Lawrence Block Popular Books
Lawrence Block Biography & Facts
Lawrence Block (born June 24, 1938) is an American crime writer best known for two long-running New York-set series about the recovering alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and the gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. Block was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1994. Block has written in the genres of crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century, releasing over 100 books. Early life Lawrence Block was born June 24, 1938 in Buffalo, New York, where he was raised. He attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, but left before graduating. Career Block's earliest work, published pseudonymously in the 1950s, was mostly in the soft-porn mass market paperback industry, an apprenticeship he shared with fellow mystery author Donald E. Westlake. Block describes the early sex novels as a valuable experience, noting that, despite the titillating content of the books (rather mild by later standards of adult fiction), he was expected to write fully developed novels with plausible plots, characters and conflicts. He further credits the softcore novels as a factor in his prolific output; writing 15 to 20 sex novels per year to support himself financially, Block was forced to learn to write in a manner that required little revision and editing of his first drafts. His first novel was a lesbian fiction titled Strange Are The Ways of Love, written under the name Lesley Evans. In 2016, Block reissued this novel with a new title Shadows, under another of his pseudonyms, Jill Emerson. The first of his work to appear under his own name was the 1957 story "You Can't Lose," for the crime/adventure magazine Manhunt. The first novel to be published under Block's name was Grifter's Game (1961). It started as an erotic novel but, as Block would later write, "I decided it might be a cut above what I'd been writing, so I wrote it as a crime novel with the hope it might work for Gold Medal." 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. He has three daughters, Amy Reichel, Jill Block and Alison Pouliot, from an earlier marriage. With Lynne, he spends much of his time traveling (the two have been to 135 countries), but continues to consider New York his home. He was a regular guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005-2015), appearing in eight of Ferguson's ten seasons as host of the program. Considerable autobiographical information on the earlier phase of his life and career may be found scattered through Telling Lies for Fun and Profit (1981), a collection of his fiction columns from Writer's Digest. In 2005 he was honored with the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award. Block is an alumnus of the Ragdale Foundation. Recurring characters 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 in many ways 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 from their publication dates. 1982's 8 Million Ways to Die (filmed in 1986 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 recovering alcoholic. 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 more 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 fan favorites 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, a tightly plotted puzzler featuring a rapidly dwindling fraternity known as the "Club of 31". A Walk Among the Tombstones, published in 1992, was made into a film, released in 2014, written and directed by Scott Frank, with Liam Neeson playing the lead role. The seventeenth entry, A Drop of the Hard Stuff was published in May 2011. It has been suggested that Scudder's struggle with alcoholism is in part autobiographical; while Block has repeatedly refused to discuss the subject, citing AA's own tradition of anonymity, in a column he wrote for Writer's Digest, Block wrote that when he created Scudder, "I let him hang out in the same saloon where I spent a great deal of my own time. I was drinking pretty heavily around that time, and I made him a pretty heavy drinker, too. I drank whiskey, sometimes mixing it with coffee. So did Scudder." Bernie Rhodenbarr Block's other major series, humorous and much lighter in tone, relates the misadventures of gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. The series is rich in sophisticated, witty dialogue. Unlike Scudder, Rhodenbarr is ageless, remaining essentially the same from 1977's Burglars Can't Be Choosers, to the twelfth and most recent entry, 2022's The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown. The only significant advancements come in the third volume, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979, winner of the first annual Nero Award) 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 an 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, Sue Grafton and John Sandford, 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 Burg.... Discover the Lawrence Block popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Lawrence Block books.
Best Seller Lawrence Block Books of 2024
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Charlesgate Confidential
Scott Von Doviak“CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL is terrific” – Stephen King A sharp and funny tale of a daring art heist gone wronginspired by the same reallife, stillunsolved crime depicted in the Netf...
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Dead Girl Blues
Lawrence BlockDEAD GIRL BLUES is a dark novel about a crime that appears to go undetected. Why don't I let these people tell you about it?"Dark and cold as the far side of the moon, but with pro...
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A Bloody Business
Dylan Struzan & Drew StruzanON THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF PROHIBITION, LEARN WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.In 1919, the National Prohibition Act was passed, making it illegal across America to produce, distribute, or se...
