Block Lawrence Скачать все книги 67 Количество книг

This is the sixth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, diminutive attorney who represents criminal defendants on a contingency basis. In earlier appearances, the little lawyer has quoted William Blake, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Thomas Hood, and Andrew Marvell, so it’s clear that he sees poetry as a sacred calling.

However vile the crime, however damning the evidence, Ehrengraf knows with utter certainty that young William Telliford is innocent. And nothing can keep him from establishing that innocence beyond dispute.

Then again, circumstances alter cases, don’t they?

This, the fifth story about Martin H. Ehrengraf, presents the criminous criminal lawyer with a different sort of problem. He’s engaged to defend a man who anticipates being charged with homicide. But no one has been murdered.

Yet.

In the beleaguered but resourceful Ethan Crowe, Ehrengraf has a client who sees the wisdom of hedging his bets before he places them. In Terence Reginald Mayhew, the little lawyer has an adversary with the terrifying power of madness housed in the body of a housebound cripple.

Ehrengraf, a great fan of poetry, has cited William Blake and Winthrop Mackworth Praed in earlier stories; in he finds the opportunity to quote two of his favorites, Christopher Smart and Thomas Hood.

In its brief existence, THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES has established itself as a peerless suspense anthology. Compiled by the best-selling mystery novelist Ed McBain, this year’s edition boasts nineteen outstanding tales by such masters as John Updike, Lawrence Block, Jeffery Deaver, and Joyce Carol Oates as well as stories by rising stars such as Edgar Award winners Tom Franklin and Thomas H. Cook. The 1999 volume is a spectacular showcase for the high quality and broad diversity of the year’s finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

The author of dozens of acclaimed novels including those in the Scudder and Keller series, Lawrence Block has long been recognized as one of the premier crime writers of our time. Now, the breathtaking skill, power, and versatility of this Grand Master are brilliantly displayed once again in a mesmerizing new thriller set on the streets of the city he knows and loves so well.

That was the thing about New York — —if you loved it, if it worked for you, it ruined you for anyplace else in the world.

In this dazzlingly constructed novel, Lawrence Block reveals the secret at the heart of the Big Apple. His glorious metropolis is really a small town, filled with men and women from all walks of life whose aspirations, fears, disappointments, and triumphs are interconnected by bonds as unbreakable as they are unseen. Pulsating with the lives of its denizens — bartenders and hookers, power brokers and politicos, cops and secretaries, editors and dreamers — the city inspires a passion that is universal yet unique in each of its eight million inhabitants, including:

John Blair Creighton, a writer on the verge of a breakthrough;

Francis Buckram, a charismatic ex–police commissioner — and the inside choice for the next mayor — on the verge of a breakdown;

Susan Pomerance, a beautiful, sophisticated folk-art dealer plumbing the depths of her own fierce sexuality;

Maury Winters, a defense attorney who prefers murder trials because there’s one less witness;

Jerry Pankow, an ex-addict who has turned being clean into a living, mopping up after New York’s nightlife;

And, in the shadows of a city reeling from tragedy, an unlikely killing machine who wages a one-man war against them all.

Infused with the raw cadence, stark beauty, and relentless pace of New York City, is a tour de force Block fans old and new will celebrate.

New York’s a tough town. Hard to impress. Shrugs off hype, casts a cold eye on glitz. But once in a blue moon a killer with street smarts and a sense of theater will reach out and take the city by the throat. Maybe he’ll write letters to a popular tabloid columnist, proclaiming himself the answer to a failed criminal justice system. Maybe he’ll point a finger at the kind of villain the law can’t touch. A child killer who got off on a technicality, say. A top mobster with decades of blood on his hands. A rabble-rouser who incites others to murder. Maybe he’ll sign himself “Will,” as in “The Will of the People.” Then suppose he takes aim at a respectable lawyer, a defense attorney with a roster of unpopular clients. Suppose the lawyer’s a friend of Matt Scudder. Scudder is New York to the bone. He’s as tough as the big town itself, as hard to impress. And now he’s up against the self-styled Will of the People in a city with eight million ways to die, a city where not just the good guys but even the wicked get worse than they deserve.

The Ehrengraf Alternative is the seventh of ten stories about the little lawyer whose resourcefulness on behalf of an innocent client is unparalleled.

It seems to me that a couple of real-life cases inspired this story, but I find I can’t call them to mind; the story seems to have outlived its inspiration. Ehrengraf would probably quote Hippocrates. “Ars longa, vita brevis,” he would remark, smiling his little smile.

A Little Touch of Bernie in the Night

Four decades ago, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block introduced the world to one of his most beloved and enduring creations: Bernie Rhodenbarr, the clever, nimble-fingered star of novels such as , and . Called “the Heifetz of the picklock” by the , Bernie has stolen not only antiques, stamp collections, and priceless works of art but also millions of readers’ hearts. Now, for all those craving more adventures of their favorite bookseller-by-day and burglar-by-night, for the first time ever collects all of Bernie’s short-form appearances in one complete volume.

From the story in which a prototype of Bernie first appeared (“A Bad Night For Burglars”) to his appearances in and (maybe? It’s kinda complicated) ... from an essay discussing Bernie’s misadventures in Hollywood (how in the world did Whoopi Goldberg ever get cast?) to a piece commissioned by a European publisher for a tourist guide to New York... you’ll find every published story, article, and standalone excerpt Bernie has ever appeared in — plus two new, unpublished pieces: an introduction discussing the character’s colorful origins and an afterword in which the author, contemplating retirement, comes face to face with his own creation.

