Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain's sleep center, Even Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world's languages (he's fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world's lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge.

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.

In this first in a series of wickedly funny mysteries, best-selling author Lawrence Block introduces Bernie Rhodenbarr, sometimes burglar, sometimes sleuth. Pulling only an occasional, very discreet job, Bernie manages to maintain his comfortable New York City apartment and keep his unorthodox vocation a closely-guarded secret. Every burglar knows never to trust anonymous phone calls. But when the caller offers easy money for an hour's work, Bernie can't ignore the job.

Bookselling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn’t generally get philosophical about his criminal career. He’s good at it, it’s addictively exciting—and it pays a whole lot better than pushing old tomes. He steals therefore he is, period.

Lawrence Block's talent for creating colorful characters, sophisticated dialog, and engaging atmosphere has earned him many awards: the title of Grand Master, three Edgar Awards, four Shamus Awards, and a Nero Wolfe Award. One of his most popular series follows the adventures of the suave bookseller and crook, Bernie Rhodenbarr. Bernie's sweetheart has dumped him. But although his heart is broken, he hasn't lost his love for fine books - or for an occasional discrete burglary.

On the border between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, five lives are about to collide - with fatal results. This is MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block at his rawest and most visceral, a bloody, bawdy, brutal story of passion and punishment - and of lines that were never meant to be crossed - available for the first time in 50 years!

When a man called Bill spots a sign in a restaurant window, he grabs his carry-on and gets off his bus. Within an hour he's got himself a job as a short-order cook, and a start on a whole new life in Cross Creek, Montana. Things just fall into place. He applies for a library card, and the next thing you know he's having dinner with the librarian. One thing leads to another, and he can see a whole new life stretching out before him.

This is a city that seduces dreamers - then eats their dreams. Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Scudder is the best, and now the ex-cop turned private investigator is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the lost, he's finding love - and death - in the worst possible places.

Nine long years have passed since the killer last struck - nine years since eight helpless young women were brutally slaughtered by an icepick-wielding maniac. The trail grew cold and the book was unofficially closed on a serial killer who stopped killing. But now "The Icepick Prowler" has confessed - but only to seven of the killings. Not only does he deny the eighth, he has an airtight alibi. Barbara Ettinger's family had almost come to accept that the young woman was the victim of a random killing.

It’s hard to ignore someone with his hands in your mouth. Bernie Rhodenbarr’s all ears when Dr. Sheldrake, his dentist, starts complaining about his detestable, soon-to-be-ex wife, and happens to mention the valuable diamonds she keeps lying around the apartment.

After appraising the worth of a rich man's library—conveniently leaving his fingerprints everywhere in the process—Bernie finds he's the cops' prime suspect when his client is murdered.

The hooker was young, pretty...and dead, butchered in a Greenwich Village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister's son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute's father wants it opened again--that's where Matthew Scudder comes in.

Lawrence Block's 17 Matthew Scudder novels have won the hearts of readers throughout the world - along with a bevy of awards including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe (Germany), and the Maltese Falcon (Japan). But Scudder has starred in short fiction as well, and it's all here, from a pair of late-'70s novelettes ("Out the Window" and "A Candle for the Bag Lady") through "By the Dawn's Early Light" (Edgar) and "The Merciful Angel of Death" (Shamus), all the way to "One Last Night at Grogan's", a moving and elegiac story never before published.

Matthew Scudder is about to face every cop's worst nightmare: James Leo Motley, psychopath extraordinaire. Twelve years ago Matthew Scudder lied to a jury to put James Leo Motley behind bars. Now the ingenious psychopath is free, and the alcoholic ex-cop turned private investigator must pay dearly for his sins. Friends and former lovers - even strangers unfortunate enough to share Scudder's name - are turning up dead because a vengeful maniac is determined not to rest until he's driven his nemesis back to the bottle…and then to the boneyard.

Winner of multiple Edgar and Shamus Awards, Lawrence Block keeps fans guessing to the end with his rollicking Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries. In this diverting caper, full-time bookstore owner and part-time burglar Bernie tries to do the right thing for a new friend, only to find himself accused of some terrible wrongs.

Lawrence Block's new collection assembles seven works of fiction produced over a period of 60 years.

Matt Scudder is drawn into the case of a serial killer targeting criminals the law cannot touch. The Will of the People, egged on by a vitriolic newspaper columnist, kills a sex offender, a mobster, and a racist cult leader despite their seemingly impenetrable security. Then Scudder gets a call from a hot-shot attorney, the recipient of the Will's latest letter....

An ancient brotherhood meets annually in the back room of a swank Manhattan restaurant, a fraternity created in secret to celebrate life by celebrating its dead. But the past three decades have not been kind to the Club of 31. Matthew Scudder - ex-cop and ex-boozer - has known death in all its guises, which is why he has been asked to investigate a baffling thirty-year run of suicides and suspiciously random accidents that has thinned the ranks of this very select group of gentlemen.

Edgar Award-winner Lawrence Block invites you into the criminally funny world of the most notorious star of mystery fiction: Bernie Rhodenbarr, bookseller by day and burglar by night. In this humorous mystery, Bernie's passion for Humphrey Bogart movies leads him to a beautiful damsel in distress, a dangerous international conspiracy, and more than a few incriminating bodies. Sparkling with wit and energy, The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart is guaranteed to have you laughing out loud.

Karlis, Tanner's comrade in the Latvian Army in Exile, is pining for his true love, a gymnast who can't get out of the Soviet Union. So Tanner sneaks through a hole in the Iron Curtain, meets the child he unwittingly fathered on an earlier trip to Macedonia, smuggles a dissident intellectual out of Yugoslavia, adds to his retinue a six-year-old Lithuanian girl, who'd be the rightful heir to the Lithuanian throne if there ever were one, and winds up not with one Latvian gymnast but with a whole company of them.