The Crime of Our Lives, by Lawrence Block
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The Crime of Our Lives, by Lawrence Block
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An MWA Grand Master tells it straight: Fredric Brown: “When I read Murder Can Be Fun, I had a bottle of bourbon on the table and every time Brown’s hero took a drink, I had a snort myself. This is a hazardous undertaking when in the company of Brown’s characters, and, I’ve been given to understand, would have been just as dangerous around the author himself. By the time the book was finished, so was I.” Raymond Chandler: “You have to wonder how he got it so right. He spent a lot of time in the house—working, reading, writing letters. He saw to his wife, who required a lot of attention in her later years. And when he did get out, you wouldn’t find him walking the mean streets. La Jolla, it must be noted, was never much for mean streets.” Evan Hunter: “In his mid-seventies, after a couple of heart attacks, an aneurysm, and a siege of cancer that had led to the removal of his larynx, Evan wrote Alice in Jeopardy. And went to work right away on Becca in Jeopardy, with every intention of working his way through the alphabet. Don’t you love it? Here’s a man with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and he’s perfectly comfortable launching a twenty-six book series.” Donald E. Westlake’s Memory: “Here’s the point: Don’s manuscript arrived, and we had dinner and put the kid to bed, and I started reading. And my wife went to bed, and I stayed up reading, and after a while I forgot I was having a heart attack, and just kept reading until I finished the book around dawn. And somewhere along the way I became aware that my friend Don, who’d written a couple of mysteries and some science fiction and his fair share of soft-core erotica, had just produced a great novel.” Charles Willeford: “Can a self-diagnosed sociopath be at the same time an intensely moral person? Can one be a sociopath, virtually unaware of socially prescribed morality, and yet be consumed with the desire to do the right thing? That strikes me as a spot-on description of just about every character Willeford ever wrote. How could he come up with characters like that? My God, how could he help it?” An MWA Grand Master and a multiple winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Maltese Falcon awards, Lawrence Block’s reflections and observations come from over a half century as a writer of bestselling crime fiction. . Several of his novels have been filmed, most recently A Walk Among the Tombstones, starring Liam Neeson. While he’s best known for his novels and short fiction, along with his books on the craft of writing, that's not all he’s written. THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES collects his observations and personal reminiscences of the crime fiction field and some of its leading practitioners. He has a lot to say, and he says it here in convincing and entertaining fashion.
The Crime of Our Lives, by Lawrence Block- Amazon Sales Rank: #222595 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-03-26
- Released on: 2015-03-26
- Format: Kindle eBook
About the Author Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His most recent novels are THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; HIT ME, featuring philatelist and assassin Keller; and A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF, featuring Matthew Scudder, brilliantly embodied by Liam Neeson in the new film, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES. Several of his other books have also been filmed, although not terribly well. He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic TELLING LIES FOR FUN & PROFIT, and THE LIAR'S BIBLE. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (TILT!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Another Excellent Book from Lawrence Block! By otherdeb Note: This is reposted from my blog, at NOT JUST ANOTHER GROUCHY GRAMMARIAN.There's only one problem with opening a new non-fiction book by Lawrence Block: Your reading list explodes logarithmically. His newest collection of introductions, eulogies, and other appreciations, The Crime of Our Lives, is no exception. In addition to finding authors I already knew of and enjoyed, like Robert B. Parker and Donald E. Westlake, there were a whole bunch whose work I had never heard of, and another bunch of writers who I dimly remember from school -- all presented so engagingly that I now have a new list of authors to pursue, along with a batch of notes on their various pseudonyms and notable pieces, so I don't miss anything. When I mentioned this to my ex -- also a Lawrence Block fan -- he noted "you don't have to read every author he recommends." "Maybe so," I responded, "but he makes them all sound so engaging."And that is the truth of Block's writing. Fiction or non-fiction, gentleman thief, assassin, adventurer, ex-cop, running essays, stamp collecting, writing -- Block's work is engaging. I have never read a Block book or story that didn't feel like I was settling in with a good friend for a catch-up session.In The Crime of Our Lives, he gives overviews of the work of sixteen writers -- peppered with anecdotes about them, about his own life and writing, and about writing and the mystery/crime genres in general. One caveat which Block notes in the beginning, is that he has restricted the subjects of the book to deceased American writers, primarily of the "hard-boiled" variety of fiction, and the list has no women on it. He does note that the last is because Christie and Sayers are British while the female American writers he would include are still living. His reasoning is that he does not wish to assemble a list of favorites and upset friends by their exclusion. In his words: "I have mentioned how generous and amiable mystery writers are, how much I enjoy their company, how well we all get along. If you think I am going to change all that by assembling a list of favorites and leaving some of them off it, you’re out of your mind."*Among the writers Block covers in this volume: Anthony Boucher, Frederic Brown, Raymond Chandler, Stanley Ellin, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, and Donald E. Westlake.After reading Block's overviews, my first instinct was to go to the Brooklyn Public Library website, find all the books by each writer and start putting them on hold, one writer at a time.If you are a fan of mysteries, crime stories, noir, or all three, this is an interesting, engaging overview of some of the author's favorite writers, who happen to be among the best in their fields. I highly recommend this book to you. In fact, I recommend this book even if you aren't a fan of the genre. You might just well become a fan after reading it.*Block, Lawrence (2015-03-26). The Crime of Our Lives (Kindle Locations 286-288). Lawrence Block. Kindle Edition.