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A Stab in the Dark
Lawrence BlockLouis Pinell, the recently apprehended "Icepick Prowler," freely admits to having slain seven young women nine years ago but he swears it was a copycat who killed Barbara Ettinger...
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Hit List
Lawrence BlockKeller is a regular guy. He goes to the movies, works on his stamp collection. Call him for jury duty and he serves without complaint. Then every so often he gets a phone call from...
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The Burglar Who Dropped In On Elvis
Lawrence BlockBetween 1977 and 1983, I wrote and published five books about the lighthearted and lightfingered Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr, with his secondhand bookstore and his dogwashing buddy, ...
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The Death of Sweet Mister
Daniel Woodrell & Dennis LehaneShug Akins is a lonely, overweight thirteenyearold boy. His mother, Glenda, is the one person who loves him she calls him Sweet Mister and attempts to boost his confidence and giv...
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Hope to Die
Lawrence BlockThe city caught its collective breath when upscale couple Byrne and Susan Hollander were slaughtered in a brutal home invasion. Now, a few days later, the killers themselves have t...
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The Girl with the Long Green Heart
Lawrence BlockHE WAS EVERY MAN'S DREAM – AND ONE MAN'S NIGHTMARE!Johnny Hayden and Doug Rance had a scheme to take real estate entrepreneur Wallace Gunderman for all he was worth. But they...
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A Stab in the Dark
Lawrence BlockIn his fourth appearance, Matthew Scudder deals as an unlicensed private investigator with a case from his own past as a cop. A serial killer has confessed to the murder of seven w...
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The Burglar in Short Order
Lawrence BlockFour decades ago, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block introduced the world to one of his most beloved and enduring creations: Bernie Rhodenbarr, the clever, nimb...
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The Big Book of Rogues and Villains
Otto PenzlerEdgar Awardwinning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, ruthless, and brilliant criminals in mystery fiction, for the biggest compendium of bad guy...
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A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
Lawrence BlockA successful socialite's beautiful wife was raped and murdered in her own home and Matt Scudder believes the victim's "grieving" husband was responsible for the outrage. But to pr...
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The Night and The Music
Lawrence BlockBesides the 17 novels that began with 1975’s The Sins of the Fathers, Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder has appeared in shorter fiction, and all 11 novelettes, short stories, and vi...
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Tanner On Ice
Lawrence BlockCold 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 Tannersicle. Which he never...
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The Count of 9
Erle Stanley GardnerFrom the worldfamous creator of "Perry Mason," Erle Stanley Gardner comes another baffling case for the Cool & Lam detective agency.HBO series Perry Mason airs June 2020 starri...
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Help I Am Being Held Prisoner
Donald E. WestlakeJAILED FOR A JOKEIt isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters so j...
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Some Days You Get the Bear
Lawrence BlockThe bear is on the prowl in many different guises. He may be the master thief stealing into Graceland, an intense young passenger experimenting in terror, or a psychiatrist h...
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The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian
Lawrence BlockIt's not that used bookstore owner and parttime burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr believes the less legal of his two professions is particularly ethical. (It is, however, a rush, and he is...
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Everybody Dies
Lawrence BlockMatt Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. The crime rate's down and the stock market's up. Gentrification's prettyingup the old neighborhood. The New York streets don't l...
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Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel
Lawrence BlockLawrence Block, the awardwinning crime fiction author, is almost as well known for his instructional books for writers, and contributed a monthly column on fiction to Writers Diges...
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Dangerous Women
George R.R. Martin & Gardner DozoisThe World Fantasy Awardwinning collection of stories featuring the best and the bravest females across genre fiction.All new and original to this volume, the 21 stories in Dangerou...
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At Home in the Dark
Joe Hill, Nancy Pickard, Duane Swierczynski, Hilary Davidson, James Reasoner, Thomas Pluck, Wallace Stroby, Jill D. Block, Richard Chizmar, Elaine Kagan, Jim Fusilli, Warren Moore, Laura Benedict, N. J. Ayres, Joyce Carol Oates, Joe R. Lansdale & Ed ParkThe crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark: "Some of these stories have one ...
