Lawrence Block - Markham (1961)

AKA "The Case of the Pornographic Photos" AKA "You Could Call it Murder"

This was a tie-in to television series that didn't last long enough to see the book's release. This is one of several Block-written novels to come out in the early sixties, and one of the few to come out under his own name. This is also one of the few that hasn't been re released by Hard Case Crime yet, and would be a good candidate for a back-to-back release as this one is short by even HCC standards - my copy was exactly 140 pages.

Lawrence Block - Grifter's Game (1961)

This was reissued as the first ever Hard Case Crime novel in September 2004. The first edition was published under the title Mona by Gold Medal in 1961.

Books of the week

Lawrence Block: One Night Stands and Lost Weekends

This is a collection of early Block stories. While I prefer his early novels, this book provided and interesting and entertaining insight into the author’s work. Quite a mixed bag really, often I could tell where the stories were going with just the title and just a little bit of the text.

Dublin Noir:

Subtitled “The Celtic Tiger vs. The Ugly American” and edited by Ken Bruen, this is my first read in the Akashic Noir Anthology series. Each collection focuses on a different location. I was very impressed with the stories here, I’m anxious to read more books in this series. I am curious if they are all this good, or if maybe Ken Bruen is to blame for all the excellence to be found here!

Gerald Kersch: The Angel & The Cuckoo:

This is the only book I could find by this author, but I will have to try to find more!

Max Philips: Snake Bite Sonnett:

Not recommended for fans only familiar with him through Hard Case Crime! This is Max Philip’s first novel, and is a book about relationships, not a crime novel!

Lawrence Block: Killing Castro

Originally released in 1961 as Fidel Castro Assassinated by Lee Duncan, Hard Case Crime starts out the new year with a bang with this forgotten book written by Lawrence Block. I've been reading a lot of early Block and have been enjoying these books immensely. I have yet to read any of his later work, but I've heard that a lot of these earlier books have been categorized as inferior compared to the later ones, which, needless to say, leaves me with high expectations for the author's later work.

A DIET OF TREACLE - LAWRENCE BLOCK

As good as these early novels are, I can't want to see what later Lawrence Block novels are like - I may have started on a bad foot with the Matthew Scudder series - or maybe I need to give those books another try - this one along with Cinderella Sims are amazing in my mind - and these are supposed to be inferior to later work! ----

on another note - now that I've caught up with the Jack Taylor novels - I've decided to give Ken Bruen's new one ONCE WERE COPS a try - and it is once again more genius - I'm still working my way though the early stuff as well!