Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block (born June 24, 1938) is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York-set series, about recovering-alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively. Block was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.

Biography

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Lawrence Block attended Antioch College, but left before graduating. His earliest work, published pseudonymously in the 1950's, was mostly in the porn paperback industry - an apprenticeship he shared with fellow mystery author Donald E. Westlake. The first of his "own" work to appear was the 1957 story "You Can't Lose." He has since published more than fifty novels and more than a hundred short stories, as well as a series of books for writers.

Block has lived in New York City for decades, setting most of his fiction there, and has come to be very closely associated with the city. He is married to Lynne Block, and has three daughters from an earlier marriage. With Lynne, he spends much of his time travelling (they've been to nearly 100 countries), but continues to consider New York his home.

Matthew Scudder

Block's most famous creation, the ever-evolving Matthew Scudder, was introduced in 1976's The Sins of the Fathers as an alcoholic ex-cop working as an unlicensed private investigator in Hell's Kitchen. Originally published as paperbacks, the early novels are interchangeable; the second and third entries — In the Midst of Death (1976) and Time to Murder and Create (1977) — were written in the opposite order. 1982's Eight Million Ways to Die (filmed in 1988 by Hal Ashby, with unpopular results) breaks from that trend, concluding with Scudder introducing himself at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The series was set to end on that note, but an idle promise Block had made to supply an editor friend with an original Scudder short resulted in "By the Dawn's Early Light," a story set during the character's drinking days, but told from the perspective of a recoverer. Block expanded on that with 1986's When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (named for a line in a song by folk singer Dave Van Ronk, a close friend), which proved not only one of the most literary entries, but also a favorite of the author and his fans. From then on, Scudder's circumstances rarely remain the same from one book to the next; 1990's A Ticket to the Boneyard, for example, reunites him with Elaine Mardell, a hooker from his days on the force, whom he marries several books later. Other high points are 1991's taut, gruesome A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (winner of the Edgar award for best Mystery Novel), and 1993's A Long Line of Dead Men, an ingeniously-plotted puzzler featuring a rapidly dwindling fraternity known as the "Club of 31." The sixteenth entry in the series, All the Flowers Are Dying, was published in early 2005.

Though it's been suggested that Scudder's struggle with alcoholism was in part autobiographical, Block has repeatedly refused to discuss the subject, citing AA's own preference for anonymity.

Bernie Rhodenbarr

Block's other major series, much lighter in tone, relates the misadventures of gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. Unlike Scudder, Rhodenbarr is ageless, remaining essentially the same from 1977's Burglars Can't Be Choosers, to the tenth and most recent entry, 2004's The Burglar on the Prowl. The only significant advancements come in the third volume, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979) which sees Bernie having used the spoils from his previous caper to buy a bookstore, and introduces Carolyn Kaiser, his lesbian "soulmate" and partner in crime. The plots run very much to form: Bernie breaks into a residence (usually on Manhattan's Upper East Side), and, through a series of implausible events, becomes involved in a murder investigation - often as the prime suspect. Not even en eleven-year hiatus (between 1983's The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian and 1994's The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams) would see that basic formula change. There is, however, a meta-quality to the more recent entries: Bernie, the reluctant detective, is himself a bookseller and genre fan, and is apt to make references to Agatha Christie, E.W. Hornung (his cat is named "Raffles"), Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Sue Grafton, among others. The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995) exploits this to full effect: set during a Humphrey Bogart film festival, the story is itself inspired by many of the actor's most famous roles. The Burglar in the Library (1997) similarly imagines a meeting between Hammet and Chandler at a New England inn in the 1940's, casting a volume inscribed by Hammet to Chandler as its own Maltese Falcon.

Other Works

Besides Scudder and Rhodenbarr, Block has written eight novels about Evan Tanner, an adventurer and accidental revolutionary who, as a result of an injury sustained in the Korean war, cannot sleep. All but the last of these were published in the 60's and early 70's (beginning with 1966's The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep), while the most recent, 1998's Tanner on Ice, revived the character after a nearly a thirty-year hiatus. Two episodic novels (Hit Man and Hit List) rework and combine a series of stories about Keller, a lonely, wistful hitman who originally appeared as a semi-regular feature in Playboy magazine in the 1990's.

2003 saw the release of Small Town, Block's first non-series book in fifteen years, which details a group of New Yorkers' varying responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. 2002's Enough Rope collects 83 of his short stories.

Selected Bibliography

Matthew Scudder novels

1. The Sins of the Fathers (1976)
2. In the Midst of Death (1976)
3. Time to Murder and Create (1977)
4. A Stab in the Dark (1981)
5. Eight Million Ways to Die (1982)
6. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1980)
7. Out on the Cutting Edge (1989)
8. A Ticket to the Boneyard (1990)
9. A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1991)
10. A Walk Among the Tombstones (1992)
11. The Devil Knows You're Dead (1993)
12. A Long Line of Dead Men (1994)
13. Even the Wicked (1997)
14. Everybody Dies (1998)
15. Hope to Die (2001)
16. All the Flowers are Dying (2005)

Bernie Rhodenbarr novels

1. Burglars Can't Be Choosers (1977)
2. The Burglar in the Closet (1978)
3. The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979)
4. The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (1980)
5. The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (1983)
6. The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (1994)
7. The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995)
8. The Burglar in the Library (1997)
9. The Burglar in the Rye (1999)
10. The Burglar on the Prowl (2004)

Evan Tanner novels

1. The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep (1966)
2. The Canceled Czech (1966)
3. Tanner's Twelve Swingers (1967)
4. The Scoreless Thai (a.k.a. Two for Tanner) (1968)
5. Tanner's Tiger (1968)
6. Here Comes a Hero (1968)
7. Me Tanner, You Jane (1970)
8. Tanner on Ice (1998)

Chip Harrison novels (as Chip Harrison)

1. No Score (1970)
2. Chip Harrison Scores Again (1971)
3. Make Out With Murder (a.k.a. The Five Little Rich Girls) (1974)
4. The Topless Tulip Caper (1975)

Keller novels

1. Hit Man (1998)
2. Hit List (2000)

Other fiction

1. Cinderella Sims (a.k.a $20 Lust) (1961)
2. Coward's Kiss (a.k.a. Death Pulls a Doublecross) (1961)
3. Grifter's Game (a.k.a. Mona, a.k.a. Sweet Slow Death) (1961)
4. You Could Call it Murder (1961)
5. The Girl With the Long Green Heart (1965)
6. Deadly Honeymoon (1967)
7. After the First Death (1969)
8. The Specialists (1969)
9. Such Men Are Dangerous (as Paul Kavanagh) (1969)
10. Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man (1971)
11. The Triumph of Evil (as Paul Kavanagh) (1971)
12. Not Comin' Home to You (as Paul Kavanagh) (1974)
13. Ariel (1980)
14. Random Walk (1988)
15. Enough Rope (stories) (2002)
16. Small Town (2003)

Books for writers

1. Writing the Novel From Plot to Print (1979)
2. Telling Lies for Fun & Profit (1981)
3. Write For Your Life (1986)
4. Spider, Spin Me a Web (1987)

External Links

• (Lawrence Block's homepage)
• Two audio interviews of Lawrence Block, 1984 and 1986, RealAudio