Kirjahaku

"A missing person case brings private eye Roy Markham to the remote winter-bound college town of Cliff's End, New Hampshire. But what began as a routine investigation quickly becomes dark and dangerous. Six pornographic photos and a tidy little blackmail scheme result in a brutal and baffling murder, and no one is safe - especially Markham himself."That's the product description for Blackstone Audio's excellent rendition of You Could Call It Murder, expertly voiced by Peter Berkrot, and we could leave it at that-but there's an interesting backstory to the book, and the Classic Crime Library seems a good place to share it with you.In 1961, Lawrence Block was living in New York and earning a living writing Midcentury Erotica and crime fiction. He'd just sold his first book under his own name, Grifter's Game, to Gold Medal Books. (They insisted on calling it Mona, but the original title's been restored by Hard Case Crime.) His agent got him an assignment to write a tie-in paperback novel for Belmont Books, linked to the TV series Markham, starring Ray Milland.The book turned out well, and the young writer's agent felt it was too good to be a Belmont tie-in. Knox Burger agreed, and Block changed the name of the hero from Roy Markham to Ed London, and Gold Medal published the book as Death Pulls a Doublecross. (Another unfortunate title; you'll find the book in the Classic Crime Library with the author's original title, Coward's Kiss.)But that left Block owing Belmont a book. You Could Call It Murder is what he wrote for them, and it turned out fairly nicely as well, but his agent sent it to Belmont all the same, where they published it as Markham: The Case of the Pornographic Photos. (By the time it came out-surprise surprise-the TV series was canceled.)Is everything clear? THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art.

"Ed London is the kind of private investigator you call to clean up the mess when your mistress turns up dead. But after he dumps a body in Central Park, it appears this case is still alive and kicking. Seems that the dead girl was in possession of something special that some very shady characters want back. Now Ed, along with his actress friend Maddy, will have to crack the case before he ends up dead himself. But there's more than a murder here; there's missing jewels, Israeli intelligence, Nazi spies, and a host of double-dealing, backstabbing thieves."Coward's Kiss started life as a tie-in novel for Belmont Books, linked to the TV series Markham, starring Ray Milland. When a very young Lawrence Block turned in the book, his agent sent it instead to Knox Burger at Gold Medal, who shared the agent's enthusiasm. Block rewrote the book, changing Roy to Ed and Markham to London, and Gold Medal published the book with the unfortunate title of Death Pulls a Doublecross.After fulfilling his assignment by writing another book for Belmont (You Could Call It Murder, Classic Crime Library #12) Block tried to write a second Ed London novel, but somehow never managed it. He did write three magazine novelettes with London, and you can find them in One Night Stands and Lost Weekends, a collection of his earliest pulp work.The legendary Anthony Boucher gave the book a nice review in the New York Times Book Review, and if Lawrence Block had the sense to hang on to things, we'd reproduce it here. But he doesn't, so you'll have to take our word for it. THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art.

A thriller loaded with international intrigue from mystery master Lawrence Block.Struggling folksinger Ellen Cameron can't believe her luck. Not only is the State Department sponsoring her trip to West Berlin, but her agent has arranged for her to tour Ireland. It's just the break she needs. And better yet, she's meeting the friendliest and most interesting people on her trip, from a kind priest on the plane to a handsome American studying abroad. But things - and people - aren't always what they seem, and her European adventure could turn out to be the type of international affair she never imagined.LB says: "This book was originally published by Lancer Books under the pen name Anne Campbell Clarke, a pseudonym I never used before or since. I'd been engaged to write a romantic espionage novel in the tradition of Helen MacInnes, and chose Ireland as a setting, being familiar with the countryside and with the folk music. I had a good time writing it, but of course that's no guarantee you'll have a good time reading it. But I certainly hope you do." THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art.

Here's one reviewer's take: "Originally marketed as "occult horror", Ariel is neither. It's a story of the madness that lies just under the surface, and what it takes to bring it out; the need to give evil a face and a name. Who better to scapegoat for unexplainable tragedies than the one who is Different? Ariel is adopted, and looks slightly unusual. Her unstable mother never fails to assume the worst, almost deliberately misreading the girl's ordinary teenage perceptiveness and need for privacy. By the book's end, almost everyone believes that Ariel is a monster -- including Ariel herself."Great characterizations, wonderful descriptions -- I want to live in Ariel's house. I could wish for a sequel, or just for more books like it."And here's LB's: "A publisher provided the premise of Ariel-an adoption that went awry. I was in Charleston when I began the book, and chose that extraordinary city as its setting. I don't know to what extent the book works-I should note that not every reader agreed with the one quoted above-but I greatly enjoyed the interplay of Ariel and her friend Erskine, and on certain nights I can still hear her flute off in the distance."THE CLASSIC CRIME LIBRARY brings together Lawrence Block's early crime novels, reformatted and with new uniform cover art.

