Lawrence Block's Books

Biography

A Fiction Writer

Lawrence Block was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1938. He is a professional fiction writer. He has never done anything else. He hasn’t been a journalist or a reporter. He hasn’t been in the police force or worked as a private detective; he only ever wanted to write fiction.

“I didn’t want to be a reporter; I didn’t want to be a journalist; I didn’t want to ask people questions they didn’t want to answer; I didn’t want to do any of that crap, I didn’t want to be tied down with facts I wanted to just sit down in a room and make all this shit up.” (YouTube)

As a twelve-year-old, he started writing poetry, and since his mid-teens, he has been churning out short stories and novels. One bibliography lists 201 books, 497 articles and short stories. Now in his 80s, he is still adding to the pile. By his admission, Lawrence Block is the man who wrote too much.

Series and Characters

The most well-known of Lawrence Block’s books feature Matthew Scudder, a private eye who lives and works in central Manhattan. Block took the unusual step of letting Scudder age as he wrote the books. When the first novel, The Sins of the Fathers, was published in 1976, Scudder was a 30-something ex-cop who had left his wife and young children. In 2019 he published the latest and maybe last, A Time to Scatter Stones, and Scudder was well into his retirement and feeling his age.

“Typically, fictional detectives never changed much, and rarely aged, but I saw early on that the level of realism in the books demanded that Scudder be altered due to the experiences he undergoes.” (Suffolk Libraries)

Another of his characters is Bernie Rhodenbarr, a used-books dealer and dry-witted gentleman thief. Unlike Scudder, Rhodenbarr is ageless, remaining more or less the same since his debut in Burglars Can’t Be Choosers in 1977. His exploits invariably contain a meticulously plotted theft which all goes according to plan until he stumbles across a dead body that is non of his doing. The second novel, The Burglar in The Closet, was filmed in 1987 as Burglar, with Whoopi Goldberg starring as a rechristened Bernice. Block was less than impressed by the film adaption, claiming he watched it as an in-flight movie and didn’t recognise it as his creation until he saw his name in the credits.

Alongside Scudder and Rhodenbarr, Lawrence Block has also written about sex-crazed teenager Chip Harrison, insomniac spy Evan Tanner, introspective assassin Keller, and a series of short stories about criminal lawyer Martin Ehrengraf. Ehrengraf has never lost a case, always turning to the “Ehrengraf defence” (which amounts to doing anything up to and including murder to clear his client’s name).

Awards

Block has been showered with awards for his prolific and entertaining output. He lists his total tally as:

Five Edgar Awards, four of which were for the best short story
Four Shamus Awards
Two Japanese Maltese Falcon Awards
Two Societe 813 Trophies
The Nero Wolfe Award
The Philip Marlowe Award
A Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America
A Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America
The UK Crime Writers Association Diamond Dagger
The Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award
The Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer

To lighten the load, Block also points out that he was presented with the key to the city of Muncie, Indiana; but claims that they changed the locks as soon as he left.

Becoming a Writer

Lawrence Block decided to become a writer when he was fifteen years old.

“I got some encouragement from my English teacher… I was writing compositions that I was enjoying… and I wrote one on career plans; I concluded it with the line ‘and reading over what I have written, one thing does become clear about my future career, and that is that I can never be a writer.’

And she wrote on the bottom ‘I’m not so sure about that'”.

And I looked at that, and I had never thought of being a writer before that moment, and I never seriously considered anything else afterwards.” (YouTube)

Block attended Antioch College in Ohio, where he studied English, but he didn’t complete the course. His tutors told him that they thought he’d be happier doing something else, and he thought this was “remarkably perceptive of them.” (Lawrence Block)

From there, he worked for a literary agent, advising aspiring authors.

“Every letter we wrote was designed to manipulate and was dashed off with a cavalier disregard for the truth…

My fee reports applauded the talent of writers who showed no talent, condemned the plots of stories with perfectly satisfactory plots, and were written with the singular goal of getting the poor mooch to submit another story and pony up another fee.” (AP News)

At the same time, Block (like his peer Donald E. Westlake) started writing pulp fiction under various pseudonyms. His stock in trade was erotic fiction, and he wrote titles that included Strange Are The Ways of Love and Warm and Willing. By this time, he was twenty-five years old, married with two daughters and had published over fifty books to support his family.

Block claims he finished his writing apprenticeship in 1966 after writing The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, claiming it was the first book that only he could write.

Style

Block is a professional writer; he mixes his genres and styles depending on the book he is writing. It may be the hard-boiled tone of Matthew Scudder:

Halfway home I stopped at a deli and had soup and a sandwich and coffee. There was a bizarre story in the Post. Two neighbors in Queens had been arguing for months because of a dog that barked in its owner’s absence. The previous night, the owner was walking the dog when the animal relieved itself on a tree in front of the neighbor’s house. The neighbor happened to be watching and shot at the dog from an upstairs window with a bow and arrow. The dog’s owner ran back into his house and came out with a Walther P-38, a World War II souvenir. The neighbor also ran outside with his bow and arrow, and the dog’s owner shot him dead. The neighbor was eighty-one, the dog’s owner was sixty-two, and the two men had lived side by side in Little Neck for over twenty years. The dog’s age wasn’t given, but there was a picture of him in the paper, straining against a leash in the hands of a uniformed police officer.
Eight Million Ways to Die

Or, by contrast, the light and humorous tone of the Bernie Rhodenbarr stories:

I stood for a moment, letting my ears do the walking, and then I gave the bell a thorough ring and waited thirty thoughtful seconds before ringing it again.
And that, let me assure you, is not a waste of time. Public institutions throughout the fifty states provide food and clothing and shelter for lads who don’t ring the bell first.
Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

Lawrence Block’s books are even and direct, and his stories progress from A to B to C with minimal embellishment. He is a storyteller, not a literary giant. Yet, this lack of fuss and drama makes those storylines (particularly the Matthew Scudder novels) all the more shocking.

The Writing Process

As well as countless novels and short stories, Block has written articles and books that advise aspiring writers.

“The best advice I can offer is very simple: Write to please yourself.

And that goes against the grain, doesn’t it? For years every wannabe I met wanted to know what editors and publishers wanted; now, with the miracle of self-publishing, the same folks want to know what readers want.

Well, here’s the thing — what they want is none of your business.

If your work is ever going to bring any real pleasure to anybody, it has to be written in your voice, and it had better reflect your inner vision. When you start out, you may not be able to access either voice or vision. That’s not unusual. So you keep writing, and you throw out a lot of crap, and you find the voice and make art of the vision.

And if it never works, well, nobody ever said you had to be a writer.” (Indies Unlimited)

The title of one of these guides for aspiring writers, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, sums up Block’s Lawrence Block’s books flawlessly.