema con el alcohol. Con ayuda de dos genios de los ordenadores, un punk callejero y una amiga prostituta, Scudder busca a los asesinos en los bajos fondos de Brooklyn.

The best USA-based stories in the Akashic noir series, compiled into one volume and edited by Johnny Temple!

These were the dark days for Matthew Scudder. An ex- New York cop, he had drowned his career in booze. Now he was drinking away his life in a succession of seedy establishments that opened early and closed late, reduced to doing paid "favors" for the cronies who gathered with him to worship the bottle.

Now, in a sad and lonely place like so many before it, opportunity comes knocking – a chance to help the ginmil's owner recover his stolen doctored financial records; a chance to help out a drinking buddy accused of murdering his wife. But when cases flow together in dangerous and disturbing ways – like the nightmare images in a drunkard's delirium – it's time for Scudder to change his priorities: to staying sober…and staying alive.

“Who Knows Where It Goes” is an uncollected short story that appeared in Ellery Queen in January 2010. It was inspired, of course, by the cratering of the world economy two years earlier. It's a story of hard times, and how a resourceful man can adapt to them. It's a story, too, about how such a man might explore his own capabilities, and find out if what he once did is something he still can do.

For years, readers have turned to Lawrence Block’s novels for mesmerizing entertainment. And for years. writers have turned to Block’s Writing the Novel for candid, conversational, practical advice on how to put a publishable novel on paper.

Now that you’ve discovered it, you, too, will find this to be the guide for the working novelist. Filled with Block’s experiences and much that he’s learned from others, the look helps you:

• identify the type of novel you’re meant to write

• invite plot ideas to bubble up from your subconscious

• develop characters who act, feel and speak like real people

• use what you know and learn what you must

• snare readers from the start

• keep writing

• develop your style

• market your work in a professional manner

Bead what Lawrence Block has to say. Then write what you have to write. Your novel.