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Fascinating insights into the world of crime fiction... A must-have collection of essays, introductions, and essays By Craig At age 77, Lawrence Block continues to churn out top-notch new novels (there will be a new one published next month from Hard Case Crime, in fact). He belongs to a small elite group of older writers whose legacy and popularity will almost certainly outlive him. Perhaps this is why over the last few years he has also busied himself republishing old pseudonymous works and collecting previously forgotten pieces—early short stories, essays, magazine articles, etc.—into new books. Or maybe he just wants to earn more money. Either way, this is good thing for his fans, because this stuff is very interesting.Here Block gives us an easy-to-read collection of book introductions, freelance articles, and his “Murders on Memory Lane” column from Mystery Scene magazine. All of these pieces are centered on famous crime authors and their novels. Block is always imminently readable, his style sort of reminds me of a rambling conversation with an eccentric uncle.He is profusely gracious and complimentary toward living writers, but he dishes the dirt on dead ones. For example, he tells an anecdote of Robert Ludlum throwing a tantrum when Robin Cook got a bigger advance than he did. There is a story of Evan Hunter a.k.a. Ed McBain writing sex novels under a pseudonym in order to keep a mistress on the side. There is even a funny anecdote concerning Lucille Ball’s rather demanding sexual proclivities.The highlight was probably the essay on Scott Meredith, the now-infamous literary editor/agent who ran mail-order scams and collected unethical commissions on every story he bought. The analysis of the works of Robert Parker and Mickey Spillane were insightful and perhaps brutally honest. Charles Wileford sounds like the literary world’s most good-hearted psychopath.As you might expect in a collection of this format, some observations show up more than once. There is also some overlap with stories already told in Block’s monthly Writer’s Digest columns, which were previously collected in a quartet of books-- Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, Spider Spin Me a Web, Liar’s Bible, and Liar’s Companion.Still, this is rare, fun stuff if you are a fan of the genre. Some of my favorite quotes are listed below:Fredric Brown: “When I read Murder Can Be Fun, I had a bottle of bourbon on the table and every time Brown’s hero took a drink, I had a snort myself. This is a hazardous undertaking when in the company of Brown’s characters… By the time the book was finished, so was I.”Ross Macdonald: “It is one of the singular properties of his fiction that ten minutes after you have turned the last page, every detail of the plot vanishes forever from your mind.”Jim Thompson: “He is surely an important writer and very much worth reading, but it helps to keep it in mind that the stuff ain’t Shakespeare.”Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: “Throughout, he alienates powerful people with his trademark wisecracks for no apparent reason, turns down fees whenever they’re offered to him, and goes through abrupt mood swings that make you wonder if he shouldn’t be on lithium.”Donald E. Westlake’s Memory: “Don’s manuscript arrived, and we had dinner and put the kid to bed, and I started reading. And my wife went to bed, and I stayed up reading, and after a while I forgot I was having a heart attack, and just kept reading until I finished the book around dawn. And somewhere along the way I became aware that my friend Don… had just produced a great novel.”Dashiel Hammett: “[He] took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley; he gave murder back to the kind of people who commit it for a reason…. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.”On himself: “I don’t know that I had all that much interest in making a lot of money, not in my idealistic youth. I was more interested, I seem to recall, in making my parents proud of me, and in impressing girls and maybe, God willing, actually getting laid. But I certainly wanted to be able to support myself by writing, if only to avoid having to do anything else.”
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Must for any Block or Crime Fiction Fan By Anthony R. Cardno Right. Time to write a review of the latest Lawrence Block non-fiction collection. Because the man was nice enough to send me a review copy, and who am I to say "no" in the face of such graciousness? ("You're no-one, regardless of getting a free copy," the insecure writer at the back of my brain says. Let's ignore him for the moment, shall we?)Look, here's the thing.If you're already a Larry Block fan, you don't need some hack like me telling you to read this collection of introductions and essays and columns. You know the man's got some insight into the crime field gleaned from a nice long career. You already know, I'm sure, that he prefers only to write retrospectives about friends who have already died, that he's honest (sometimes brutally) about what he likes and doesn't like, that he's fond of variations of the phrase "he never wrote a bad sentence, a klunky phrase, a weak book" in regards to certain favorite authors. You already know if you appreciate his self-effacing way of writing introductions like he's got nothing new to say about the stuff he's introducing. You already know if you enjoy or get annoyed by the way he re-tells certain stories every chance he gets. (On that last, I can honestly say I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing how Block came to work for the Scott Meredith Agency, or how he met Donald Westlake; each telling has a slightly different flavor without ever changing the actual facts.)In fact, if you're already a Larry Block fan, you've already figured out what I'm doing with this review. Good on ya for that.And if you're not already a Larry Block fan, well ... I'm not going to tell you to start with this collection, because really, you should be out there reading his fiction: the cozy crime capers of Bernie Rhodenbarr, the noir darkness of Matthew Scudder, the plethora of short stories. Personally, I'd make sure to check out Killing Castro, reissued a few years back by Hard Case Crime, a great thriller that is also a bit of alternate history, which technically also makes Block a science fiction writer... but I digress. Read some of Block's fiction first, then come back to this collection of non-fiction about his friends and influences.It's a great batch of stuff, really: reminiscences about his friendships and professional relationships with Donald Westlake, Evan Hunter, and others. Several columns worth of "what it was like to learn how not to write bad stuff while working for Scott Meredith." Some funny pieces about (not) winning an Edgar. Tributes to Poe, Chandler, Hammett, Spillane, and some less-obvious and long-out-of-print pulp and paperback original authors. (My "scour used bookstores for these authors" list got a bit longer while reading this collection...)But, like I said: if you're a Block fan, you don't need me to tell you this. And if you're not, I've rambled on long enough. Go buy the book already. Block self-published it in affordable ebook format just for that purpose. So why would you want to let him down by not reading it?
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