Books by Lawrence Block and Complete Book Reviews

Lawrence Block, Author Dutton Books $23.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-525-94421-8
Never one to abandon a sound series hero indefinitely, Block (who recently resurrected burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr) has now also brought back international man of action Evan Tanner, after more than 25 years. As usual, Block has a good joke up his...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Subterranean $30 (220p) ISBN 978-1-931081-43-6
A pity Block doesn't write for the movies. There's a great little B movie here. First published in 1968, this is a reissue of the fifth book in the series featuring Evan Tanner, "whose sleep center was destroyed in Korea" but who...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $18.95 (302p) ISBN 978-0-688-09070-8
This is as near perfect as a private-eye thriller can get. Block is the utter professional, a master who holds the reader in the palm of his hand for as long as the pages need to be turned. His hero is former cop Matthew Scudder, now coasting as a...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $17.95 (260p) ISBN 978-0-688-09069-2
The prolific author's humanity and the immediacy of his understated style are again evidenced in his seventh mystery related by Matt Scudder: ex-NYPD officer, recovering alcoholic, and now private detective ( When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes , etc.).
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Lawrence Block, Author Carroll & Graf Publishers $4.5 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7867-0047-9
A former Green Beret attempts to steal a shipment of nuclear weapons from the U.S. Army. (Nov.)
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $19 (309p) ISBN 978-0-688-10349-1
In this pitch-perfect crime story, now-sober Manhattan PI Matt Scudder--seen last in A Ticket to the Boneyard --embarks on a personal mission as he investigates the death of the wife of TV producer Richard Thurman. Amanda Thurman was sexually...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $17 (318p) ISBN 978-0-688-10350-7
Despite their dark titles (the words Slaughterhouse and Boneyard figured in the previous two), Block's splendid, award-winning Matt Scudder novels are by no means unrelievedly bleak. His latest-as well as offering the customary skillful plotting,...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $20 (302p) ISBN 978-0-688-10820-5
Best known for his Matt Scudder private eye novels, Block is also an accomplished writer of short fiction, and the 22 stories here, most of them post-1984, have appeared in a variety of magazines, including Playboy and the Ellery Queen and Alfred...
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Lawrence Block, Author Carroll & Graf Publishers $3.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7867-0046-2
Five ex-soldiers are hired to find and eliminate criminals in the Edgar Award-winning author's gripping novel. (Dec.)
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Lawrence Block, Author Carroll & Graf Publishers $3.95 (160p) ISBN 978-0-7867-0106-3
Two scam artists orchestrate a phony real estate deal in this thriller. (July)
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $20 (285p) ISBN 978-0-688-12193-8
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...
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Lawrence Block, Author Dutton Books $21.95 (291p) ISBN 978-0-525-94016-6
This time out, the recently revived Bernie Rhodenbarr, Greenwich Village bookseller and dedicated burglar, is swept away by a gorgeous foreigner who comes into his store one day. They share a passion for old Bogart movies and are soon spending...
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Lawrence Block, Author Dutton Books $22.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-525-94159-0
Those who long for another new exploit of the immortal Bernie Rhodenbarr, Greenwich Village bookseller by profession and burglar by avocation, should be warned that their wait must be extended. For this is a reissue, after 17 years, of what was...
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Lawrence Block, Author Dutton Books $23.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-525-94301-3
Bernie Rhodenbarr, bookseller and burglar (The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart, etc.), is one of Block's most stylish creations, and this new outing (there has been a reissue or two in recent years) is cause for rejoicing. This time, Bernie is off
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Lawrence Block, Author Tor Books $18.95 (345p) ISBN 978-0-312-93092-9
Block's latest novel is for New Age disciples or for readers interested in learning the tenets of the philosophy. Otherwise a ``random walk'' can be a tiresome journey. Guthrie Wagner, a bartender in Roseburg, Ore., hears a voice urging him to take...
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Lawrence Block, Author Dutton Books $23.95 (280p) ISBN 978-0-525-94500-0
Block's addictive series about bookseller/burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr (The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, etc.) continues as our hero invades the hotel suite of an aged literary agent in search of a cache of letters, by a respected and reclusive...
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Lawrence Block, Author Subterranean Press $16 (150p) ISBN 978-1-892284-56-3
Master mystery writer Block has dabbled in his time in many genres, and early in his career, back in 1971, he published a handful of paperback erotic novels under a pseudonym; this is one of them. He wanted, he says, to have fun with an epistolary...
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Lawrence Block, Author Subterranean Press $30 (168p) ISBN 978-1-892284-99-0
In this first hardcover edition of a 1968 paperback original (titled Two for Tanner), Evan Tanner is ""the spy who never sleeps,"" a Korean War vet whose head injury has destroyed the sleep center in his brain. Never having to sleep, Tanner has...
