Showing results by author "Lawrence Block" in All Categories

"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 ...

Scanning the world's literature, including the vast library of forbidden books, John Warren Wells provides a searching and comprehensive overview of human sexuality. Chapters include: The Endless Search for Eros, The Techniques of Provoking Desire, Positions for Coitus, Extracoital Copulation, Masturbation, Pluralistic Sex Practices, and more. Introduction by Benjamin Morse, M.D.

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 ...

Can a one-woman crime wave settle down and find contentment and happiness in the arms of a nice surburban lady in Kirkland, Washington? That’s what Kit Tolliver’s going to have to find out for herself. She’s become closer to Rita than she’s ever been to another human being, and the phone conversations the two women have are more exciting than the times she spends in bed with men. But there’s a lot Rita doesn’t know about her. Like what she’s done to every man shes been with, starting with her own father. What’ll happen if she tells her? What’ll happen if she doesn’t? All...

LAWRENCE BLOCK remembers: “Actually, the header’s mistaken. In point of fact, I remember next to nothing about Trailer Trollop. I’ve loaded it onto my Kindle in advance of republishing it, and I’ve made my way through a few of its chapters, and while there’s sufficient textual evidence to make it very clear that I wrote this book, the memory of the two or three weeks devoted to so doing has long since left me. “I can tell you where and when I wrote it. In the spring of 1960, my recently-acquired first wife and I took an apartment on West 69th Street in New York. I installed a ...

Kit Tolliver’s got a problem. Whenever she has sex with a man, she feels an irresistible urge to kill him. That’s fine, she enjoys the killing as much as the sex, but it does limit the possibilities for a satisfying long-term relationship. But she’s got a friend, a woman in Kirkland, Washington, and there’s a definite sexual undercurrent to the friendship. Is that a possibility? And would she even enjoy sex with a woman? And what would happen afterward? She’s in St. Louis, hoping a lesbian bar might hold the answer. And she’s not the bar’s only patron with a hidden agenda. ...

A partir de su debut en 1977, Bernie Rhodenbarr se ha ganado la entusiasta admiración de un público internacional cada vez más numeroso. Este caballero, con su corazón ligero y sus dedos más ligeros aún, cuyos talentos detectivescos lo sacan de los apuros en que lo meten sus habilidades de ladrón, se roba de paso los corazones y las mentes de los lectores. «Los ladrones no pueden escoger» es su primera aparición.

En su cuarta aventura, Matthew Scudder reabre un caso que había investigado años antes como detective del Departamento de Policía de Nueva York. Louis Pinell, el recién aprehendido Merodeador del Picahielo, admite libremente haber matado a siete jóvenes mujeres nueve años atrás – pero jura que Bárbara Ettinger fue asesinada por algún copión. Scudder le cree. Sin embargo, la pista que podría conducir al verdadero asesino de Ettinger es torcida, oscura y peligrosa…además de estar ya más fría que el cadáver de la joven que Scudder está resuelto a vengar. Su investigación ...

From the notebook of a female sex therapist: "The "patient" calls me this morning to confirm his appointment, arrived precisely at 11 a.m. He's 28, tax lawyer, divorced. Sex problems: periodic impotence, periodic premature ejaculation, occasional inability to reach climax. Diagnosis: general sexual insecurity. "We sit on couch, drink coffee. Neck a little. He has soft hands, a nice touch. Very breast-oriented. We get undressed, sit around naked, then go to bed and play with each other. He gets erection almost immediately but loses it early, then unable to get it back. "I tell him we'll cure...

In her fifth appearance, “Waitress Wanted,” Kit Tolliver had to leave Phoenix in a hurry. She’d had sex with her boss, and that sealed his fate; the guy had about as much survival potential as a male Black Widow spider. Now she’s in Washington State, renting a room in a comfortable suburban house, and ready to hook up with one of the men on her list. A Chicagoan, he slept with her a couple of years ago in New York, and got out of town before she could seal the deal. And now he’s right here in Kirkland, and he doesn’t know it, but he’s about to get lucky. Except the clown ...

In “Clean Slate” (Kit Tolliver #4) Kit found her mission in life. There were five men who once slept with her and lived to tell the tale, and she’s determined to hunt them down and wipe them off the board of life. So far, so good. But what do you do when all you know about a guy is the name he gave you? She’d met him in Philadelphia, but he was in town on business, so all she really knew was that he was from someplace else. Good old Sid from Philadelphia, except he wasn’t from Philadelphia, and his name wasn’t Sid. Want to give that a whirl out on Google? Then Rita told her ...