In all of mystery fiction, there has never been a character like Bernie — and in this, his dozenth book, he demonstrates all the charm and wit and kleptophilic ingenuity that has made two generations of readers welcome their favorite burglar into their homes.

This time it started with a call girl.

She came running to Eddie Manso scared stiff. A bad scene with some sadistic hood. The guy had told the girl he was a rich banker. That's what interested Eddie. The guy had said he owned the banks.

A hood who owned

Eddie called the colonel and the colonel called the others...

There were six of them. Specialists. Ex-soldiers, each with a unique talent. There game was getting to a special kind of vermin, the kind that preyed on innocents... the kind the law never seemed to be able to grab.

There was always trouble, but this one was going to be really rough. The "banker" was no ordinary hood.

You think you’ve got problems?

Well, how would you like to get a letter from your ex-wife’s lawyer threatening a lawsuit over a measly few months’ alimony? And then be fired from your job as editor of Ronald Rabbit’s Magazine for Boys and Girls simply because the magazine had ceased publication six month ago? And then go home to find your wife has run off with your best friend — and your bank account? And that you are being evicted from your apartment?

What do you do then, when you are left with nothing but your lurid memories, your itchy libido and an unemployed typewriter?

If you are Laurence Clarke, our trepid hero and the world’s most cunning linguist, you immediately plunge into not one but seven simultaneous and overlapping love affairs that would boggle a satyr. And you set into motion the most outrageous, insanely complicated and deviously horny series of interlocking plots and counterplots since Machiavelli began his nursery school.

How did these maniacal manipulations bring together the erstwhile publisher of Ronald Rabbit’s his depraved but virginal secretary, six little schoolgirls who should have had Polly Adler for a housemother, two ex-wives who were usually too prone to argue, one landlord, two law firms, various bystanders, and a partridge in a pear tree?

You’ll have to read the incredible letters of Laurence Clarke to find out, but we will admit to one thing:

We lied about the partridge.

For years, readers have turned to Lawrence Block’s novels for mesmerizing entertainment. And for years. writers have turned to Block’s for candid, conversational, practical advice on how to put a publishable novel on paper.

Now that you’ve discovered it, you, too, will find this to be the guide for the working novelist. Filled with Block’s experiences and much that he’s learned from others, the look helps you:

• identify the type of novel you’re to write

• invite plot ideas to bubble up from your subconscious

• develop characters who act, feel and speak like real people

• use what you know and learn what you must

• snare readers from the start

• keep writing

• develop your style

• market your work in a professional manner

Bead what Lawrence Block has to say. Then write what you have to write. Your novel.

A walk on the wild side! In this series of collections of gritty Noir and Hardboiled stories, you’ll find some of the best writers of the craft writing in their prime.

In the depths of her blue eyes, he glimpsed... murder.

Cashed out from the NYPD after 24 years, Doak Miller operates as a private eye in steamy small-town Florida, doing jobs for the local police. Like posing as a hit man and wearing a wire to incriminate a local wife who’s looking to get rid of her husband. But when he sees the wife, when he looks into her deep blue eyes...

He falls — and falls hard. Soon he’s working with her, against his employer, plotting a devious plan that could get her free from her husband and put millions in her bank account. But can they do it without landing in jail? And once heХs kindled his taste for killing... will he be able to stop at one?

Dolly, as you’ll see, is a person who finds it hard to let go of those things she holds dear...

The Ehrengraf Nostrum is the eighth of ten stories about the determined and resourceful attorney, Martin H. Ehrengraf.

Ehrengraf’s cases, while refashioned by the perverse imagination of his biographer, sometimes draw their inspiration from the real world. Such is clearly the case in the present instance, and readers with good memories will surely recall the rash of pointless deaths that have burdened us to this day with containers of patent medicine that only a child can open.

But I digress...

When you’ve already got blood on your hands, what’s a little more?

Turner needs to start a new life and that means he needs cash… fast. So the twenty thousand he’s offered for a job sounds pretty good, even if it means killing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. And he’s not alone. There are four other men—killers, idealists, mercenaries—all with the same target. Can they band together to overthrow Castro and get Turner his chance at a new life?

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from his personal collection, and a new afterword written by the author.

Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Schudder is the best — and now the ex-cop-turned-p.i. is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the lost, he's finding love — and death — in the worst possible places.

The Spinner is dead, bashed on the head and left to rot in a river. There are three suspects. Henry Prager has paid enough for the sins of his daughter, and begs Scudder not to destroy his shaky business or the fragile girl's reformed life. Beverly Etheridge cheerfully admitted all the sex acts Scudder had seen in the photos and she promises to show him a few more. Theodore Huysendahl offers Scudder enough money to choke even a blackmailer's greed, a proposition no sane man would turn down. Scudder's code of honour demands that one of them will pay…

Nobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it also — and she wanted out. Maybe Kim didn't deserve the life fate had dealt her. She surely didn't deserve her death. The alcoholic ex-cop turned p.i. was supposed to protect her, but someone slashed her to ribbons on a crumbling New York City waterfront pier. Now finding Kim's killer will be Scudder's penance. But there are lethal secrets hiding in the slain hooker's past that are far dirtier than her trade. And there are many ways of dying in this cruel and dangerous town — some quick and brutal… and some agonizingly slow.