Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

After a night out with friends, Matthew Scudder is reminded of an enigmatic case he had while still working as uniformed policeman. The case in question involves the suicide of a devout Catholic man in front of his wife and children... or was it a murder?

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...

For 15 years, Janet has been married to her devoted and boring husband, Trevor. But their marriage was not as simple as it seemed. Now Janet is on the road, hurtling towards another man, and another life. Has she found freedom, and the strength to escape Trevor’s dominating fetishes? Or is there something far more sinister waiting for her at the crematorium?

 A Writer Prepares, an examination of the first quarter century of one writer's life, is arguably the work of two writers. There's the middle-aged fellow who wrote about half of it at a blistering pace in 1994, and there's the octogenarian who finished the job another quarter century later. The older fellow brought less raw energy to the task, and his memory is a long way from infallible, but one can only hope he's offset these losses with a slight edge in judgment, in perspective, in maturity. 

There's no glass slipper in this fairy tale - just a damsel in distress, a bag of cash, and a whole lot of dead bodies. Reporter Ted Lindsay is trying to forget his ex-wife, and New York City's tough streets are just what the doctor ordered. They're also filled with alluring women, but only one catches Ted's eye. Cinderella Sims is not only beautiful, she's on the run and she needs Ted's help. She's got a bag full of cash and some very angry people staking out her apartment.

Matthew Scudder and his wife Elaine visit their good friend, Mick Ballou, at his bar, Grogan’s, where Mick muses on about the final scene of the Sopranos.

Chip Harrison has finally secured himself a job, acting as the man-about-town for the corpulent detective Leo Haig. And it's on the dangerous streets of New York that Chip brings home his first case, one in which five beautiful sisters are being systematically murdered by a killer with a diabolical design. Three of the Trelawney women have already been bumped off, and now Chip is cozying up to the remaining two, and investigating a couple of other nefarious relatives with motive on their minds.

When young, broke, and single Chip Harrison finds a bus ticket to Bordentown, South Carolina, he knows it was sent by the hand of fate. It’s his way out of wintry New York City, Bordentown’s sheriff provides a very warm welcome! Before long, Chip charms his way into the sheriff’s good graces and into the arms of Lucille, the preacher’s daughter. Even Chip should see he is headed for trouble with a capital T, in another furiously funny caper by Edgar Award-winning author Lawrence Block.

A very dangerous man. That's Paul Kavanagh, an ex-Green Beret with nothing but time on his hands--until he gets an offer to steal a shipment of tactical nuclear weapons form the US government--and finds himself a partner, George Dattner, who has the cold eyes of a trained killer. Each of these men alone is dangerous. But anyone who tries to stop them together is guaranteed not to come out of it alive!

From Ian Rankin to Joe Lansdale, Seanan McGuire to David Morrell, each author reveals the dark truths and buried secrets that make institutions of higher learning such a hotbed of controversy. You'll encounter plagiarism, sexual misconduct, and brutal competition - not to mention secret societies, cover-ups of murder, and one near-future course of study that makes The Handmaid's Tale look like Mother Goose. So: collect your supplies, plan your schedule, and prepare to pull an all-nighter, because The Darkling Halls of Ivy is required listening.

What leads one person to collect stamps and another coins, one fine art and another butterflies? Who can say? But one thing is certain: those who've got the collecting bug care passionately - sometimes violently - about the objects of their obsession. 

Jeff Flanders has a perfectly good life. Until Candace Cain sashays into it, and turns it upside-down. Jeff’s got a good-looking wife; he loves her, and she loves him. He’s got a job, swinging a desk at a semi-shady finance company, signing off on usurious loans to losers; he doesn’t love it and it doesn’t love him, but it’s easy work and it pays the bills. Until a girl called Candy applies for a $1000 loan - with no job, no bank account, no security.

"Readers of Brooklyn Noir will recall that its contents were labeled by neighborhood - Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Greenpoint, etc. We have chosen the same principle here, and the book's contents do a good job of covering the island, from C.J. Sullivan's Inwood and Charles Ardai's Upper East Side, to Justin Scott's Chelsea and Carol Lea Benjamin's Greenwich Village."

While he is probably best known as a novelist and short-story writer, Lawrence Block has produced a rich trove of nonfiction over the course of a 60-year career. Over the years, Block has written extensively for magazines and periodicals. Generally Speaking collects his philatelic columns from Linn's Stamp News, while his extensive observations of crime fiction, along with personal glimpses of some of its foremost practitioners, have won wide acclaim in book form as The Crime of Our Lives. Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails is what he's got left over.

There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 a piece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro. This breathtaking thriller, originally published the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis (under a pen name by Lawrence Block), is the rarest of Block's books - and still a work of chilling relevance all these years later, with Castro and Cuba once again commanding headlines.

Keller ist ein Killer. Durch und durch Profi, cool, selbstsicher, kompetent, zuverlässig. Aber er ist auch eine vielschichtige Persönlichkeit: in sich gekehrt und zurückgezogen, eiskalt und gnadenlos effizient, aber zugleich anfällig für Selbstzweifel und Einsamkeit, Albträume und Zukunftssorgen. Seinem Therapeuten gegenüber gibt er sich als "Troubleshooter" eines großen Unternehmens aus, aber sein eigentliches Metier ist Mord.

In seinem vierten Abenteuer nimmt sich Matthew Scudder - nun in deutscher Neuübersetzung - eines ungelösten Falles an, mit dem er schon Jahre früher als Detective beim NYPD befasst war. Louis Pinell, der vor Kurzem gefasste Eispickel-Mörder, gibt freiherzig zu, vor neun Jahren sieben junge Frauen ermordet zu haben - aber er schwört, dass ein Nachahmer für den Mord an Barbara Ettinger verantwortlich war. Scudder glaubt ihm. Die Spur zu Ettingers wirklichem Mörder ist verworren, dunkel und voller Gefahren ... und sogar noch kälter als die Leiche, der er Gerechtigkeit verschaffen will.

MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block presents 23 stories, all of them on the dark side, and all of them set in the city that never sleeps.

Ein Mann kommt in eine Bar und ab da nimmt sein Leben eine Kehrtwendung. Der Mann bringt eine Frau um, flieht vor dem Gesetz und fängt ein neues Leben an, in einer anderen Stadt, und unter einem anderen Namen. Wird ihn seine Vergangenheit irgendwann wieder einholen? Oder schafft er es, mit einem Mord davonzukommen?

Der Spitzel und Kleingauner Jake "Schnipser" Jablon macht sich eine Menge neuer Feinde, als er die Laufbahn wechselt und von Informant auf Erpresser umsattelt. Früher oder später, vermutet er, wird einer seiner neuen Kunden handgreiflich werden, und wen wird das kümmern? Er sitzt an einem Tisch mit Matthew Scudder, schnipst einen Silberdollar an und lässt ihn auf dem Tisch kreiseln. Schließlich ist das die Gewohnheit, die ihm seinen Spitznamen eingebracht hat. Dann heuert er Scudder an, einen Mord aufzuklären, der sich noch nicht ereignet hat.