Lawrence Block

Novelist

Lawrence Block was born in Buffalo, New York, United States on June 24th, 1938 and is the Novelist. At the age of 85, Lawrence Block biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.

Date of Birth
June 24, 1938
Nationality
United States
Place of Birth
Buffalo, New York, United States
Age
85 years old
Zodiac Sign
Cancer
Profession
Novelist, Screenwriter, Writer
Lawrence Block Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

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Lawrence Block Life

Lawrence Block (born June 24, 1938) is an American crime writer best known for two long-running New York-set series about the recovering alcoholic P.I.

Bernie Rhodenbarr, Matthew Scudder, and the gentleman burglar Benjamin Rhodenbarr.

In 1994, Block was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

Early life

Lawrence Block was born in Buffalo, New York, where he was raised on June 24, 1938. He attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, but left before graduating.

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Lawrence Block Career

Career

Block's earliest work, which was published pseudonymously in the 1950s, was mainly in the soft-porn mass market paperback industry, which he shared with fellow mystery writer Donald E. Westlake. Block compares the early sex novels to be a rewarding experience, noting that despite the books' titillating content (rather mild by adult fiction's standards), he was supposed to write fully developed books with plausible plots, characters, and conflicts. Block was also credited with his prolific output, writing 15 to 20 sex novels per year to support himself financially, and he was encouraged to write in a manner that demanded no revision or editing of his first drafts. Strange Are the Ways of Love, Lesley Evans' debut was a lesbian romance called Strange Are the Ways of Love. Block reissued this book in 2016, under the name Shadows, another of his pseudonyms, Jill Emerson.

The first of his creations to appear under his own name was the 1957 story "You Can't Lose," for the crime/adventure publication Manhunt. Grifter's Game (1961), Block's first book to be published under Block's name. It started as an erotic novel, but later Block would write, "I decided it would be a cut above what I'd been writing," I wrote it as a crime book in the hopes of a Gold Medal." Since being published more than fifty books and more than a hundred short stories as well as a collection of writers' books, he has sold more than fifty novels and more than a hundred short stories.

Block has lived in New York City for decades, directing the bulk of his fiction there, and has long been associated with the city. Lynne Block is his husband. Amy Reichel, Jill Block, and Alison Pouliot have three children from a previous marriage. Lynne spends the majority of his time traveling (the two have been to 135 countries), but he does not consider New York his home.

Craig Ferguson, a regular on The Late Late Show, 2005-2015), appeared in eight of Ferguson's ten seasons as host of the show.

A collection of his fiction columns from Writer's Digest may contain substantial autobiographical information on the earlier period of his life and career.

He received the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Block is a smear on the Ragdale Foundation.

The ever-evolving Matthew Scudder, Block's most popular item, was introduced in 1976's The Sins of the Fathers as an alcoholic ex-cop serving as an unlicensed private investigator in Hell's Kitchen. The early novels, which were originally published as paperbacks, are in many ways interchangeable; the second and third entries—In the Midst of Death (1976) and Time to Murder (1977)—were written in the reverse order from their publication dates. The 8 Million Ways to Die (1982, produced by Hal Ashby, with unpopular results) breaks from that trend, with Scudder introducing himself at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The series was supposed to come to an end on that note, but Block's idle promise to provide an editor friend with an original Scudder short resulted in "By the Dawn's Early Light," a tale told from the perspective of a recovering alcoholic. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (named for a line in a song by folk singer Dave Van Ronk), which was not only one of the more literary entries but also a favorite of the author and his followers, but also one of the author's followers. Scudder's life rarely remain the same from one book to the next; 1990's A Ticket to the Boneyard reunites him with Elaine Mardell, a hooker from his days on the service, who marries multiple books later. The taut, gruesome A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, 1991, a winner of the Edgar Award for Best [mystery] Novel], and 1993's A Long Line of Dead Men, a tightly woven mystery with a burgeoning fraternity dubbed the "Club of 31" are among fan favorites. A Walk Among the Tombstones, published in 1992, was turned into a film that was written and directed by Scott Frank, with Liam Neeson playing the lead role. In May 2011, A Drop of the Hard Stuff, the seventeenth entry, was published.

Scudder's alcoholism battle has been portrayed in part autobiographical, although Block has refused to address the subject in a column he wrote for Writer's Digest, saying that he allowed him to hang out in the same saloon where I spent a considerable amount of my own time. Around that time, I was drinking a lot, and I made him a heavy drinker. I loved whiskey, occasionally mixing it with coffee. Scudder, as well.

Bernie Rhodenbarr's other major series, which is both amusing and lighthearted, is related to the misadventures of the gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. The collection is full of nuanced, witty dialogue.

