Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

For 14 years, five-time Edgar winner and MWA grandmaster Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column on fiction for Writers Digest magazine. These columns yielded four books regarded as classics: Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, Spider Spin Me a Web, The Liar's Bible, and now, The Liar's Companion. Listen to The Liar's Companion and gain inspiration to create outstanding fiction.

Matt Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. The crime rate's down and the stock market's up. Gentrification's prettying-up the old neighborhood. The New York streets don't look so mean anymore. Then all hell breaks loose.

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.

Four Lives at the Crossroads is the latest addition to the Collection of Classic Erotica. But it came very close to being shoehorned instead into the Classic Crime Library. Back in the late 1950s and early '60s, when I was finding myself as a writer and producing a great quantity of books under pen names, some of the books I wrote were as much crime fiction as they were erotica.

I can trace the origin of A Week as Andrea Benstock to two distinct sources. The first inspired my attempting the book, while the second inspired its form. Let me consider the second first. In 1949, the Belgian author Georges Simenon published a novel called - well, who knows what he called it, but the English translation bore the title - Four Days in a Lifetime. I must have read it sometime in the late 1950s, because what I recall of the experience is that I was in my parents’ house on Starin Avenue at the time.

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.

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.

O Rose thou art sick. /The invisible worm, /That flies in the night /In the howling storm: /Has found out thy bed /Of crimson joy: /And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy. Those eight lines constitute the complete text of “The Sick Rose,” published by William Blake in Songs of Experience in 1794. I took to Blake early on, and thought Of Crimson Joy would make a dandy title. I accordingly fastened it on this novel when I sent the manuscript to Harry Shorten at Midwood.

William Charles Croydon, a convicted murderer sentenced to death, amuses himself by exchanging correspondence with the misguided women who send him fan mail. But soon even that loses its attraction, and so he begins to write to the brother of his victim, Paul Danridge. At first, Danridge doesn’t reply, so he writes again, and again. After ignoring the letters initially, Dandridge finally can’t help himself and begins writing back.

The Adulterers features George and Mona Sutton, a sexually incompatible couple on their way to a Mexican divorce. But they meet a helpful guide named Ernesto, and that changes everything. Ernesto took George to a live sex show, and it made an impression on the fellow. And, not too long afterward, Mona drank enough rum and Coca-Cola to float a light cruiser, and wound up as the sex slave of El Tigre.

Four old friends, a policeman, a solider, a doctor and a priest, play cards and trade stories....The Daily Telegraph recently proclaimed Lawrence Block as one of the 50 great crime writers of all time. Find out why in this spicy brew or lust, deception, double crosses, violence and forbidden desire.

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.

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.

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.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Born to Be Bad and experience the compelling world of erotica.

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?

The ménage a trois in its many forms has fascinated both observers and participants throughout history. John Warren Wells provides in-depth interviews with all the participants in a manner designed to make the dynamics of these relationships readily comprehensible - but no less intriguing.

In the third installment of his acclaimed anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

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.