Te atraviesa como una dosis de sales vol tiles y te arde como yodo.Con estas palabras la revista Kirkus Reviews describi a El hombre peligroso, cuando ste hizo su aparici n en ingl s, hace casi cincuenta a os, bajo el t tulo de Such Men Are Dangerous, y desde entonces esta novela no ha perdido un solo paso: sigue manteniendo al lector sentado en el borde de la silla.Disponible por primera vez en castellano, El hombre peligroso es la historia de Paul Kavanagh un ex-miembro de las Fuerzas Especiales del Ej rcito de los Estados Unidos que se retira a una islita del tama o de una moneda de diez c ntimos, en los Cayos de Florida, para sobrellevar lo que ahora llamamos desorden de estr s postraum tico. All se impone una vida simple en extremo, siendo su nico contacto humano su visita semanal al tendej n en una isla cercana.Entonces llega George Dattner, y trae un plan. Como agente de la CIA, conoce informaci n secreta acerca de un env o de armamentos que se ha planeado desde una base militar en Dakota del Sur. Son artefactos realmente espantosos: granadas at micas, gases letales, dispositivos t cticos capaces de voltear de cabeza cualquier insurgencia o conflicto de fronteras. l ya hizo arreglos con un comprador. S lo le hace falta un compinche, porque seg n sus planes el secuestro del env o requiere de dos hombres eficaces.Kavanagh acepta el trabajo.El plan es brillante, como tambi n la manera de ejecutarlo, pero no se hacen esperar las sorpresas en el camino. Y la mayor sorpresa de todas es la del desenlace estremecedor que te caer encima con el mismo impacto con que les cay a los primeros lectores, hace medio siglo.

When Joyce Kendall arrives in New York, fresh out of Clifton College in Iowa, she has a job and an apartment waiting for her. The job's as a first reader for Armageddon Publications. The apartment's at 21 Gay Street, and the small Federal-period house is already home to a lesbian couple, Jean Fitzgerald and Terri Leigh, and an out-of-work newspaperman, Pete Galton.The relationships of these four people under one roof add up to a fast-paced story that is not only satisfying fiction but a rare window on Bohemian life in the late 1950s. A drug-fueled rent-party-turned-orgy at the apartment of one Fred Koans is just link to a world some older readers may recall.Gay Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village, runs for only a single block between Christopher Street and Waverly Place. The 1943 movie A Night to Remember portrays 13 Gay Street as the address of the building where most of the action, including a murder, occurs. In 1996, Sheryl Crow made a video on Gay Street for the song "A Change Would Do You Good."21 Gay Street, a very early Lawrence Block novel, was originally published under the pen name Sheldon Lord. It was never reprinted after its initial publication in 1960, and this marks its first appearance in 56 years. As such, it seems an ideal choice to lead off Lawrence Block's Collection of Classic Erotica, and the book's original cover, with a painting by the great Paul Rader, is reproduced here.

Jeff Flanders has a perfectly good life. Until Candace Cain sashays into it and turns it upside-down. Jeff's got a good-looking wife; he loves her and she loves him. He's got a job, swinging a desk at a semi-shady finance company, signing off on usurious loans to losers; he doesn't love it and it doesn't love him, but it's easy work and it pays the bills. Until a girl called Candy applies for a $1000 loan-with no job, no bank account, no security. Nothing but a beautiful face, an awesome body, and all the nerve in the world. He lends her the money himself. That's a mistake. In return, she takes him to bed. That's a bigger one. All she wants in the world is someone who'll keep her in style. All he wants is more Candy. . . CANDY, first published in 1960, is a noir novel of sexual obsession. It seems a better fit for the Classic Crime Library than the Collection of Classic Erotica. Either way, we get to use the gorgeous Paul Rader cover.

