Lawrence Block — Author (106)
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A Drop of the Hard Stuff Douban
"Right up there with Mr. Block's best....A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF keeps us guessing."--Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer. When Scudder's childhood friend Jack Ellery is murdered, presumably while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder reluctantly begins his own investigation, with just one lead: Ellery's Alcoholics Anonymous list of people he wronged. One of them may be a killer, but that's not necessarily Scudder's greatest danger. Immersing himself in Ellery's world may lead him right back to the bar stool.
In a novel widely celebrated by critics and readers, Lawrence Block circle back to how it all began, reestablishing the Matthew Scudder series as one of the pinnacles of American detective fiction.
Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer. When Scudder's childhood friend Jack Ellery is murdered, presumably while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder reluctantly begins his own investigation, with just one lead: Ellery's Alcoholics Anonymous list of people he wronged. One of them may be a killer, but that's not necessarily Scudder's greatest danger. Immersing himself in Ellery's world may lead him right back to the bar stool.
In a novel widely celebrated by critics and readers, Lawrence Block circle back to how it all began, reestablishing the Matthew Scudder series as one of the pinnacles of American detective fiction.
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Time to Murder and Create Goodreads
Time to Murder and Create
author:
劳伦斯·布洛克
Small-time stoolie, Jake "The Spinner" Jablon, made a lot of new enemies when he switched careers, from informer to blackmailer. And the more "clients", he figured, the more money - and more people eager to see him dead. So no one is surprised when the pigeon is found floating in the East River with his skull bashed in. And what's worse, no one cares - except Matthew Scudder. The ex-cop-turned-private-eye is no conscientious avenging angel. But he's willing to risk his own life and limb to confront Spinner's most murderously aggressive marks. A job's a job after all - and Scudder's been paid to find a killer - by the victim...in advance.
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When the Sacred Ginmill Closes Goodreads
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
author:
劳伦斯·布洛克
Downing a bourbon or two with a couple of cronies, Scudder witnesses a heist. The Morrisey brothers who run the joint are strangely submissive during the raid, but eager to see Scudder track down the thieves without involving the regular forces of law and order.
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Out on the Cutting Edge Goodreads
Out on the Cutting Edge
It isn't called Hell's Kitchen for nothing - a gritty landscape of dark doorways and dirty alleys inhabited by crack addicts and the homeless. For Matt Scudder, it's a city gone mad, but a city he can't leave as he's been hired to find missing would-be actress Paula Hoeldtke.
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A Ticket to the Boneyard Goodreads
A Ticket to the Boneyard
Matt Scudder put the brilliant and elusive James Leo Motley behind bars - for good, or so he hoped. Because Motley went down swearing revenge on Scudder and anyone who knew him. Twelve years later, Motley is out and giving his psychopathic tendencies free rein. No one is safe, friends, lovers and even strangers unfortunate enough to share the Scudder name. Each step in the resulting grisly dance takes the Big Apple PI one step further away from Al-Anon and one step nearer to death.
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A Dance At The Slaughterhouse Goodreads
A Dance At The Slaughterhouse
In Matt Scudder's mind, money, power, and position elevate nobody above morality and the law. Now the ex-cop and unlicensed p.i. has been hired to prove that socialite Richard Thurman orchestrated the brutal murder of his beautiful, pregnant wife. During Scudder's hard drinking years, he left a piece of his soul on every seedy corner of the Big Apple. But this case is more depraved and more potentially devastating than anything he experienced while floundering in the urban depths. Because this investigation is leading Scudder on a frightening grand tour of New York's sex-for-sale underworld -- where an innocent young life is simply a commodity to be bought and perverted ... and then destroyed.
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A Walk Among the Tombstones Goodreads
A Walk Among the Tombstones
Big-time dope dealer Kenan Khoury is a wealthy man, and it comes as no surprise when his wife Francine is kidnapped and a ransom demanded. Kenan pays up and his wife is duly returned to him - in small pieces left in the boot of an abandoned car, leaving private eye Matt Scudder to speculate on the motives of a very unusual kidnapper. Soon he is on the trail of a pair of ruthlessly sadistic psycopaths whose insanely cruel games have only just begun...
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The Devil Knows You're Dead Goodreads
The Devil Knows You're Dead (Matt Scudder Mystery)
Scudder is back, tracking a killer through the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen and mapping the darker regions of the human soul.
