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Lawrence Block - Page 6
Lawrence Block
The Burglar in the ClosetThe Burglar in the Closet
Time To Murder and CreateTime To Murder and Create
Burglars Can't be ChoosersBurglars Can't be Choosers
Tanner's Twelve SwingersTanner's Twelve Swingers


Paperback - No Exit Press (1990)
The Burglar in the Closet
It was ridiculous really -- there was Bernie Rhodenbarr, pro burglar, locked in the clothes cupboard of a smart New York apartment while he was thieving it. And there was his stash of jewels, all neatly packed, not in hand or at hand but on the opposite side of the bedroom. So by the time Bernie finally picked his way out he wasn't too pleased to find the rocks gone and their beautiful ex-owner, Crystal Sheldrake, lying dead on the mat with a gleaming steel instrument embedded in her heart. The cops weren't too impressed either...
'Fall-down funny ... hilarious.' Publishers Weekly


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Paperback - Signet
Time To Murder and Create
His name was Jake Jablon, but they called him the Spinner. He was a petty thief and a blackmailer. He died a sordid little death. Someone had bashed his head in, then dumped the body into the greasy water of the East River. The cops knew there wasn't a shortage of guys like the Spinner in New York City. And when he turned up on a table in the morgue, nobody cared . .. except Matt Scudder. He's an ex-New York City cop turned private eye. There isn't too much Scudder really cares for anymore, except maybe booze. But he has a conscience that doesn't cut him any slack - especially since the victim paid in advance to find his killer.
PRAISE FOR LAWRENCE BLOCK
"No writer conveys the streets, saloons, stationhouses, furnished rooms, deserted churches, and lost sheep of this city better" New York Daily News
"Block is awfully good, with an ear for dialogue, an eye for low-life types and a gift for fast and effortless storytelling that bear comparison with Elmore Leonard" Los Angeles Times
"The suspense mounts & mounts & mounts . . . very superior." James M. Cain
"Block is a deft surgeon, sure and precise" The New York Times


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Paperback - No Exit Press
Burglars Can't be Choosers
Introducing Bernie Rhodenbarr, New York City's prince of thieves, who really should have known better!
When the mysterious pear-shaped man with a lot of uncomfortably accurate information about Bernie and his career offered him five big ones to liberate a blue leather box - unopened - from an East Side apartment, it would have been a good time to plead a previous engagement, but times were tough.
Everything was straightforward; the box was where it should have been, but before the liberation two men in blue coats turned up. Still all was not lost, there was always a way to work things out . . . That was before they discovered the body in the bedroom and Bernie decided to leg it!
'Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn't have to try for hipness, because hip is in the very air he breathes. The Burglar is just adorable. He is cute without being cuddly, he is witty without looking like he's striving for it, and he is rakish without possessing a single mean streak in his lithe and sinuous body. And his language - I suppose we should say Lawrence Block's language - is dry and droll and elegant, like how Dashiell Hammett would write if he was still doing the Thin Man books today.' Jenny Turner, The Guardian
'better than ever' Tony Hillerman
'Light-hearted crime at its very best' Robert Ludlum


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Paperback - No Exit Press (1997)
Tanner's Twelve Swingers
In a moment of drunken sentiment, Tanner had made an absurd promise to a friend - sure he'd smuggle himself into the Soviet Union, find his friend's long-lost love, and then smuggle them both back to the U.S.
But the long-lost love - she had a sister. And the sister - she had these ten girlfriends, the sexiest Olympic team the Russians had ever sent to the Games. And the bunch of them had a doddering old man, defecting from Yugoslavia, and a six-year-old girl, heiress to the Lithuanian throne. And they all wanted to be smuggled to America.
But how do you smuggle fifteen people out of Russia? You don't - unless you create a little diversion, like suddenly spinning the world towards the brink of international war...
'For clean close-to-the-bone prose, the line goes from Dashiell Hammett to James M. Cain to Lawrence Block. He's that good.' Martin Cruz Smith
'No one writes the hard boiled thriller better than Lawrence Block.' San Diego Union
'Simply the best.' Mostly Murder


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