17-year-old Johnny Wells was a very handsome young man, and you'd have called him a babe magnet, but I'm afraid they didn't have that phrase back in 1961. He decided to capitalize on his looks and the response they earned from women, invested in a haircut and a good wardrobe, moved out of his slum apartment and into a budget hotel, and reinvented himself as a gigolo.The life transformed him. He took up reading, became devoted to it, and educated himself. His new contacts provided him with polish and sophistication. He moved to a good hotel, put money in the bank. And then an out-of-the-blue bout of impotence left him unfit for his profession.Next up, true love-and another transformation. Before you know it he's an advertising copywriter, a rising star on Madison Avenue. A family man.But fate's not done dealing, and the next card he draws is down and dirty...Gigolo Johnny Wells was published by Nightstand Books in 1961, and elicited a surprising response from whoever was serving as editor at the time. (Harlan Ellison, I've been told, but maybe not. And, really, who cares?) Whoever it was, he loved the book and asked for more. I must have written one, but efforts to find it have failed. And, really, who cares?A note on the name: Several years later, I needed a pen name for a work described as a cross-cultural survey of comparative sex techniques. I'd by then long since forgotten having used the name Johnny Wells in this book (which Nightstand had titled "Lover") and the name I stuck on Eros & Capricorn was John Warren Wells, a name I was to go on using on almost two dozen books of sexually-oriented nonfiction. Let me assure you that Johnny Wells and John Warren Wells are not related.

THOSE BOYS AND THEIR CARS...Danny Duncan drives his father's Oldsmobile. It's a nice respectable family sedan, and April North is every bit as respectable as the car. Until he manages to get her into the back seat. Now she's no longer a good girl, but only Danny know it, and he can keep a secret, can't he?Well, no. He tells half the town of Antrim, Ohio-the male half, and they all come sniffing around, led by Bill Piersall, driving a homemade hot rod cobbled together from spare parts and held together with spit and baling wire. She gives Bill what he wants, but he turns out to be harder to shake than a summer cold, until a Mercedes 300 SL screeches to a stop, with Craig Jeffers at the wheel. He has money and class and sophistication, and just about everything but a functioning moral compass.And, you know, things happen...April North, April North. A friend of mine thought enough of Mae West to write a book with a heroine he called June East, and I gave the compass and the calendar a further spin. Thus April North, and the name does have a certain lilt to it, doesn't it? Beacon Books thought so, evidently; this was Sheldon Lord's first book for them, and they liked the title enough to keep it, and the reading public liked the book enough to spark a second and third printing. None of this did much for the author, who got a flat fee of $600 for the book. Or maybe it was $750. It's hard to remember, after all these years... This paperback edition of APRIL NORTH reproduces the original cover, as painted by Al Rossi.

Well, here's what the blurb for the audiobook says: "Carla is a beautiful girl. She was plucked from the obscurity of a Polish slum to be the wife of a wealthy man-a man who seemingly gives her everything a wife could want. Except the one thing that she needs most: the pleasure she burns for while he snores beside her, the passion that only a lover can give."But adultery seems impossible until, suddenly, it happens. When she seduces a filling-station attendant, ruining her clothes in the grease of a mechanic's floor, she starts to spin out of control. He is the first but not the last, as Carla learns that infidelity is no work at all."What it doesn't say, but I will, is that Carla was my first published novel. In the summer of 1958 I came home from a vacation in Mexico to a note from my agent: Did I know what a sex novel was? Could I write one? We both knew I could write a book, I'd sent him one then under consideration at Gold Medal, and now I sat down and wrote a portion and outline of a book to be set in my hometown of Buffalo, where I was spending what remained of the summer before going back to college in the fall.Midway Tower Books, a new publisher founded by Harry Shorten of Archie Comics, lapped up Carla, so to speak. I met Harry some months later, and all he wanted to talk about was the scene in the grease put at the gas station. I guess it really worked for him.One other thing perhaps worth noting. After my portion and outline had been okayed, I completed the book. Then my agent let me know that it was a little too short. Could I please write another chapter to be inserted anywhere in the book?That was a poser, as the plot-such as it was-didn't have a lot of leftover space in it. But I figured out what to write, and sent along a chapter with the notation that it could indeed be inserted anywhere in the book. My good buddy Don Westlake, who also labored some in the Shorten vineyard, thought this was a remarkable tour de force, but I'm not so sure. I mean, what else was I supposed to do?You can probably spot the chapter in question.As I said, Carla was my first published book, and that's reason enough for me to be pleased by its renewed availability. It may even be reason enough for you to read it. I'd hope, though, that it's not your very first exposure to my work.Still, if it is, there's a bright side. From here on, they get better. And I'm delighted we've been able to reproduce the original Midwood cover, with a painting by the great Paul Rader