Unlike Scudder, Rhodenbarr is ageless, remaining essentially the same from 1977's Burglars Can't Be Choosers to 2013's The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. Bernie's third volume, "The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979), is the first volume to receive a book, and he introduces Carolyn Kaiser, his lesbian "soulmate" and partner in crime. Bernie is the prime suspect, according to the plots, who often reside on Manhattan's Upper East Side) and becomes involved in a murder probe, with some of them as the prime suspect. Not even an eleven-year absence (between 1983's The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian and 1994's The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams) will see the basic formula change. However, there is also a meta quality to the more recent entries: Bernie, the reluctant detective, is himself a bookkeeper and genre enthusiast, and he is apt to mention Agatha Christie, E.W. Hornung (his cat is named "Raffles"), Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Sue Grafton, and John Sandford are among others. The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995) is a film that was based on several of the actor's most popular roles. The Burglar in the Library (1997) imagines a meeting between Hammett and Chandler in the 1940s, casting a volume inscribed by Chandler to Hammett as its own Maltese Falcon. Bernie helps locate a writer who is clearly based on J.D. in The Burglar in the Rye. Salinger.

The Burglar in The Closet, the second book in the series, was shot in 1987, with Whoopi Goldberg as Bernie (or Bernice).

Block has written eight books about Evan Tanner, an adventurer and accidental explorer who, as a result of an injury sustained in the Korean War, cannot sleep. All but the last three of these were released in the 1960s and early 1970s (beginning with 1966's The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep), but Tanner on Ice, 1998, brought the character back to life after nearly a thirty-year absence.

Chip Harrison, who was aiming for lust and awe, appeared in two funny, non-mystery books that revolved around seventeen-year-old Chip's constant battle to lose his virginity: No Score and Chip Harrison scores Again.

Chip, who realized that the series had no future until Chip fulfilled his dream, invites Leo Haig, an admirer of sleuth Nero Wolfe who models himself after his hero (e.g., Wolfe raises tropical fish). Make Out With Murder and The Topless Tulip Caper, two subsequent, decidedly tongue-in-cheek mystery books, as well as a handful of short stories.

Four episodic books (Hit Man (1998), Hit Parade (2006), and Hit Me (2013)) as well as one full-length story (Hit and Run (2008)) chronicle Keller's life, a tragic, wistful hitman who first appeared in a Playboy magazine in the 1990s. The bulk of the books are based on related short stories; Hit and Run is the only Keller novel to be written as a series. Keller's Fedora, a new bookla set in 2016, in which Keller is compelled to come out of retirement for one last job.

Keller's full name is John Paul Keller (askeptically mentioned in Hit Man), but he is not the first to mention Keller in the series, although he is rarely identified as anything other than Keller. Keller's behavior and the people he meets are rarely based on the specifics of his crimes, instead being character studies of his character and the people he encounters (e.g., Keller's being hired to kill a major league baseball designated hitter but postponing the case and following the team to away games so the hitter can reach his career high of 400 home runs). Born in New York City, after a horrific tragedy went wrong, he later relocated to New Orleans, where he lives under the name "Nicholas Edwards" and marries, has a child, and works in construction. Keller is assigned assignments by a contact named Dot, who is originally based in White Plains. His assignments usually take him to different towns, where he often imagines himself retiring from the company, daydreaming about settling there, and then returning to finish the assignment and returning, his dreams were replaced as a passing fantasy. Keller's pastime is stamp collecting, to which he is utterly dedicated. He collects non-U.S. papers before 1940, with a particular keen interest in stamps from former French colonies.

At the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards, Hit and Run was nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger.

Small Town (2003), Block's first non-series book in fifteen years, includes a collection of New Yorkers' various reactions to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Block has also written hundreds of short stories over the years, and he is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story. Enough Rope's collection in 2002 compiles stories, 84 in total, from previous collections like Like a Lamb to Slaughter and Sometimes They Bite, to more recent and previously uncollected stories.

Martin H. Ehrengraf, a series of lawyers, is described as a swanky little criminal defense advocate whose clients all turn out to be innocent. Ehrengraf charges a mere $1 retainer fee and then works on contingency; he gets paid a significant fee if and only if his clients are informed of wrongdoing. Ehrengraf has committed misdeeds up to and including murder to exonerate his client and often frame another for the felony. "The Ehrengraf Defense," Ehrengraf's first short story about him was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1978. Twelve stories had been published by 2003, and Block's "The Ehrengraf Settlement" was the eleventh story to tell. In a book entitled Ehrengraf For The Defense (2012), the eleven names were collected and published.

In addition to writing the scripts for a handful of television episodes over the years, including, in 2005, two episodes of ESPN's Tilt—Block co-wrote the screenplay for My Blueberry Nights, a 2007 film directed by Wong Kar-wai and starring Norah Jones.

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