And tutorial guides such as “Telling Lies for Fun and Profit” have helped countless aspiring writers figure out how to proceed from plot to print.īut when I met with Block, once Grandmaster of Mystery Writers of America and winner of awards too numerous to recount here, for a late lunch last month near New York’s Union Square, the topic at hand was a sharp change-up even from the multi-varied pitch count that has been his career. The Bernie Rhodenbarr series is written with the light touch and sleight of hand of its burgling antihero, while Hard Case Crime has made an annual sport of highlighting early gems, such as “Grifter’s Game” and “Killing Castro,” from his pulp-writing days when he started a half-century ago. His Matthew Scudder novels, at their best, illuminate one man’s journey away from the bottle toward redemption by helping others in their worst hours.

This ebook edition of Grifter's Game contains as a bonus the first chapter of another Lawrence Block noir classic, The Girl with the Long Green Heart.In the mystery world, Lawrence Block needs no introduction. A lot has changed in the half century since it first appeared-but it's still got one of the most shocking and powerful endings in all of noir fiction. Grifter's Game was Lawrence Block's first crime novel, the first book published under his own name. The other suitcase, holding a fortune in pure skag. Not the one with the shirts and cufflinks. And you never had an opportunity handed to you like what you found in LKB's suitcase. But you never met a woman like Mona Brassard, the kind of dame who gets in your blood like malaria germs. Your name's Joe Marlin, and you're used to playing the angles and working the short con-sleeping with married women and stealing their jewelry, beating checks in restaurants, making quick scores and disappearing, turning up miles away with a new name and the same old say of getting by. Because it's full of white powder, and it's just what you think it is. But however different the two of you may be built, you've got the same neck size and the same sleeve length, so the man's shirts fit you just fine.Īnd when you open the second suitcase, you've got your hands full.

One suitcase is full of his clothes, and his pants are too big in the waist and too short in the leg and no good to you at all. Keith Brassard is the owner of those suitcases you picked up, and he's also the husband of the gorgeous blonde who picked you up. They're monogrammed L.K.B.-so now your name is Leonard K. You left empty-handed, and you need luggage to check into a decent hotel, so you grab two checked bags before the owner turns up to claim them. It's David Gavilan when you skip a hotel bill and head for Atlantic City. Your name's Joe Marlin, but you change it almost as often as you change your shirt.

Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block