I'd no sooner finished CARLA, my first book for Midwood Tower, than Harry Shorten asked for another. I'd just returned to Antioch College, where after two years as an undistinguished student I'd dropped out for a year to hang on to a summer job at Scott Meredith's literary agency and bucket shop. It was wonderful training, but after a year there I decided I should go back to school, where I had a chance to assume the editorship of the school newspaper. So there I was in Yellow Springs, Ohio, taking a batch of English courses, and I had a publisher who wanted me to write a book. What'll it be, Larry-a paper on Tobias Smollett and the Great Chain of Being, or 50,000 words of soul-searching and sex for Harry Shorten? 50,000 words for which I'd be paid $600?No contest, really.The story concern a has-been writer trying to get back in the game, and all these years later I find it interesting that this young wannabe was already picturing himself on the way down and out.A fellow named Craig said some nice things in his Amazon review, which vanished when an earlier edition went off the boards, so I'll excerpt it here: "The protagonist Dan Larkin is an aspiring author, like Block himself, and it's downright eerie how many aspects of Dan's fictional life would end up paralleling the arc of Block's own life over the next 25 years: the progression from obscure pulp writer to eventual best-seller stardom, the women, the binge drinking, and the eventual spiral into alcoholism. . ."There are flashes of some really good writing. The narrator's voice resembles shades of Matt Scudde at times. It doesn't quite match up to the plot, which is mostly devoid of gritty realism and tension. There is a very funny chapter detailing a ten-day drinking binge that presages passages in After the First Death and When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes. There's a memorable scene of frank and unexpected violence during an encounter with an older woman. Above all, the author's young-eyed enthusiasm for the publishing industry and the life of being a professional writer shines through despite an affected veneer of world-weariness."My guess is that some of the writing stuff is interesting. Interesting, too, is the title-which was not my idea, in case you were wondering. I have no idea what title I hung on it, but Harry or one of his elves went for A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE. Meanwhile, my very first novel, a sensitive lesbian coming-of-age effort which I'd called SHADOWS, was in the process of being accepted over at Fawcett Books for their Crest imprint. (They were the first publisher to see it, and in fact had it in hand before I wrote the opening sentence of CARLA, but Harry could commission two books and publish them both in less time than Fawcett could read a manuscript and reach a decision.) And when they did say yes to it, and when I'd revised it to their satisfaction, they changed my pen name (from Rhoda Moore to Lesley Evans, for reasons no one ever explained) and my title from SHADOWS to STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE.A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE and STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE? Really? I don't think I've ever used the word "strange" in a title since, and doubt I ever shall. Unless, of course, I were to write a politically incorrect novel of a young gay man's coming out, but I don't think so. Besides, STRANGE FRUIT only works if you can get Billie Holiday to sing it.The cover, as I've just learned from Lynn Munroe's wonderful website, is by Rudy Nappi (1923-2015), who was for 20 years the principal cover artist for the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. The rumor that his cover for A STRANGE KIND OF LOVE was adapted from a rejected Nancy Drew cover strikes me, I have to say, as fanciful. But what do I know?

There's a song they used to sing at Antioch College, and it went something like this: "She was just a little freshmanVictim of Admission's whimThen she met an upperclassman-we won't name him-And she had a child by him."Now he's off in New York CityRescued by the co-op planWhile she walks the streets of Yellow Springs, Ohio, Looking for another man."Ah, they don't write 'em like that anymore, and it's not hard to see why. And the sad story recounted in the song is not entirely unlike that of Linda Shepard, titular (so to speak) heroine of CAMPUS TRAMP.The story of the book may be more interesting than the story told in the book. I wrote it in July of 1959, at the Hotel Rio on West 47th Street in New York. I'd just arrived from, yes, Yellow Springs, having spent a year writing books for Harry Shorten, editing the college newspaper, and giving short shrift to my academic studies. (This was my third year at Antioch. I was there for two years, took a year off to work at a literary agency, and then came back, only to discover that, having seen Paree, you couldn't keep me down on the farm. I tried to drop out during the first semester, got manipulated into staying by my parents, and somehow finished the year. Now I was in New York, where I was to spend the summer writing, before returning for what was supposed to be my last year of school.)Well. My agent came up with an assignment. William Hamling, publisher of science fiction and Rogue Magazine, had decided to initiate a line of erotic novels similar to what I'd been writing for Midwood. Could I write one?I could and did, and thought it might be amusing to use Antioch as a setting, and to choose the characters' surnames from the buildings and dormitory units on the Antioch campus. I picked the title CAMPUS TRAMP and sent it off, and they liked it well enough in Hamlingville (that would be Evanston, Illinois, IIRC) to ask for more.Not long after I'd finished the book, I got a letter from Yellow Springs. The Student Personnel Committee, having taken a long look at my academic performance, advised me of their decision that I might be happier elsewhere. I thought this was very perceptive of them, that I would indeed be happier almost anywhere else, and the passive-aggressive lout I was at the time found this an ideal resolution to a situation I seemed incapable of resolving on my own. Their letter had left the door slightly ajar, if not wide open; I sensed I could talk my way back in, but why?Then CAMPUS TRAMP came out, and a copy or two made it all the way to Yellow Springs, and a legend sprang up. I'd written the book as payback, it was said, a way to revenge myself upon the school that had expelled me. Now when I'd written CAMPUS TRAMP I'd still thought I was to return in the fall. And I was if anything profoundly grateful to the school for having cut the umbilical cord and sent me out into the world. No end of people knew better, even as they were sure they knew who the models were for the various characters-but that happens all the time. But never mind. One recalls the newspaperman's line from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend "Foir years I wondered who painted the cover, and recently learned it was one Harold W. McCauley. If he himself wasn't familiar with the college, he must have had coaching; that's a remarkably accurate representation of Antioch's Main Building, towers and all. Copies of the book commanded high prices at Antioch Senior Sales over the years, I've been assured, and Christian Feuerstein used to perform inspired readings of the text at what I can but assume were memorable occasions. I just wish someone had thought to hire her to do the audioboo

