Lawrence Block
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A 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 prove it, the haunted P.I. must descend into the depths of New York's sex-for-sale underworld, where young lives are commodities to be bought, perverted... and destroyed.
42) Random Walk
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In Roseburg, Oregon, a bartender walks off his job and heads east with no destination in mind. The Cascades are in his way, but he doesn't let that stop him.
He keeps walking. And other people are moved to join him, and as they walk the group generates a sort of collective energy, and unexpected things happen. Miraculous things, you might say.
Meanwhile, in Kansas, a perfectly respectable real estate professional loses his temper with a prostitute...
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SHE 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 needed a girl on the inside to make it work.
Enter Evelyn Stone: Gunderman's secretary, his lover — and his worst enemy. Gunderman had promised to marry her, but never came through. Now she's ready to make him pay...
Johnny Hayden has spent a lifetime working the long...
44) Grifter's Game
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Your name's Joe Marlin, but you change it almost as often as you change your shirt. It's David Gavilan when you skip a hotel bill and head for Atlantic City. You left empty-handed, and you need luggage to check into a decent hotel, so you grab two checked bags before the owner turns up to claim them. They're monogrammed L.K.B.-so now your name is Leonard K. Blake.
But you're not the only L.K.B. in Atlantic City. L. Keith Brassard is the owner of...
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Four 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, nimble-fingered star of novels such as Burglars Can't Be Choosers, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, and The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. Called "the Heifetz of the picklock" by the New York Times, Bernie has stolen not only antiques, stamp collections, and priceless...
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Here's CHIP HARRISON-the 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 innocence survive past a second book? How can our Chip remain the same age forever? Simple, Block decided, and put our Lecher in the Wry to work for a private detective, the remarkable Leo Haig. Haig believes that Nero Wolfe really exists, and that if he distinguishes himself...
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Alex Penn wakes up in a squalid Times Square hotel room. This is what he sees when he finally opens his eyes:
"The floor was a sea of blood. A body floated upon this ocean. A girl-black hair, staring blue eyes, bloodless lips. Naked. Dead. Her throat slashed deeply.
"It had to be a dream. It had to, had to be a dream. It was not a dream. It was not a dream at all.
"I've done it again, I thought. Sweet Jesus, I've done it again."
Years before,...
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Bad cop Jerry Broadfield didn't make any friends on the force when he volunteered to squeal to an ambitious D.A. about police corruption. Now he's accused of murdering a call girl. Matthew Scudder doesn't think Broadfield's a killer, but the cops aren't about to help the unlicensed P.I. prove it -- and they may do a lot worse than just get in his way.
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That's the product description for Blackstone Audio's excellent rendition of You Could Call It Murder, expertly voiced by Peter Berkrot, and we could leave it at that-but there's an interesting backstory to the book, and the Classic Crime Library seems a good place to share it with you.
In 1961, Lawrence Block was living in New York and earning a living writing Midcentury Erotica and crime fiction. He'd just sold his first book under his own name,...
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This is a city that seduces dreamers . . . then eats their dreams.
Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Schudder is the best-and now the ex-cop-turned-P.I. is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the...
51) Lucky at Cards
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AT CARDS AND WITH WOMEN, BILL MAYNARD KNEW HOW TO CHEAT...
On the mend after getting run out of Chicago, professional cardsharp Bill Maynard is hungry for some action — but not nearly as hungry as Joyce Rogers, the tantalizing wife of Bill's latest mark. Together they hatch an ingenious scheme to get rid of her husband. But in life as in poker, the other player sometimes has an ace up his sleeve...
52) Deadly Honeymoon
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"You may rape the bride..."
David and Jill Wade wanted a properly traditional start to their marriage. For openers, they decided to delay its consummation until after the ceremony. They planned a perfect honeymoon at a secluded lakeside resort in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.
Joe Carroll, the guest in the cabin next door, seemed friendly enough. They took his dinner suggestion, then returned to their cabin and prepared to retire-until a noise...
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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.
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Here's CHIP HARRISON-the 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 innocence survive past a second book? How can our Chip remain the same age forever? Simple, Block decided, and put our Lecher in the Wry to work for a private detective, the remarkable Leo Haig. Haig believes that Nero Wolfe really exists, and that if he distinguishes himself...
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In the dark days, in a sad and lonely place, ex-cop Matt Scudder is drinking his life away -- and doing "favors" for pay for his ginmill cronies. But when three such assignments flow together in dangerous and disturbing ways, he'll need to change his priorities from boozing to surviving.
56) Ariel
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Originally marketed as "occult horror", Ariel is neither. It's a story of the madness that lies just under the surface, and what it takes to bring it out; the need to give evil a face and a name. Who better to scapegoat for unexplainable tragedies than the one who is Different? Ariel is adopted, and looks slightly unusual. Her unstable mother never fails to assume the worst, almost deliberately misreading the girl's ordinary teenage perceptiveness...
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From Publishers Weekly's starred review: "Set in and around colleges and universities, the 17 new stories and one reprint in this top-notch anthology explore the forbidding side of academia. As Block (the Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries) notes in his droll introduction, each of the varied, well-told tales is "as individual as fingerprints." Among the standouts are David Morrell's devious "Requiem for a Homecoming," in which two alumni cast suspicion on...
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2023.
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"Bernie Rhodenbarr may be New York’s most charming bookseller (by day) and its most skillful burglar (by night), but the modern world isn’t kind to either of his vocations... Tempted to steal a priceless diamond from the penthouse apartment of a swinish entrepreneur, Bernie goes out drinking with his best friend Carolyn instead. But when he wakes up with something much stranger than a hangover, he realizes he’s got the opportunity...
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Es difícil ignorar a alguien cuando tienes sus manos dentro de tu boca. Bernie Rhodenbarr es todo oídos cuando el Dr. Sheldrake, su dentista, empieza a quejarse de su detestable casi-ex esposa, y de paso menciona los valiosos diamantes que ésta tiene mal guardados dentro de su apartamento. Como es cosa sabida que Bernie suele complementar sus entradas como dueño de una librería con algunas aventurillas no tan infrecuentes en el área del latrocinio...