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Lawrence Block, Author Dutton Books $219.45 (0p) ISBN 978-0-525-93892-7
Block has long been one of the best hard-boiled writers in the business, with his ongoing series about PI Matt Scudder. He also has a lighter side, however, and those who relish his tales of Bernie Rhodenbarr, the smart burglar-despite-himself who...
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Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson. Hard Case Crime, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-85768-287-1
MWA Grand Master Block revives his Jill Emerson alias for the first time since the 1970s for this extremely violent erotic novel that works better as soft-core porn than as noir. As a child growing up in smalltown Minnesota, femme fatale Kit...
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean/Hard Case Crime, $30 (336p) ISBN 978-1-59606-489-8
Early 1960s Manhattan plays host to murder, marijuana, and kinky sex parties in this striking two-pack revival of vintage pulp from MWA Grandmaster Block. Stella James, “the tigress with the biggest breasts,” rules Greenwich Village’s 69 (pun...
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Lawrence Block. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $26.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-12735-6
MWA Grand Master Block’s highly enjoyable, episodic third novel featuring philatelist and killer for hire John Keller (after 2008’s Hit and Run) finds Keller living in New Orleans under a new name with his wife, Julia, and their baby daughter....
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Lawrence Block. Hard Case-Subterranean, $30 (288p) ISBN 978-1-59606-571-0
Crime writer Lawrence Block, who turns 75 this year, is beyond a legend and practically a force of nature at this point in his career. You might expect this collection of relatively new material to come in on the nostalgic side, to be attenuated due
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Lawrence Block. Hard Case Crime, $23.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-78116-777-9
First published in 1962, this erotic crime novel from MWA Grand Master Block (A Walk Among the Tombstones) packs plenty of vicarious thrills, sexual titillation, and taboo breaking. Meg, a recent divorcee who’s landed in El Paso, Tex., ready for...
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $30 (216p) ISBN 978-1-59606-667-0
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
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean (subterraneanpress.com), $30 (312p) ISBN 978-1-59606-701-1
“I love to steal,” admits Bernie Rhodenbarr in MWA Grand Master Block’s superlative 11th mystery featuring the New York City thief and bookseller (after 2004’s The Burglar on the Prowl). A man called Smith, who collects buttons as a hobby, launches...
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Lawrence Block. Hard Case Crime, $9.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-78565-001-7
The first crime novel by MWA Grand Master Block (The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes) returns to print, slightly revised, after being lost for 50 years. It’s as lean and compulsively readable as you’d expect from a writer who made his rent writing...
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Edited by Lawrence Block, read by multiple narrators. Dreamscape Media, 8 CDs, 10 hrs., $59.99 ISBN 978-1-5200-4498-9
In this thematic short story collection, 17 writers—including Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, and Joyce Carol Oates—imagine back stories to paintings by American realist painter Hopper. The resulting tales are a diverse gathering of dark noir-tinged...
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Lawrence Block, Author Dorchester Publishing Company $6.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8439-5768-6
The Hard Case Crime imprint has found a perfect partner in Block, as this gritty grifter's tale, in print for the first time in 40 years, goes to show. In a small town somewhere between Chicago and New York, down on his luck card shark Bill Maynard...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Morrow $25 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-019832-9
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...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Subterranean $30 (0p) ISBN 978-1-931081-51-1
Originally titled $20 Lust and published under the pseudonym Andrew Shaw by Nightstand in 1961, this early Block novel has its quirky charms. As the MWA Grandmaster explains in the Lawrence Block Bibliography: 1958–1993, "much of the...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Morrow $24.95 (464p) ISBN 978-0-06-001190-1
This is a rare standalone from the Edgar Award–winning creator of Matt Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, hit man Keller and others, and takes a number of risks unusual for its author. For a start, it is very deliberately a post–9/11 thriller,...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Morrow $24.95 (293p) ISBN 978-0-06-019830-5
You'd think that Block, with more than 50 books to his credit, would run out of ideas, but as this 10th in his Burglar series shows (after 1999's The Burglar in the Rye ), he's as fresh, witty and inventive as ever. The author builds his
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Lawrence Block, Author . Morrow $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-019831-2
Matt Scudder, bestseller Block's extraordinary private detective, has been around for almost 30 years, and if his aging has been neither gentle nor graceful, it's certainly been eventful. In his stellar 16th outing (after 2001's Hope to...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Subterranean $30 (200p) ISBN 978-1-59606-019-7
Since this reissue of MWA Grandmaster Block's 1968 Evan Tanner thriller lacks the wit and clever plotting that characterize his mature work, this dated tale of picaresque adventure will appeal mainly to Block completists. Tanner, a thief with...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Morrow $24.95 (295p) ISBN 978-0-06-084088-4
Block's assassin, John Keller (Hit Man ; Hit List ), returns in these loosely linked, well-crafted vignettes of the protagonist on assignment, blithely but expertly eliminating a grab bag of targets: a philandering pro baseball player, a jockey...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Hard Case Crime $6.99 (205p) ISBN 978-0-8439-5957-4
Reprinted for the first time since its pseudonymous publication nearly 50 years ago, this tour of the 1950s Manhattan underworld begins with Anita, a good college girl with a bright but predictable future, who comes to Greenwich Village to find what
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Lawrence Block, Author . Morrow $24.95 (287p) ISBN 978-0-06-084090-7
While in Des Moines for one last job in MWA Grand Master Block’s solid fourth Greatest Hits thriller (after Hit Parade ), hit man John Paul Keller takes to the road. He’s been accused of assassinating the governor of Ohio, who was in...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Harper $14.95 (366p) ISBN 978-0-06-158214-1
First published in two volumes by Crippen & Landru in 1999, this collection of early crime stories from bestseller Block (Hit and Run ) is a mixed bag. Part one consists of 25 unremarkable tales, including Block's sole foray into science...