Sheldon Lord began his career with CARLA (#5 in the Collection of Classic Erotica), published by Harry Shorten's Midwood Books in 1958. Just about a year later he wrote CAMPUS TRAMP (CCL #7) for William Hamling's Nightstand Books, for whom he'd morphed into Andrew Shaw. And young Mr. Lord's first book for yet a third publisher, Beacon, was APRIL NORTH (CCL #4).Each publisher wanted more from the guy. Beacon's request for a second book was remarkably specific. They had a title in mind-COMMUNITY OF WOMEN-and a theme. Their notion was that no end of interesting and attractive couples lived in the suburbs, and five mornings a week virtually all of the husbands rode into Manhattan on the train, while their wives remained to do presumably wifely things at home. So during daytime hours, Monday through Friday, all of these wives constituted a...Community of Women. Which would make it a hotbed of, um, hot stuff.Duh.Well, it was an okay premise. I remember the occasion when it was delivered to me. I was in Buffalo, my ancestral home, on a brief visit. My agent called and recounted what Beacon had asked for. (That agent believed in keeping writers and publishers far apart. I did meet Harry Shorten once, at Harry's insistence, but never had any direct contact with anyone at Nightstand or Beacon.) "They need this as soon as possible," he added.I fell for this, of course. I always did. About a year earlier I was living on West 69th Street when the same agent told me that Monarch Books had an unfinished novel, the first chapters and outline of which had been written by William Ard, who'd died at what even then seemed like an impossibly young age. (Looking back, I can't avoid the thought that the one thing poor Bill Ard got out of his early death was that he didn't have to finish that goddam book.) So my job was to complete the book, which would put a few dollars in my pocket and a few more in the near-empty purse of Ard's widow."And they need it right away..."Well, the hell they did. But I bought the notion, moved into a hotel on the corner of Broadway and 69th. I went there every morning and went home every night, and i finished that awful book. Are might have made something of it, he was a pretty good writer, but all I can say for myself is the book got written, and published. And it's not as though Monarch was holding the press for it. They published it whenever they got around to it.Same with Beacon and COMMUNITY OF WOMEN. Nobody there was holding his breath. But I believed what I was told, so I wrote it right there, sitting at a card table in the front room of my mother's house on Starin Avenue. I didn't know much about life in the suburbs, or about people who went to an office every morning and came home every night, but it wasn't hard to come up with characters and find ways for them to interact with one another. If I recall correctly (and how often does that happen?) it took me four or five days.I guess Beacon liked it well enough. They wanted more, and published several more of Sheldon Lord's efforts. And then, when they wanted still more and I had neither time nor inclination to write them, my agent suggested we find writers to ghost the books under Sheldon Lord's name; I'd receive a fee off the top for my involvement, with the balance to go to the actual writers. Consequently there are more than a few Sheldon Lord titles-specifically most of the ones for Beacon-which I neither wrote nor read.And so I've spared you a summary of COMMUNITY OF WOMEN, and gotten off the hook instead by taking this little trip down Memory Lane. It is, after all, one of my favorite thoroughfares, not without potholes and sharp turns, and sometimes confused with the Boulevard of Broken Dreams..

