Lawrence Block

For the first time ever, all of Bernie's short-form appearances in one complete volume - plus two new, unpublished pieces. In all of mystery fiction, there has never been a character like Bernie--and in this book, he demonstrates all the charm and wit and kleptophilic ingenuity that has made two generations of readers welcome their favourite burglar into their homes.

Assassinations, political upheaval, student riots, and conservative rage. In the thick of the Cold War it was the perfect recipe for revolution, and it only took a gentle push to send a nation toppling into dictatorship. But what if it happened in the United States? Miles Dorn can make it so. A hired killer with no past and no future, he steps out of retirement and sets his sights on the political leaders holding America back from the brink. When...

Happily retired, living under a new name with his wife and daughter, Keller thought he was out of the murder-for-hire business. Until he got the call from his old employer, asking him to tackle the most unusual assignment of his career. The client's wife is having an affair, and Keller's been hired to get rid of her lover. But who is this mysterious lover? The husband doesn't know-he only knows that she has one, and he wants the man dead. It's an...

"Martin H. Ehrengraf, dapper and diabolical, may be Lawrence Block's darkest creation. He's the defense attorney who never sees the inside of a courtroom, because all his clients are innocent--no matter how guilty they may seem. Some even believe themselves to be guilty: they remember pulling the trigger, or wiring the dynamite to their spouse's car, or holding the bloody blade. But things have a way of working out when Martin Ehrengraf is on the...

On the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, five lives are about to collide - with fatal results. You'll meet MARTY - the professional gambler who rolls the dice on a night with... MEG - the bored divorcee who seeks excitement and finds... LILY - the beautiful hitchhiker lured into a live sex show by... CASSIE - the redhead with her own private agenda... and WEAVER - the madman, the killer with a straight razor in his pocket,...

Well past retirement age and feeling his years--but still staying sober one day at a time--Matthew Scudder learns that alcoholics aren't the only ones who count the days since their last slip. Matt's longtime partner, Elaine, tells him of a group of former sex workers who do something similar, helping each other stay out of the life. But when one young woman describes an abusive client who's refusing to let her quit, Elaine encourages her to get help...

Whether you are a fan of Matt Scudder or Bernie Rhodenbarr, whether you know Lawrence Block as the best living writer about New York or the most versatile of crime novelists, this is the book you have been waiting for. Block talks to mystery connoisseur Ernie Bulow about his apprenticeship writing for pulp magazines and working at a leading literary agency, about his love of New York and his fondness for travel. He gives brief, tantalizing glimpses...

Matt Scudder wields his own brand of guerilla justice against kidnappers who have taken a drug dealer's wife. The 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 friend, ex-cop Scudder, they track the killers through the back streets of Brooklyn.

The pretty young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer-a minister's son-hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's father has come to Matthew Scudder for answers, sending the unlicensed private investigator in search of terrible truths about a life that was lived and lost in a sordid world of perversion and pleasures. -- from Amazon.

"A Writer Prepares, an examination of the first quarter-century of a writer's life, is the work of two writers. There's the middle-aged fellow who wrote about half of it at a blistering pace in 1994, and there's the octogenarian who finished the job another quarter-century later. The older fellow brought less raw energy to the task, and his memory is a long way from infallible, but one can only hope he's offset these losses with a slight edge in judgment,...