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Lawrence Block, Author . Hard Case Crime $6.99 (204p) ISBN 978-0-8439-6113-3
Shortly before the Cuban missile crisis, mystery Grand Master Block (Hit and Run ) donned a pen name to publish this absorbing yarn about five men vying for a $100,000 prize put on Fidel Castro’s head by a mysterious guy named Hiraldo. Bounty...
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Lawrence Block, Author Avon Books $7.5 (384p) ISBN 978-0-380-70994-6
A call girl warns former cop Matthew Scudder that a homicidal psycho he helped convict is out of jail and seeking revenge. ``The New York settings are superbly authentic, the dialogue is hip . . . and the resolution . . . is hair-raising,'' said PW.
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $23 (336p) ISBN 978-0-688-14181-3
Marriage to his old flame, Elaine, seems to have mellowed Block's veteran PI, Matt Scudder. He still continues to get his man with a combination of doggedness and occasional flashes of inspiration, but his life has become too cozy to make him the...
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Lawrence Block, Author Arbor House $15.95 (239p) ISBN 978-0-87795-774-4
The prolific, Edgar Awardwinning Block has written many mysteries, most in assorted series with colorful protagonists. Featured here is Matt Scudder in his follow-up appearance to Eight Million Ways to Die. Scudder is a former New York cop, now an...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $29.95 (896p) ISBN 978-0-06-018890-0
A month before the mass market edition of his bestseller Hope to Die hits shelves, whodunit Grand Master Lawrence Block will come out with Enough Rope""in Blocks words, a huge doorstop of a thing ""a collection of 83 stories spanning a career...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $25 (296p) ISBN 978-0-06-019833-6
John Keller, whom Block introduced in Hit Man, is a killer for hire, with a difference. He's thoughtful, even broody, tends to take a liking to some of the towns where he goes to do his work, dreams of perhaps settling down in one of them one day...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $25 (292p) ISBN 978-0-688-14182-0
The body count is indeed high in this latest Matt Scudder tale, which is also the best since A Walk Among the Tombstones (1993)--resonant, thoughtful, richly textured and capped by a slam-bang windup. At the center of the case is Matt's old buddy,...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $22 (256p) ISBN 978-0-688-14179-0
Keller, the protagonist of this smoothly integrated story collection, is a gun for hire. Every so often a mystery man in White Plains, N.Y., calls him through an amiably efficient assistant, Dot, and arranges for him to go somewhere and, for a fee,...
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Lawrence Block, Author Dutton Books $23.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-525-94180-4
A welcome reissue is The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza, the fourth entry in Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series originally published in 1980. The Greenwich Village bookseller who moonlights as a burglar ""happens"" to discover a rare coin in...
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Lawrence Block, Author William Morrow & Company $24.99 (365p) ISBN 978-0-06-172181-6
Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Block has been writing for more than 50 years and walking slightly longer, according to this memoir notable for frequent flashes of the author's keen wit. In the introduction, he accurately and honestly...
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Lawrence Block, Author Onyx Books $6.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-451-18426-9
Burglar/Greenwich Village bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr discovers a dead body in the apartment and is accused of stealing a $1 million baseball card collection. (June)
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Lawrence Block, Author Avon Books $7.5 (384p) ISBN 978-0-380-71374-5
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. (Aug.)
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Lawrence Block, Author, Lawrence Block, Read by , read by the author. Harper Audio $39.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-06-089792-5
Block's latest collection of darkly funny, morally ambiguous short tales featuring the philatelist–hit man John Keller and his wisecracking "manager," Dot, is being called a novel. This disingenuous designation is clarified in the...