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Even the Wicked
Lawrence BlockMatthew Scudder knows that justice is an elusive commodity in the big city, where a harmless man can be shot dead in a public place criminals fly free through holes in a tattered l...
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The Burglar on the Prowl
Lawrence BlockA philosophical yet practical gentleman, Bernie Rhodenbarr possesses many admirable qualities: charm, intelligence, sparkling wit, and unwavering loyalty. Of course, he also has th...
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Brothers Keepers
Donald E. WestlakeWhat will a group of monks do when their centuryold monastery in New York City is threatened with demolition to make room for a new highrise? What will a group of monks do when the...
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A Long Line of Dead Men
Lawrence BlockMatthew Scudder investigates a secret, a private club in Manhattan whose members suddenly start dying, when it becomes obvious that someone is trying to kill them all.
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The Scoreless Thai
Lawrence BlockEvan Tanner can't sleep. Ever. Which gives him plenty of free time to get involved in lots of interesting endeavors in all sorts of exotic locales.Now Tanner's in Thailand with a p...
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A Walk Among the Tombstones
Lawrence BlockThe wife of Kheran Khoury, heroin wholesaler, is killed after he haggles over the price of her ransom. With the help of two computer geniuses, a streetwise punk, drug lords and his...
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Small Town
Lawrence BlockThe author of dozens of acclaimed novels including those in the Scudder and Keller series, Lawrence Block has long been recognized as one of the premier crime writers of our time. ...
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The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries
Otto PenzlerThe Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Si...
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Such Men Are Dangerous
Lawrence Block"This goes through you like a dose of salts and stings like iodine."So said Virginia Kirkus Reviews of Such Men Are Dangerous when it first appeared almost fifty years ago, and sin...
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The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons
Lawrence BlockEver since The Burglar on the Prowl climbed the bestseller lists in 2004, fans have been clamoring for a new book featuring the lighthearted and lightfingered Bernie Rhodenbarr. No...
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The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons
Lawrence BlockEver since The Burglar on the Prowl climbed the bestseller lists in 2004, fans have been clamoring for a new book featuring the lighthearted and lightfingered Bernie Rhodenbarr. No...
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The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling
Lawrence BlockBernie Rhodenbarr has gone legit almost as the new owner of a used bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village. Of course, dusty old tomes don't always turn a profit, so to make en...
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Collectibles
Lawrence Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Thomas Pluck, Joyce Carol Oates, Elaine Kagan, S. A.Cosby, Kasey Lansdale, Lee Goldberg, Janice Eidus, Rob Hart, Dennis Lehane, Otto Penzler, David Rachels, S. J. Rozan & Kristine Kathryn RuschFrom Publishers Weekly:"Standouts include Dennis Lehane's giltedged chiller, 'A Bostonian (in Cambridge),' in which a wealthy collector of letters of abandonment falls prey to wily...
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The Night and the Music
Lawrence BlockLawrence Block’s 17 Matthew Scudder novels have won the hearts of readers throughout the worldalong with a bevy of awards including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe (Germa...
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Invisible Blood
Maxim Jakubowski, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Mary Hoffman & Christopher FowlerFEATURING A BRANDNEW JACK REACHER STORY! A collection of seventeen brandnew crime stories from bestselling authors Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Stella Duffy, and more. Includes three...
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Make Out With Murder
Lawrence BlockHere’s CHIP HARRISONthe second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES...How can a series predicated on the hero’s sexual inno...
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When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
Lawrence BlockIn the dark days, in a sad and lonely place, excop Matt Scudder is drinking his life away and doing "favors" for pay for his ginmill cronies. But when three such assignments flow ...
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Eight Million Ways to Die
Lawrence BlockNobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it alsoand she wanted out. Maybe Kim didn't deserve the life...
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The Burglar in the Rye
Lawrence BlockGulliver Fairborn's novel, Nobody's Baby, changed Bernie Rhodenbarr's life. And now pretty Alice Cottrell, Fairborn's onetime paramour, wants the bookselling, bookloving burglar to...