One Night Stands and Lost Weekends
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In the era before he created moody private investigator Matthew Scudder, burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, sleepless spy Evan Tanner, and the amiable hit man Keller—and years before his first Edgar Award—a young writer named Lawrence Block submitted a story titled "You Can't Lose" to Manhunt magazine. It was published, and the rest is history.
One Night Stands and Lost Weekends is a sterling collection of short crime fiction and suspense novelettes penned between 1958 and 1962 by a budding young master and soon-to-be Grand Master—an essential slice of genre history, and more fun than a high-speed police chase following a bank job gone bad.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in two volumes by Crippen & Landru in 1999, this collection of early crime stories from bestseller Block (Hit and Run) is a mixed bag. Part one consists of 25 unremarkable tales, including Block's sole foray into science fiction. Offering no defense of their quality in his frank introduction, the author admits that he hasn't reread these stories in decades. Even devoted fans will struggle not to lose patience at encountering yet another grim account of a brutal misogynist who ends up on the wrong end of a gun or a knife. By contrast, the three novellas featuring New York City PI Ed London, starting with "The Naked and the Deadly," are taut classic hard-boiled noir, with the gumshoe tangling with treacherous women and lying clients. Closer to the MWA Grand Master's usual level, they blend suspense, a puzzle and an appropriately cynical first-person narrative voice, and will leave even newcomers hungry for more.