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Lawrence Block, Author, Lawrence Block, Read by , read by the author. Harper Audio $25.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-06-053646-6
Block (The Burglar in the Library; Eight Million Ways to Die; etc.) is one of today's most well-established mystery and thriller writers, but his gift for crafting compelling narratives does not, unfortunately, translate to a knack for narration.
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Lawrence Block, Author, Stephen King, Introduction by Dark Harvest $19.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-913165-66-9
Block has been getting better and better in recent Matt Scudder novels, but as this first hardcover version of a 16-year-old paperback shows, he was pretty good from the start. King's admiring introduction is generous but by no means overstated....
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean, $25 (104p) ISBN 978-1-59606-795-0
In this quietly suspenseful novella from MWA Grand Master Block, a man on the run boards a Trailways bus in Galbraith, N.Dak., and gets off in Cross Creek, Mont. Under a new name, he settles down in Cross Creek, where he lands a fry-cook job, rents...
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Lawrence Block, Author, Lawrence Block, Editor Oxford University Press, USA $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-19-516952-2
This engaging anthology from the American National Biography reference series chronicles America's obsession with the outlaw and documents the rise and fall of more than 50 of the country's most infamous rogues. Coverage spans some two centuries of...
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Lawrence Block, Author, Various, Author, Adams Round Table, Editor Berkley Publishing Group $21.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-425-16146-3
The Adams Round Table, founded in 1982 by Mary Higgins Clark and Thomas Chastain, is a group of writers who meet once a month at a restaurant to share their writing experiences. In its fourth anthology (Missing in Manhattan), there are a few...
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Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake, Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $30 (400p) ISBN 978-1-59606-303-7
In the 1960s, Block and the late Westlake (1933–2008), not yet individually established as two of the world's most superbly talented crime writers, collaborated on three erotic pulp novels: A Girl Called Honey, So Willing, and Sin Hellcat. One...
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean, $25 (96p) ISBN 978-1-59606-811-7
A fresh contract to kill takes MWA Grand Master Block’s stamp-collecting hit man, Keller, last seen in 2013’s Hit Me, from his home in New Orleans via Amtrak to Chicago. Keller reluctantly tells his daughter that the trip is philatelic in nature. In
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Edited by Lawrence Block. Pegasus, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-68177-561-6
MWA Grand Master Block follows 2016’s In Sunlight or In Shadow—which gathered stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper—with an anthology whose theme is a bit more nebulous: stories inspired by iconic paintings, from the cave drawings at...
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean, $25 (160p) ISBN 978-1-59606-893-3
This well-crafted novella from MWA Grand Master Block finds recovering alcoholic and retired PI Matthew Scudder, last seen in 2011’s A Drop of the Hard Stuff, and his wife, Elaine, enjoying the good life in Manhattan. Then Elaine, whom Matt met...
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean, $30 (144p) ISBN 978-1-59606-957-2
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. In “Mr. Rhodenbarr, Bookseller, Advises a...
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Lawrence Block. LB Productions, $14.99 trade paper (218p) ISBN 978-1-951939-64-9
This unnerving narrative from MWA Grand Master Block (The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes) opens in 1968 at a honky-tonk bar in Bakersfield, Calif., where Roger Edward Borden, a gas station attendant in his mid-20s, charms a drunken woman into...
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean, $30 (232p) ISBN 978-1-64524-027-3
This welcome expanded edition of MWA Grand Master Block’s 2013 collection of the same name contains the complete short fiction featuring his best-known character, Matthew Scudder. The stories, which run the gamut from Scudder’s early years as an...
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Lawrence Block. Subterranean Press, $60 (280p) ISBN 978-1-64524-130-0
Amiable burglar and Greenwich Village bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr returns in this imaginative 13th installment of Block’s long-running series (after 2013’s The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons), which Subterranean Press is releasing in a limited...
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John K. Snyder III and Lawrence Block. IDW, $24.99 (144p) ISBN 978-1-61377-884-5
Snyder’s adaptation of Block’s novel makes for a skillfully realized graphic narrative. On the mean streets of 1982 New York City, former policeman Matthew Scudder works as a private investigator. His latest case connects him with Kim Dakkinen, a...
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ARTICLES
  • Edward Hopper as Muse: PW Talks with Lawrence Block
  • Edward Hopper as Muse: PW Talks with Lawrence Block
  • Hit Parade: PW Talks with Lawrence BlockA Web-Exclusive Q&A
  • Edward Hopper as Muse: PW Talks with Lawrence Block
  • Edward Hopper as Muse: PW Talks with Lawrence Block
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