Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

For the most part, Kit Tolliver’s homicidal lifestyle suits her just fine. But her recent North Carolina reunion with a wounded veteran (“One Kind Favor I Ask of You”) has left her with her own verion of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She’s found a room in a cheap hotel in the Rust Belt, she’s working a minimum-wage job, and she’s letting time take time. But a girl gets restless, you know? And one night she goes out for a walk, and a car pulls up, and a guy rolls down the window and offers her a ride. “Don’t get in the car,” a little voice says. But she gets in the car......

Lawrence Block has this to say about Flesh Parade: “FLESH PARADE was first published in 1962 by Midnight Reader, a sister imprint of Nightstand Books. The title was supplied by an editor, and we’ll never know what my own title may have been. The publisher was fond of two-word titles, often with favorite words: Flesh, Slut, Lust. They could slip past the censors while letting the reader know what kind of book he was getting. “I’ve had a complicated relationship with my early pseudonymous books. There was a time when I rejoiced in the fact that they had not been printed on acid-free ...

One of this book's six versatile ladies sums it up like this: "When we first began to get into swinging, our whole orientation was innocent, and essentially limited to the idea of mate-swapping. That was what we thought swinging was about--you met with another couple, paired off, and had sex. We never considered the possibility that homosexual relations would be involved. Well, you live and you learn. I found out today I liked making love to another woman. Today I can't envision swinging without lesbian relations. And I understand that ninety-two percent of wives who get into swinging also ...

Lawrence Block remembers: “Well, maybe that’s not the best way to kick things off, because the fact of the matter is that Lawrence Block remembers virtually nothing about writing BUTCH. I have no difficulty recognizing it as my own work, and I remember hanging the title Butch on one of my monthly titles for Bill Hamling’s Nightstand Books—and, wonder of wonders, noting its appearance on the printed volume. “It’s not a bad title, but I don’t know that this was the right book for it. In Her Brogues Oxford-Style, who uploaded Harold McCauley’s reasonably fetching artwork to ...

Because they were collected into a single hardcover volume published by Subterranean Press, a good number of readers are acquainted with my three collaborations with Donald E. Westlake. That's not the case with CIRCLE OF SINNERS, a similar joint effort undertaken with another longstanding (and, I'm pleased to say, still standing) friend and colleague, Hal Dresner. Unlike two of the Block/Westlake titles, CIRCLE OF SINNERS did not bear a joint byline; Nightstand issued it as "by Don Holliday," which was in fact Hal's pen name. (To increase the level of confusion, one book of mine was ...

Lawrence Block on Lust Weekend: “LUST WEEKEND was written in 1962 and published that same year by Nightstand Books. The title’s an obvious play on THE LOST WEEKEND, Charles Jackson’s groundbreaking novel of alcoholism. The book was a sensation, as was the film adaptation starring Ray Milland. “The people at Nightstand generally changed the titles on my manuscripts. But LUST WEEKEND made the cut, and I’m sure I came up with the title first and wrote the book to fit. ‘Lust’ was a favorite word at Nightstand, where they wanted to excite the readers withoutd alarming the censors. ...

Lawrence Block on GIRLS ON THE PROWL: “GIRLS ON THE PROWL was first published by Nightstand Books in 1961, with Andrew Shaw credited as author. Harold W. McCauley provided the cover art. The principal characters—one hesitates to characterize them as titular—are Saundra, Marilyn, and Joan. (Joan is the lesbian.) “A mere forty-three years later, THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL was first published by William Morrow in 2004, with Lawrence Block credited as author. Amy King provided the jacket design, Paul Oakley the jacket illustration, while the author photograph was the work of Athena ...

"You Can Call Me Lucky" first appeared in Indian Country Noir, edited by Liz "Bootsie" Martinez and Sarah Cortez, and published by Akashic Books as part of their Noir series. Bootsie is a good friend of mine, and I had a hard time saying no when she beseeched me for a story. I felt unqualified, having minimal acquaintance with American Indians and their habitat. Then I thought of Indian casinos. And I remembered my nameless girlfriend, who'd thus far brightened Hell's Kitchen and Riverdale with her presence. No reason why she had to stay in the five boroughs of New York. Suppose she turned ...

In Mike Nichols' extraordinary film, The Graduate, Anne Bancroft's Oscar-nominated performance as Mrs. Robinson added that character's name to our emotional vocabulary. As the older woman in Dustin Hoffman's life, Bancroft epitomized a phenomenon, at once seductive and predatory. Women like Mrs. Robinson have always been with us. Nowadays they call them Cougars. John Warren Wells spotted the phenomenon early on, and presents revealing interviews with 11 women who fit the job description with a purr and a growl. Here are four of them: MELANIE—One younger man was not enough. She could take ...

