Lawrence Block

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About Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block was born in Buffalo, New York in 1938. He attended Antioch College in Ohio then went to work in the mailroom of a New York publisher. His first story was published in 1957 and he has gone on to write more than thirty novels and countless stories and articles, not just under his own name but also as Paul Kavanagh. Indeed Lawrence Block has had several pseudonyms having learned his writer's art crafting erotic literature as Andrew Shaw, Sheldon Lord and Jill Emerson!
In 1994 Lawrence Block won the Mystery Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and has also won Edgar, Shamus, and Maltese Falcon awards for his work. In 2004 Lawrence Block was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for a lifetime's achievement in crime writing.
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Blog postallonymbooks
In a timely addition to the series of occasional blogs about other crime writers, allonymbooks author EJ Knight ponders the crime novels by Lawrence Block from which the imminently released film A Walk Among The Tombstones is drawn.
I’ve visited New York many, many times over the years and, much as my allonymbooks stablemate Evie Woolmore found Warsaw an inspiration for her novel Rising Up, so my slow wanderings around8 years ago Read more -
Blog postThe Liar’s Companion is available as ebook, hardcover, or Audible download at Amazon http://tinyurl.com/p479hry and B&N http://tinyurl.com/kj5kfoj
Fairfield Writer's Blog
One evening six years ago the master crime novelist Lawrence Block(right) made an author appearance at the Westport (Conn.) Library next door to Fairfield. At that point, among the more than 100 books Block had published were four about writing. During the question-and-answer session, I asked him if8 years ago Read more -
Blog postIt’s that time of year, isn’t it? Leaves turning, pumpkins ripening in the field, and children creeping like snail unwillingly to school. I was going go treat you to a picture of a pumpkin patch, one that puts a nice seasonal spin on the notion of crop circles, but Vertical Response furnished this properly autumnal template, and not for the first time I chose to take the Easy Way Out. It’s a character defect, and I’m working on it…
That’s the first paragraph of a newsletter that just9 years ago Read more -
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Blog postA week or so ago I started a short story, and I put in a few hours here and there, and it’s coming along well enough. I figure another week or two should see it through to the end.
But it seems to have hit…well, not exactly a snag, but for the past few days I’ve been sitting down at my desk first thing each morning, whereupon I open the file and look at the story, and then I go and Do Other Things. All of this, I have learned over the years, is part of what we like to call the Creativ9 years ago Read more -
Blog postIt’s called eReaderiQ, and it tracks titles on Kindle. If you want, it’ll notify you when a title you’re interested in drops in price. I did an EgoSearch, naturally, and found it fascinating to see all my titles listed, with price reductions chronicled wherever they applied. (I was also puzzled to note, among my titles, Block by Block: The Post Register Looks at the Neighborhoods of Idaho Falls. I don’t know that I want it, but I have to admit it seems quite reasonable at $2.99.)
Even9 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis’ll be short and sweet.
Catch and Release, my new short-story collection, is on sale. The Subterranean Press hardcover edition is essentially sold out, although you can still find booksellers with copies available. (I signed stock at the Mysterious Bookshop, and they may have a few left; call Ian Kern at (800) 352-2840. Signed copies are also available, while they last, from VJ Books at (503) 750-5710).
UPDATE: Mysterious Bookshop tells me their copies are all gone!
<9 years ago Read more -
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Blog postSubterranean Press has begun shipping hardcover copies of my new short story collection, Catch and Release, and a beautiful book it is. While the entire edition is essentially sold out, you may be able to secure a copy, if not from the publisher then from an online bookseller or mystery specialty store. But don’t drag your feet; Subterranean’s printing is a small one, and when they’re gone, well, they’re gone.