When I decided to reissue my early books in the Collection of Classic Erotica, I did so without realizing what I was getting myself into. I would have to read them again.Or, as in the case of BORN TO BE BAD, I'd have to read them for the first time.I remembered just three things about the book. (1) The title, BORN TO BE BAD. (My mother, on hearing about the novel, suggested that BORN TO BE BANGED might have been a superior choice.) (2) The name of the heroine, Rita Morales. (My mother, bless her heart, thought Rita Immorales might better suit the character.) (3) The circumstances of the writing-that it was the fall of 1958, that I had just returned to Antioch College after a gap year with a literary agency, that I wrote it on an office-model Remington typewriter in the office of the Antioch College Record, where I was serving as Managing Editor prior to assuming the full-time editorship the following semester, and that between the newspaper and the books I was writing, I was devoting precious little time to my classes. When I was supposed to be reading PARADISE LOST, by John Milton, and Roderick Random, by Tobias Smollett, I was instead writing BORN TO BE BAD, by Sheldon Lord.It was my third novel for Harry Shorten at Midwood Books, and you'd think I might have a clearer recollection of the circumstances of writing it, if not of the book itself. At the very least, I'd have expected to have a good number of Oh Yeah moments while reading it. "Oh yeah, I remember that character. Oh yeah, I remember that scene. Oh yeah, I remember cooking up that plot twist."Nope. It was all remarkably new to me-and I drew great comfort from the discovery that it was better than I'd expected. It's the story of the daughter of a Cuban prostitute from the slums of Miami who goes to New York, breaks into show business, moves from a Times Square hotel room to a Greenwich Village apartment, and takes aim at a life of middle-class respectability. She meets some unusual people and does some unusual things, and stuff happens. And you know what? It's not bad.Still, let's keep Rita's bildungsroman in perspective. She's no Becky Sharp, and BORN TO BE BAD's not on the same shelf as Vanity Fair. (Uh, that's be the novel, by William Makepeace Thackeray, not the magazine. But you knew that, right?)Never mind. I can but hope you enjoy BORN TO BE BAD as much in your first reading of it as I did just now, in mine. I should mention that the cover is by the great Paul Rader, who did so many outstanding covers for Midwood? The book sported a different cover in 1962, when Midwood reissued it with the title PUTA. Then, five years later, they trotted it out again with a third cover and its original title restored. So I guess they must have sold a few copies over the years, but I never got anything beyond the original $600 advance. But you know what? I'm okay with it.

Young David Forrester is a sex-obsessed freshman student at Upper Manhattan's Columbia University, although the institution remains unnamed in the book. An upperclassman shepherds him through the loss his virginity, then steers him into a club of libertines.And, you know, one thing leads to another.But as far as I'm concerned, the most striking aspect of COLLEGE FOR SINNERS is that it seems to have been the occasion for some unwitting plagiarism on my part.The dramatist Moliere has a character who's astonished, and not half-chuffed, to discover that all his life he's been speaking prose. Well, I'm every bit as surprised by this revelation, if less delighted with myself for it.Here's the story: Not too long ago some idle surfing, possibly prompted by a Talkwalker alert, led me to a site on which a blogger took me to task for having plagiarized CAMPUS LOVE CLUB, by David Challon. The novel he names was published in 1959, a year before COLLEGE FOR SINNERS, and evidently told much the same story; it too was set at Columbia, called Metropolitan University in Challon's novel. And there's a horny young innocent like our David Forrester, and a suave upperclassman, and a club of undergraduate perverts in training. And, duh, one thing leads to another.Now in the ordinary course of things I'd have written this off as coincidence, and a fairly commonplace coincidence at that. But here's the thing-I happen to know that I actually did read CAMPUS LOVE CLUB. I remember the byline, David Challon, and remember having learned that the actual author was the prolific and talented Robert Silverberg. I recall reading it, and I recall thinking that it was good of its kind, and then from that day to this I don't believe I ever gave it another thought.The book I read was published by Bee-Line Books, and the fifty cents I paid for it was more than its author ever saw from the bastards; a bit of surfing shows that Bee-Line failed to pay Silverberg for it, and so a couple of years later he sold it to Midwood, where it was published under another of his pen names, Loren Beauchamp. In the interim COLLEGE FOR SINNERS was published by Nightstand Books under my pen name, Andrew Shaw.If I thought I was plagiarizing anyone, it was neither Mr. Challon nor Mr. Silverberg. (Mr. Beauchamp was not yet in the picture.) My conscious model for COLLEGE FOR SINNERS, to the limited extent that I had one, was an earlier book called HIGH SCHOOL SEX CLUB. . .by a chap who was calling himself Andrew Shaw.Indeed. Decades after all of this happened, Bob Silverberg and I finally met and became friends, and in fact presented a joint program at a Bay Area library in 2011, talking about our early days of laboring in the Midwood/Nightstand vineyard. (And a wonderful evening it turned out to be. Go to YouTube, search for "Lawrence Block Robert Silverberg Lust Lords"-and enjoy.)Did I steal anything from Bob's book? Not consciously, certainly. It was natural enough for me to pick Columbia as a setting, as I'd spent a semester taking courses at that institution's School of General Studies during my year at Scott Meredith. Beyond that, I never deliberately followed any plotline, my own or another's, when I was writing one of these books. I wrote a chapter, and whatever happened in it led me to the next chapter, and so on. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty much the way I've led my life.Is that enough about COLLEGE FOR SINNERS? I think it had better be. . .

