Block Squared

Sinner Man – Hard Case Crime Series – Lawrence Block (Titan Books)

Lawrence Block is easily one of the most prolific writers of his generation cranking out not only a mountain of words but in the process creating some of fictions more memorable characters like; PI Matthew Scudder, burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr and hit man Keller among many others.

When he was first stringing together words for a living Block penned a hard boiled crime novel featuring a mild mannered insurance salesman who accidentally offs in wife when he slaps her one night and she dies after crackling her skull. Panicked and trying to avoid a run in with the cops the guy stashes her body and sets out to reinvent himself. A quick train ride to Buffalo and said insurance man goes through the motions of setting himself up to be a gangster, quickly garnering the attention of the local mob.

That book, dubbed by Block as Sinner Man made the rounds with publishers who uniformly professed to like the writing, just not enough to publish the work. Block continued his journey into writing a few years later, it seems the book did get sold, he just never could remember seeing it in print. A few years back a publisher mentioned the seemingly long lost novel and encouraged Block to try to track it down so it could be re-packaged and re-released. That journey garnered some interest, but never proved fruitful in tracking down a published copy of the book, until an innocent Facebook post by a fan cross-referenced the details of the story with a book Block had self-published for wannabe writers.

Block tracked down a copy of the book which had been published under another title and brought it to Titan Books, publishers of the Hard Case Crime series of hard boiled fiction. Sinner Man is a perfect fit for the series and for this fellow Buffalo-nian (Block was born in the Queen City) the references to actual and strikingly familiar “fictional” landmarks make the book extra fun.

In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper – Edited by Lawrence Block (Pegasus Books)

Growing up in an era way before the explosion of video games, the kids in my neighborhood actually spent lots of time outdoors running around playing sports, riding our bikes and generally getting into mischief. When Mother Nature threw us a curve ball and it rained we headed into the subterranean world known as the basement and pulled out a stack of board games. These games called for a mix of skill, reasoning and a bit of luck. One of my all-time favorite games was Masterpiece, which featured auctions for the works of the great masters and the challenge of which “paintings” were real and which were fakes.

One of my favorite paintings in the game was the Edward Hopper classic Nighthawks featuring a handful of folks in a lonely diner on a darkened street. I can’t say for sure what about the painting it was that appealed to me, but one look and you had to wonder what the story was behind these folks hanging out in the diner.

It is those folks and their stories that are at the root of the new short story collection In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper edited by Lawrence Block and featuring 17 new short stories by the likes of Stephen King, Michael Connelly, Lee Child and Jeffery Deaver. Each writer was given a work by Hopper to base their story on.

The result is an amazing, diverse collection of stories that are equal to the masterful strokes of Hopper’s brush. No two of these stories take the same approach which makes them really stand up as they stand alone. Match these stories with beautifully printed renditions of the Hopper paintings and you get the perfect mix of art and words and it makes for a great gift for fans of either genre.

What Makes a Thriller Great

While often disparaged by those who claim to be of a higher mind as not being great literature (insert your best Downton Abbey accent here) the thriller holds a special place in the hearts of readers everywhere.

There are a handful of prerequisites that separate great thrillers from the average. First a great thriller will drop you into the action right from the very first page; while some think Stephen King writes thrillers, this guy will bury you in 400 pages of background, before he hits you with the action. Get me in the grip of the story right away, or lose me!

Second, while a thriller needs intensity, what really makes it great is tension! It’s the knife edge, the whats around the next corner, the will the hero get caught that drives great thrillers. And last, but certainly not least, a thriller needs to finish strong. You’ve succeeded in dragging me through the twists and turns of a great ride, but then you finish with a slap down or a lame shoot out to end things?! NO! You need to make the action carry right to the last page.

Three recent entries in the thriller sweepstakes hit the mark to varying degrees of success:

Brad Taylor is back with another installment in the Pike Logan series; Enemy of Mine which is chock full of been there done that, insider knowledge. With Pike Logan, Taylor is poised to join the elite class of thriller writers that include Vince Flynn and Brad Thor.

Taylor jumpstarts the action from the get go and ratchets up the intensity as he puts the covert force known as the Taskforce through its paces. The real world believable plot of a terrorist attempt on a U.S. envoy sent to solidify an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord has a ripped from the headlines feel.

While it may not be what is traditionally considered to be a thriller, Lawrence Block’s hit man for hire, Keller is back in Hit Me. While considered a master of mystery, with Keller, Block clearly steps away from the whodunit style with a unique and intriguing character.

Everybody’s favorite philatelist (stamp collector) has retired from the murder for hire game and has migrated from New York City south to New Orleans. Add to the mix a new name, a wife, a new kid and a new career as a home remodeler/flipper in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

But, like seemingly everybody else, Keller’s new life gets impacted by the economic downturn and suddenly he is thrust back into the world he thought he left behind. While comfortable, Keller does want to dip into his cash reserves, so when the phones rings and the ever-present contractor Dot offers up work in his former profession, Keller needless to say takes the job.

Block is a master of tension, mixing Keller benign hobby smoothly with his menacing career. The stakes seem higher for Keller as he walks the fine line between his new life and his old. You may end doing a double take when you realize that Block has caught you up in the web so tightly that you are rooting for a man who commits murder for money.

While comparisons to Dan Brown may be a blessing and a curse, TV personality and critic Linda Stasi’s initial foray into fiction, The Sixth Station has all of the elements and alchemy of thriller gold; terrorism, international intrigue and even the very real possibility that someone has utilized religious artifacts to clone Jesus in an otherworld style Second Coming.

Stasi’s wise-cracking, feisty, reporter Alessandra Russo sets the table quickly, when she is seemingly randomly picked from a crowd gathered for the international U.N. tribunal for alleged  terrorist Demiel ben Yusef, and she is on the receiving end of a kiss from ben Yusef that sets the wheels in motion on a global conspiracy.

Is ben Yusef the cloned Son of the Son or the murderous terrorist, who stands accused of killing tens of thousands. The race is on as Russo fends of villains of every stripe in an end of days chase for answers. Stasi does a nice job of balancing religious history and mystery with a tension filled style. The problem is as the story builds and grows to epic proportions that the ending seems to be a letdown. The whats next ending seems to have set the table for a sequel/ follow up to continue the tale.