I’ve just published the Catch and Release eBook, expertly formatted b9 years ago Read more -
Blog postSome of you may be familiar with the deluxe limited-edition broadsides produced by Lavendier Books of Rhode Island. My first venture with them was “A Burglar’s Eye View of Greed,” an op-ed newspaper piece of mine that got its second wind as a Lavendier broadside (and appears anew in Subterranean Press’s forthcoming Catch and Release). Then I wrote an original Matthew Scudder vignette for Lavendier, “Mick Ballou Looks at the Blank Screen,” and that at once became part of the Scudder canon, and9 years ago Read more
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Blog postHere’s a newsletter that just went out to subscribers:
Well, here it is, September, and I’m back after a long silence, and I suppose the first order of business is to bring you up to date on where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. I spent much of the summer on Holland America’s M.S. Veendam, cruising the North Atlantic. That sounds like a vacation, and it would have been, but for the fact that most of my waking hours each day found me locked in my cabin, glaring at my MacBook Air, a9 years ago Read more -
Blog postWe closed the bookstore back in May, anticipating a June reopening, and wound up keeping the virtual doors locked for an extra couple of months. But as of today we’re back in business, still an eBay top-rated seller, with a good stock of signed copies for sale. At the moment we’ve got 126 items listed, and should be adding more in the coming weeks. Some are hard to find and one-of-a-kind. Have a look!
9 years ago Read more -
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Titles By Lawrence Block
Bookseller and New-Yorker-to-the-bone, Bernie Rhodenbarr rarely ventures out of Manhattan, but he's excited about the romantic getaway he has planned for himself and current lady love Lettice at the Cuttleford House, a remote upstate b&b. Unfortunately, Lettice has a prior engagement—she's getting married . . . and not to Bernie—so he decides to take best buddy Carolyn instead. A restful respite from the big city's bustle would be too good to waste. Besides, there's a very valuable first edition shelved in the Cuttleford's library that Bernie's just itching to get his hands on. Did we neglect to mention that Bernie's a burglar?
But first he's got to get around a very dead body on the library floor. The plot's thickened by an isolating snowstorm, downed phone lines, the surprise arrival of Lettice and her reprehensible new hubby, and a steadily increasing corpse count. And it's Bernie who'll have to figure out whodunit . . . or die.
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 love it.
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.
Nice, huh?
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.
Meanwhile, internet booksellers have muscled your legit enterprise into obsolescence. The new breed of customers browse your bookshop, find what they’re looking for, then whip out their phones and order their books online.
Wonderful. You had two ways to make a living, and neither of them works anymore.
But suppose you keep on supposing, okay?
Suppose you wake up one morning in a world just like the one in which you fell asleep—but with a couple of differences.
The first one you notice doesn’t amount to much. The Metrocard in your wallet has somehow changed color and morphed into what seems to be called a SubwayCard. That’s puzzling, but you swipe it at the turnstile same as always, and it gets you on the subway, so what difference does it make?
But that’s not the only thing that’s changed. The Internet’s up and running, as robust as ever, but nobody seems to be using it to sell books. Doors are secured not with pickproof electronic gizmos but with good old reliable Rabson locks, the kind you can open with your eyes closed. And what happened to all those security cameras? Where’d they go?
All of a sudden you’ve got your life back, and your bookshop’s packed with eager customers, and how are you gonna find time to steal something?
Well, just suppose one of the world’s worst human beings has recently acquired one of the world’s most glamorous gems. When the legendary Kloppmann Diamond is up for grabs, what can you possibly do but grab it?
And what could possibly go wrong?
In a novel widely celebrated by critics and readers, Lawrence Block circle back to how it all began, reestablishing the Matthew Scudder series as one of the pinnacles of American detective fiction.
"Right up there with Mr. Block's best . . . A Drop of Hard Stuff keeps us guessing." -- Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
Bernie Rhodenbarr is a personable chap, a good neighbor, a passable poker player. His chosen profession, however, might not sit well with some. Bernie is a burglar, a good one, effortlessly lifting valuables from the not-so-well-protected abodes of well-to-do New Yorkers like a modern-day Robin Hood. (The poor, as Bernie would be the first to tell you, alas, have nothing worth stealing.)
He's not perfect, however; he occasionally makes mistakes. Like accepting a paid assignment from a total stranger to retrieve a particular item from a rich man's apartment. Like still being there when the cops arrive. Like having a freshly slain corpse lying in the next room, and no proof that Bernie isn't the killer.
Now he's really got his hands full, having to locate the true perpetrator while somehow eluding the police -- a dirty job indeed, but if Bernie doesn't do it, who will?