When we first met Kit Tolliver, in “If You Can’t Stand the Heat,” we didn’t know her name. She walked into a bar in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, where a slightly sinister gentleman picked her up, took her home, and took her to bed. She had a good time. Then she killed him, took his money, and went on her way. In her fourth appearance, “Clean Slate,” we found out more about Kit. Her name, and how she got this way. And she in turn finds her mission in life. There were five men who slept with her and lived to tell the tale, and she’s determined to hunt them down and wipe them ...

Young David Forrester is a sex-obsessed freshman student at Upper Manhattan’s Columbia University, although the institution remains unnamed in the book. An upperclassman shepherds him through the loss his virginity, then steers him into a club of libertines. And, you know, one thing leads to another. But as far as I’m concerned, the most striking aspect of COLLEGE FOR SINNERS is that it seems to have been the occasion for some unwitting plagiarism on my part. The dramatist Moliere has a character who’s astonished, and not half-chuffed, to discover that all his life he’s been ...

Hard Case Crime, die außergewöhnliche Krimi-Reihe als exklusive und ungekürzte Hörbuchproduktionen: Willkommen in einer Welt, in der die Sonne nur scheint, um tiefe Schatten zu werfen und in den Augen verkaterter, übernächtigter Männer zu brennen. Einer düsteren, brutalen Welt der Ganoven und Huren, in der die scheinbar ehrbaren Bürger moralisch verkommen sind, die Polizisten sowieso.

Karen Winslow is starting over. But she's not sure how to move forward when her deepest secret haunts her and keeps her from enjoying her carefree youth. She's a sweet but troubled young thing, and not until she meets Rae, a confident young lesbian, does she realize what she's been missing. Meanwhile, she's also intrigued by a man and can't help but wonder if a normal life will put an end her sorrows for good.

Twenty-five years ago Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block introduced his acclaimed unlicensed private investigator to the New York crime scene. Today Matt Scudder remains one of the most complex, richly human protagonists in noir fiction as he pursues a faceless adversary with...

In the wake of the great popular success of Coffee, Tea, or Me (purportedly by a pair of personable airline hostesses, but actually written by the equally personable Donald Bain), Irwin Stein of Lancer Books asked John Warren Wells to turn his attention to the same topic. Would that all requests from publishers were as pleasantly fulfilled. Here’s the blurb that appeared on the Lancer edition: “Did she serve you yesterday? “She is every man's dream mistress, pleasant and poised, cool under stress, always smiling and--because she is booked on another flight tomorrow morning--disposable...

You might be surprised to learn that back in 1961 Nightstand Books published an inquiry into the heartbreak of scoliosis, but—oh, hang on a minute. You say the title refers to characters who are not spinally but psychosexually bent?Oh.Well, never mind.Dave and Nancy Grantland look for all the world like happy couple leading a comfortable suburban lifestyle. And Lucy King, the regular babysitter for the Gavilans next door, looks for all the world like a normal teenager.But Dave’s lost interest in sex with his wife, as he increasingly becomes obsessed with the desire for a much younger ...

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.

It is Kit Tolliver's oft-repeated role in life to hook up with a suitable male, go home with him, have richly satisfying and often inventive sex with him, and then kill him and take his money. She'd done so in three stories ("If You Can't Stand the Heat", set in Hell's Kitchen, "Rude Awakening," set in the Bronx, and "You Can Call Me Lucky," set in an Indian casino in Michigan) and, while I knew her like a sister, I still didn't know her name or her backstory or why she was doing these terrible things. Then Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin invited me to contribute a story to a cross-...

One morning in the spring of 1958 I woke up in my room at the Hotel Alexandria with a paralyzing hangover (which was not unusual) and an idea for a book (which was). I sat in front of my typewriter, and within a few hours I had produced a chapter-by-chapter outline of a novel. I had all the characters sketched out and knew how they'd relate to one another, and how the rather elementary storyline would resolve itself. I even had a title: Shadows.

For almost three years, novelist and short-story writer Lawrence Block's monthly column, "Generally Speaking," was one of the most popular features in Linn's Stamp News. A general collector of pre-1940 issues, Block had the entire world of stamps as his subject, and he turned in 33 columns before he decided it was time to stop. But Keller, the author's fictional character, never lost his enthusiasm for philately. A wistful and introspective killer for hire, Keller rekindled a boyhood passion for stamps at the end of Hit Man, the first of a series of books about him.