Glenn Holtzman sits on top of the world, watching the sun set from his penthouse… half and hour later he’s just another statistic, gunned down in a phone booth on Eleventh Avenue. When the cartridge casings of the fatal shots turn up on a well-known local Vietnam Vet the whole of the Big Apple knows it’s an open and shut case. But not Scudder – this Yuppie lawyer has skeletons in his closet and Matt can hear them rattling.
Glenn Holtzman sits on top of the world, watching the sun set from his penthouse… half and hour later he’s just another statistic, gunned down in a phone booth on Eleventh Avenue. When the cartridge casings of the fatal shots turn up on a well-known local Vietnam Vet the whole of the Big Apple knows it’s an open and shut case. But not Scudder – this Yuppie lawyer has skeletons in his closet and Matt can hear them rattling.
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A Long Line of Dead Men Goodreads
A Long Line of Dead Men
In Manhattan thirty-one men have been meeting annually for years. Their private club meets only to record the passage of time and give toast to the joys of life. But suddenly they are dying at an alarming rate and one of their number begins to suspect that something more than bad luck is at work.
For private eye Matt Scudder, the case is one of the most baffling he's faced. Can the deaths really be a bizarre series of suicides and violent accidents? Or is there is a pattern behind the random play of tragedy? Is there a murderer at work and can he be stopped before the victims run out?
For private eye Matt Scudder, the case is one of the most baffling he's faced. Can the deaths really be a bizarre series of suicides and violent accidents? Or is there is a pattern behind the random play of tragedy? Is there a murderer at work and can he be stopped before the victims run out?
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Even the Wicked Goodreads
Even the Wicked
An anonymous letter writer, the self-styled 'Will of the People', targets prominent criminals and evil-doers that the law cannot reach - and kills them. All of them are dubbed by the Will 'society offenders who might as well be in the ground' - and he sends his hit-list to a tabloid newspaper columnist. His latest target is a criminal defence attorney who's got one too many killers off a murder charge. Given the failure of New York's finest to protect his predecessors, DA Adrian Whitfield wants the most stubborn PI in the Big Apple watching his back.
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Hope to Die Goodreads
Hope to Die
The city caught its collective breath when upscale couple Byrne and Susan Hollander were slaughtered in a brutal home invasion. Now, a few days later, the killers themselves have turned up dead behind the locked door of a Brooklyn hellhole -- one apparently slain by his partner in crime who then took his own life.
There's something drawing Matthew Scudder to this case that the cops have quickly and eagerly closed: a nagging suspicion that a third man is involved, a cold, diabolical puppet master who manipulates his two accomplices, then cuts their strings when he's done with them. No one but Scudder even suspects he exists. And his worst fear is that the guy is just getting started ...
There's something drawing Matthew Scudder to this case that the cops have quickly and eagerly closed: a nagging suspicion that a third man is involved, a cold, diabolical puppet master who manipulates his two accomplices, then cuts their strings when he's done with them. No one but Scudder even suspects he exists. And his worst fear is that the guy is just getting started ...
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Burglars Can't Be Choosers Douban
Bernie Rhodenbarr is a personable chap, a good neighbor, a passable poker player. His chosen profession, however, might not sit well with some. Bernie is a burglar, a good one, effortlessly lifting valuables from the not-so-well-protected abodes of well-to-do New Yorkers like a modern-day Robin Hood. (The poor, as Bernie would be the first to tell you, alas, have nothing worth stealing.) He's not perfect, however; he occasionally makes mistakes. Like accepting a paid assignment from a total stranger to retrieve a particular item from a rich man's apartment. Like still being there when the cops arrive. Like having a freshly slain corpse lying in the next room, and no proof that Bernie isn't the killer. Now he's really got his hands full, having to locate the true perpetrator while somehow eluding the police -- a dirty job indeed, but if Bernie doesn't do it, who will?
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A Time to Scatter Stones Douban Goodreads
A Time to Scatter Stones
MATT SCUDDER RETURNS. More than 40 years after his debut and nearly a decade since his last appearance, one of the most renowned characters in all of crime fiction is back on the case in this major new novella by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block. Well past retirement age and feeling his years—but still staying sober one day at a time—Matthew Scudder learns that alcoholics aren't the only ones who count the days since their last slip. Matt's longtime partner, Elaine, tells him of a group of former sex workers who do something similar, helping each other stay out of the life. But when one young woman describes an abusive client who's refusing to let her quit, Elaine encourages her to get help of a different sort. The sort only Scudder can deliver. A Time to Scatter Stones offers not just a gripping crime story but also a richly drawn portrait of Block's most famous character as he grapples with his own mortality while proving to the younger generation that he's still got what it takes. For Scudder's millions of fans around the world (including the many who met the character through Liam Neeson's portrayal in the film version of A Walk Among the Tombstones), A Time to Scatter Stones is an unexpected gift—a valedictory appearance that will remind readers why Scudder is simply the best there is.