"What a treat! Catnip to Bernie disciples!" —Booklist
Four decades ago, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block introduced the world to one of his most beloved and enduring creations: Bernie Rhodenbarr, the clever, nimble-fingered star of novels such as Burglars Can't Be Choosers, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, and The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. Called “the Heifetz of the picklock” by the New York Times, Bernie has stolen not only antiques, stamp collections, and priceless works of art but also millions of readers' hearts.
Now, for all those craving more adventures of their favorite bookseller-by-day and burglar-by-night, The Burglar in Short Order for the first time ever collects all of Bernie's short-form appearances in one complete volume. From the story in which a prototype of Bernie first appeared (“A Bad Night For Burglars”) to his appearances in Playboy and (maybe? It's kinda complicated) Cosmopolitan…from an essay discussing Bernie's misadventures in Hollywood (how in the world did Whoopi Goldberg ever get cast?) to a piece commissioned by a European publisher for a tourist guide to New York…you'll find every published story, article, and standalone excerpt Bernie has ever appeared in—plus two new, unpublished pieces: an introduction discussing the character's colorful origins and an afterword in which the author, contemplating retirement, comes face to face with his own creation. In all of mystery fiction, there has never been a character like Bernie—and in this, his dozenth book, he demonstrates all the charm and wit and kleptophilic ingenuity that has made two generations of readers welcome their favorite burglar into their homes.
From Publishers Weekly:
"MWA Grandmaster Block collects 15 tightly crafted and amusing short stories and articles concerning burglar and bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr, hero of The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling and other novels... A foreword, 'A Burglar's Origins,' and an afterword, 'A Burglar's Future,' are original to this volume. The author's legion of fans won't want to miss this one."
From Booklist:
"What a treat, therefore, to come upon this charming addendum, which collects all of Block's Bernie short stories as well as several short essays, one describing Bernie's origins (broke, Block contemplated becoming a thief himself before deciding to write about one instead)... All this backstory will be catnip to Bernie disciples, and the stories are a treat, too, especially 'The Burglar Who Dropped in on Elvis,' in which Bernie is charged with breaking into Graceland's impregnable second floor."
The pretty young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer—a minister's son—hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's fatherhas come to Matthew Scudder for answers, sending the unlicensed private investigator in search of terrible truths about a life that was lived and lost in a sordid world of perversion and pleasures.
Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone legit -- almost -- as the new owner of a used bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village. Of course, dusty old tomes don't always turn a profit, so to make ends meet, Bernie's forced, on occasion, to indulge in his previous occupation: burglary. Besides which, he likes it.
Now a collector is offering Bernie an opportunity to combine his twin passions by stealing a very rare and very bad book-length poem from a rich man's library.
The heist goes off without a hitch. The delivery of the ill-gotten volume, however, is a different story. Drugged by the client's female go-between, Bernie wakes up in her apartment to find the book gone, the lady dead, a smoking gun in his hand, and the cops at the door. And suddenly he's got to extricate himself from a rather sticky real-life murder mystery and find a killer -- before he's booked for Murder One.
In the dark days, in a sad and lonely place, ex-cop Matt Scudder is drinking his life away -- and doing "favors" for pay for his ginmill cronies. But when three such assignments flow together in dangerous and disturbing ways, he'll need to change his priorities from boozing to surviving.
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.
Bernie Rhodenbarr is actually trying to earn an honest living. It's been an entire year since he's entered anyone's abode illegally to help himself to their valuables. But now an unscrupulous landlord's threat to increase Bernie's rent by 1,000% is driving the bookseller and reformed burglar back to a life of crime -- though, in all fairness, it's a very short trip. And when the cops wrongly accuse him of stealing a priceless collection of baseball cards, Bernie's stuck with a worthless alibi since he was busy burgling a different apartment at the time . . . one that happened to contain a dead body locked inside a bathroom.
So Bernie has a dilemma. He can trade a burglary charge for a murder rap. Or he can shuffle all the cards himself and try to find the joker in the deck -- someone, perhaps, who believes that homicide is the real Great American Pastime.
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