KEPT So you’re unemployed, fresh off a construction crew in Albany, and standing on a Thruway ramp trying to thumb a ride, and a babe in a Cadillac convertible stops for you. Hey, these things happen. They never happened to me, but never mind. For you it's different. You’re Mark Taggert and you’ve got the good sense to get in the car, and it changes your life. The girl’s Elaine Rice, and she’s gorgeous and sexy, and you wind up in her Park Avenue apartment, and you go to bed, and the chemistry is right, and there’s only one problem. She’s rich. Too rich for you to be ...

Some Days You Get the Bear is listed in various bibliographical sources as having first appeared in Penthouse, but I don't believe it did. The story SOLD to Penthouse, and sat in inventory forever, until my agent asked for its return. Then in 1993 It became the title story in my third collection of short fiction, published by William Morrow, and later turned up in my omnibus collection of short fiction, Enough Rope. It's not a crime story, nor is it erotic, so that makes it not what you might expect from me. If I were to categorize it—and I'd just as soon not—I'd probably call it a ...

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...

Sheesh. What a lousy title. Flesh Mob was published by Midnight Reader, a fellow imprint of Nightstand Books, in 1962. I can tell at a glance that it’s my work, although I don’t specifically recall writing it. And I must have put a title on it, but I an assure you that it wasn’t Flesh Mob. It could only have been the inspiration of some editor in Illinois. Several notables filled that role over the years, including Earl Kemp, A. J. Budrys, and Harlan Ellison, but it’s hard to imagine any of those three making a eureka moment of Flesh Mob. For years it struck me as merely a bad title...

Lawrence Block remembers: “Back in the 1960s, when I was writing erotic novels for several publishers, I trauned and employed several ghostwriters. The first, William Coons, was recruited by my friend Donald Westlake; MAN FOR RENT is half his work and half mine, and here’s what wrote about it in my memoir of those early years, A Writer Prepares…” This happened fairly early in Bill’s ghosting career, when he was living with his wife and daughter in Washington Heights—but not too early, because it was after Nightstand had upped their order to two Andrew Shaw titles a month. I’d ...

Kit Tolliver’s chosen lifestyle is pretty clear-cut. She finds a guy, goes home with him, has sex with him, and kills him. What could be simpler? But way back in “Rude Awakening” (Kit Tolliver #2) she had a little too much to drink, and she fell asleep before finishing the job. During breakfast the next morning, she found a chance to put a little something in her host’s vodka bottle. Alas, it didn’t work out quite the way she’d hoped. Peter Fuhrmann was alive and well, and still a name on her list of The Ones Who GotAway. It took a lot of work to determine this, and more work to...

When Kit Tolliver met Alvin Kirkaby, he looked cute in his military uniform. He was on his way to an overseas assignment, and maybe it was an uncharacteristic attack of patriotism that led her to break her usual pattern and spare his life. But now he’s just a name on her list, and home from the wars, so all she has to do is head down to Hedgemont, North Carolina, and give her soldier boy an honorable discharge. Then she walks into his trailer and finds out things are a little more complicated than that... All of Kit’s homicidal (and increasingly erotic) adventures are collected in book ...

In 2006, the estimable S J Rozan invited me to contribute a story to Bronx Noir, an anthology she'd been commissioned to edit for Akashic Books. As she'd been obliging enough to write a story for my own Manhattan Noir, I felt honor-bound to return the favor. To do so, I enlisted the homicidal services of a young woman who'd starred in "If You Can't Stand the Heat," my Hell's Kitchen story for Manhattan Noir. Although she seemed quite capable of standing the heat, I figured it was nevertheless time for her to get out of the Kitchen, so I sent her up to the Riverdale section of the Bronx. My ...

Sheldon Lord began his career with CARLA (#5 in the Collection of Classic Erotica),published by Harry Shorten’s Midwood Books in 1958. Just about a year later he wrote CAMPUS TRAMP (CCL #7) for William Hamling’s Nightstand Books, for whom he’d morphed into Andrew Shaw. And young Mr. Lord’s first book for yet a third publisher, Beacon, was APRIL NORTH (CCL #4).Each publisher wanted more from the guy. Beacon’s request for a second book was remarkably specific. They had a title in mind—COMMUNITY OF WOMEN—and a theme. Their notion was that no end of interesting and attractive ...