O Rose thou art sick.The invisible worm, That flies in the nightIn the howling storm: Has found out thy bedOf crimson joy: And his dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.Those eight lines constitute the complete text of "The Sick Rose," published by William Blake in SONGS OF EXPERIENCE in 1794. I took to Blake early on, and thought OF CRIMSON JOY would make a dandy title. I accordingly fastened it on this novel when I sent the manuscript to Harry Shorten at Midwood. Someone there changed the title to OF SHAME AND JOY, and while I was a tad annoyed at the time, I have to say they made the right call. OF SHAME AND JOY's not only a better title, it's a damn good one.I remember where and when I wrote the book, although I can't say I recall much of the writing, or indeed of the book itself. It would have been in the late summer or fall of 1959. I'd gone to New York in July, settling in at the Hotel Rio on West 47th Street, planning to stay there until it was time to return to Antioch College for my final year. What I soon learned was that I'd already had my final year at Antioch, at least as far as the school was concerned. I'd written CAMPUS TRAMP, my first book as Andrew Shaw just before they informed me of this decision, and then I went to work on something else, and a bad morning led me to pack a bag and move back to my parents' home at 422 Starin Avenue in Buffalo.("A bad morning." Is that unnecessarily cryptic? Think of the opening scene in AFTER THE FIRST DEATH, but without the dead hooker on the floor. That's the kind of morning it was, and it led me to conclude that New York Wasn't Working Out, and that maybe I'd do better back in Buffalo.)And, back in Buffalo, I set up my typewriter on the little maple desk on which I'd written STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE and CARLA, and resumed writing books for Harry Shorten at Midwood, -and for Bill Hamling at Nightstand, who'd liked CAMPUS TRAMP enough to want more. For the next eight months or so I wrote books on that desk. My routine was an interesting one; I'd join my mother at the kitchen table for a cup of coffee around midnight, then write all night, then have breakfast with my dad around seven-and then go to bed. It worked for me, and I found things to do with the rest of my time; notably, I bought a partnership in a coffeehouse, The Jazz Center, and began keeping company with the woman whose ill fortune it would be to become my first wife.And how did OF SHAME AND JOY fit into all this? Well, the Provincetown setting came from a two-day trip while I was living at the Rio. This girl whom I knew vaguely was going there, and I decided to join her. I remember we took a Greyhound bus, and that her name either was or wasn't Suzy. (But then that's true of almost everyone, isn't it?) We went to P'town, and she had friends there, and I didn't, and I wandered around for an evening and slept on somebody's couch and went back to New York by myself in the morning. I never saw Suzy again, so for all I know she's still there, though it strikes me as doubtful.OF SHAME AND JOY has never been republished since its appearance as a Midwood Book, and I'm glad to be able to bring it out again-not least of all for the opportunity to use the wonderful Paul Rader cover. Isn't it gorge

A WOMAN MUST LOVE is #12 in the Collection of Classic Erotica, and it's never been reissued since Midwood brought it out in 1960. Consequently I've just read it for the first time since I wrote it some 57 years ago.I remember the circumstances of writing it. I was living in Buffalo, at 422 Starin Avenue, in the house where I grew up. Besides writing, I was co-proprietor of a coffee house and non-alcoholic nightclub called The Jazz Center. (We hosted some decent musicians. Trumpeter Sammy Noto, who'd quit Stan Kenton's band because he didn't like living on the road, led one combo that played our joint with some frequency. Another band was fronted by a dude known alternately as Tommy Green, Tommy Mundy, and Ahmed Khan; his specialty was bongos and bullshit, but he had some good musicians working for him. One night Percy Heath of the Modern Jazz Quartet came by late, sat in with our guys, and played a twenty-minute bass solo that I wish I could hear again. That part was nice, but we never took a dime out of the place, and after I sold my interest to my partner, an old Trotskyite named Frank St. George, he wound up making the musicians partners so he wouldn't have to pay them. After he was forced to close down, Frank went on to have a distinguished career as a Buffalo restauranteur.)See, that much I remember. And I remember my writing schedule at the time. I would be at the club, or out on the town with the unfortunate young woman destined to become the first Mrs. Block. Then I'd get home, and I'd have a cup of coffee with my night owl mother before she went to bed around midnight. Then I'd write until dawn, when I'd have breakfast with my early-rising father. And then I'd go to bed and sleep until it was time to get up and do it all over again.As for the novel itself, A WOMAN MUST LOVE, I can't say I remembered much. It's set in Buffalo, in the very neighborhood in which it was written, and I hadn't even recalled that about the book until I read it on my Kindle. I vaguely remembered that there was a book in which I'd given all the characters English and Irish counties as surnames, and this seems to be the book. Aside from those two elements, I felt like the old boy in the assisted-living center, meeting new people every day.I was surprised to be reading less the erotic romp the Midwood and Nightstand books tended to be than an out-and-out romance novel. Barbara, a young widow, has vowed to be true to her husband's memory (even though he'd wished otherwise). She's courted, and she has a couple of adventures, and there's a certain amount of coupling in the book of one sort or another, but the damn thing's a romance, and I have to wonder how I came to write it.It would have been about a year later that my own father died-suddenly, of an aortic aneurysm. In the years that followed I might well have gone through some sort of Hamlet/Oedipus crap when my mother resumed dating, though I can't recall much in the way of conflicted feelings. But the book was way earlier, and where the story came from I have no idea.Well, never mind. I hope you'll find things to enjoy in Barbara's story-not least of all Paul Rader's cover art. Long after I'd forgotten the words I wrote, I remembered those vivid pastels.