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Everybody Dies Douban
author:
劳伦斯·布洛克
1999
- 9
Ex-cop Matt Scudder is off the booze, but he still spends time with some of his old drinking buddies, including Mick Ballou. Two of Mick's henchmen have been killed during a raid on one of his bourbon warehouses and Mick wants Scudder on the case, but someone else wants Scudder off the job.
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All the Flowers Are Dying (Matthew Scudder Mysteries) Douban
In his sixteenth Matthew Scudder novel, All the Flowers Are Dying, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Lawrence Block takes the award-winning series to a new level of suspense and a new depth of characterization. Building on the critical and commercial success of Hope to Die, Block puts Scudder -- and the reader -- at the very edge of the abyss.</p>
Scudder, a complex character who has grown and aged in real time, confronts the implacable challenge of mortality. But he must also tackle a determined, relentless, and icily inhuman adversary, perhaps the most unforgettable villain Block has ever created.</p>
A man in a Virginia prison awaits execution for three hideous murders he swears, in the face of irrefutable evidence, he did not commit. A psychologist who claims to believe the convict spends hours with the man in his death row cell, and ultimately watches in the gallery as the lethal injection is administered. His work completed, the psychologist heads back to New York City to attend to unfinished business.</p>
Meanwhile, Scudder has just agreed to investigate the ostensibly suspicious online lover of an acquaintance. It seems simple enough. At first. But when people start dying and the victims are increasingly closer to home, it becomes clear that a vicious killer is at work. And the final targets may be Matt and Elaine Scudder.</p>
The suspense is breathtaking, the outcome never certain. A series that has garnered no end of awards -- the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe, the MalteseFalcon -- has ascended to a dizzying new height. With this novel, Lawrence Block, who recently received the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom, is at the very top of his form.</p>
Scudder, a complex character who has grown and aged in real time, confronts the implacable challenge of mortality. But he must also tackle a determined, relentless, and icily inhuman adversary, perhaps the most unforgettable villain Block has ever created.</p>
A man in a Virginia prison awaits execution for three hideous murders he swears, in the face of irrefutable evidence, he did not commit. A psychologist who claims to believe the convict spends hours with the man in his death row cell, and ultimately watches in the gallery as the lethal injection is administered. His work completed, the psychologist heads back to New York City to attend to unfinished business.</p>
Meanwhile, Scudder has just agreed to investigate the ostensibly suspicious online lover of an acquaintance. It seems simple enough. At first. But when people start dying and the victims are increasingly closer to home, it becomes clear that a vicious killer is at work. And the final targets may be Matt and Elaine Scudder.</p>
The suspense is breathtaking, the outcome never certain. A series that has garnered no end of awards -- the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe, the MalteseFalcon -- has ascended to a dizzying new height. With this novel, Lawrence Block, who recently received the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom, is at the very top of his form.</p>
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Five Great Novels Douban
COWARD'S KISS New York City private investigator Ed London has a problem. Or rather, the problem is his brother-in-law's. Jack Enright's mistress has been shot in the apartment that he pays for. As Ed tries to help Jack, he finds himself drawn into a complex web of murder and deceit. GRIFTER'S GAME Joe Marlin is a grifter. He's a conman who charms women into handing over everything they have. Joe's never been at the sharp end of love, until he meets Mona - wicked and beautiful, she's got a plan that involves the biggest con of them all...murder. YOU COULD CALL IT MURDER A missing person case brings private eye Roy Markham to the remote winter-bound college town of Cliff's End, New Hampshire. But what begins as a routine investigation quickly becomes dark and dangerous. THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART Johnny Hayden and his partner plan to put the perfect scam into operation, tricking a guy into buying a piece of worthless land. But as the con develops, things start to get out of control...DEADLY HONEYMOON It was the perfect setting for a honeymoon - a charming little cabin in the isolated Pennsylvania woods. Then five shots rang out and shattered Dave and Jill Wade's world forever.