Ah, yes. THE ADULTERATORS, the thrilling account of a couple of desperadoes whose violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act brought a nauseated nation to its knees, and-Oh, it's THE ADULTERERS? Oh. Well, never mind.THE ADULTERERS was my second effort for Bill Hamling's Nightstand Books. Like its predecessor, CAMPUS TRAMP, its cover was the work of Harold W. McCauley. I wrote the book in the fall of 1959, and it's not hard to find its beginning in my own life a little over a year earlier. In May of 1958 I left the employ of Scott Meredith and went home to Buffalo, where I wrote my first novel, STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF LOVE. Then, with my friend and Antioch roommate Steve Schwerner, I headed to Mexico to devote two months to rest and recreation before returning for another year at the college.We flew to Houston, hitchhiked to Laredo-and that last empty stretch of road from Freer to Laredo, where the book begins, bas not faded from memory. We were a long time waiting for a ride, and learned later it was because nobody wanted to pick up a hitchhiker on that stretch of highway; if you did and he put you out of the car, you'd die out there. Well, the guys who picked us up weren't worried. They were Tex-Mex gangsters in a block-long Caddy, and the car's welcome A/C was cool, but they were way cooler.THE ADULTERERS features George and Mona Sutton, a sexually incompatible couple on their way to a Mexican divorce. But they meet a helpful guide named Ernesto, and that changes everything. Now Steve and I had met an Ernesto of our own, and he was helpful enough to steer us to some pot, but this Ernesto took George to a live sex show, and it made an impression on the fellow. And, not too long afterward, Mona drank enough rum and Coca-Cola to float a light cruiser, and wound up as the sex slave of El Tigre, who might have been a narco-trafficker if the career category had existed back then.So it's a story of evolving depravity. And it's dedicated, you'll note, to Steve and Letitia. You already know who Steve is. Letitia was a young woman at work in one of the establishments we visited, and he became quite fond of her. But, you know, those summer romances never work out...

So you're unemployed, fresh off a construction crew in Albany, and standing on a Thruway ramp trying to thumb a ride, and a babe in a Cadillac convertible stops for you. Hey, these things happen.They never happened to me, but never mind. For you it's different. You're Mark Taggert and you've got the good sense to get in the car, and it changes your life.The girl's Elaine Rice, and she's gorgeous and sexy, and you wind up in her Park Avenue apartment, and you go to bed, and the chemistry is right, and there's only one problem. She's rich.Too rich for you to be comfortable living with her. You're totally lacking in ambition and quite happy drifting, going from town to town and menial job to menial job. It's a life and it's a living and that's enough for you. But if you're going to share Elaine's life, you have to make something of yourself.So you check out the want ads, and you let her buy you a wardrobe, and she fabricates a r sum for you, and you land a job. And you turn out to be remarkably good at it, but she's still got too much money, and you move out. And, you know, stuff happens...Pretty interesting set-up, innit? KEPT was the penultimate book Sheldon Lord wrote for Midwood-CANDY, #2 in the Collection of Classic Erotica, was the last-and it's a shame I stopped there. I understand why I did; I was starting to write crime novels, and didn't want to devote a disproportionate amount of my time to erotica, and Bill Hamling's line, Nightstand Books, was paying me significantly more per book than Harry Shorten at Midwood. Hello, Bill. G'bye, Harry.A pity, though, because Nightstand's artists never came close to the cover art Paul Rader was turning out for Midwood, and his cover for KEPT may be the best of the bunch.