Such Men Are Dangerous (22 page)
Then one day I went upstairs and started writing the book that turned out to be
Such Men Are Dangerous.
I wrote all day every day for a week, went to New York for two days, then came back and wrote for two more days, and that was that. The book was done.
Well, it’s not hard to guess where the protagonist came from. Paul Kavanagh and I didn’t have a lot of life experience in common, but somehow we’d reached the same internal place.
That’s probably as much as you need to know about the writing of
Such Men Are Dangerous
, and as much as I need to tell you. But I probably ought to say something about the frame device; the book purports to be a true story written by the person who lived it. (Although I began putting my own name on the book years ago, it was initially published “by Paul Kavanagh”.) I’m not entirely sure why I chose to do it that way. It was a book I was pleased with, and it would have certainly done my career no harm to have it appear under my own name, but the gamesmanship of it probably appealed to me. I don’t know, and after all these years I don’t suppose it matters.
I don’t know that I really thought anyone would buy the premise, but I actually received a letter, sent to my publisher and dutifully forwarded to me, from a chap who ran some sort of charity in the UK. He’d noted that all royalties from the book were to be given to charity, and he respectfully proposed his worthy organization to be the recipient of some if not all of the funds.
One more story. Sometime in the mid-eighties, a good fifteen years after the novel was published, I was married again and living in the West Village. My wife Lynne had some people over to the house, and one of them, a former CIA employee, spotted a copy of
Such Men
on a table.
“Oh, I know about that book,” the guy said. “A Company guy wrote it.”
“No,” Lynne said. “That’s one of my husband’s books.”
“Yeah, right,” the fellow said. “Look, everybody at the Company knew about that guy. Wandered off the reservation, pulled some weird shit. That’s the book he wrote.”
—Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village
Lawrence Block ([email protected]) welcomes your email responses; he reads them all, and replies when he can.
Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Block attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Leaving school before graduation, he moved to New York City, a locale that features prominently in most of his works. His earliest published writing appeared in the 1950s, frequently under pseudonyms, and many of these novels are now considered classics of the pulp fiction genre. During his early writing years, Block also worked in the mailroom of a publishing house and reviewed the submission slush pile for a literary agency. He has cited the latter experience as a valuable lesson for a beginning writer.
Block’s first short story, “You Can’t Lose,” was published in 1957 in
Manhunt
, the first of dozens of short stories and articles that he would publish over the years in publications including
American Heritage
,
Redbook
,
Playboy
,
Cosmopolitan
,
GQ
, and the
New York Times
. His short fiction has been featured and reprinted in over eleven collections including
Enough Rope
(2002), which is comprised of eighty-four of his short stories.
In 1966, Block introduced the insomniac protagonist Evan Tanner in the novel
The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep
. Block’s diverse heroes also include the urbane and witty bookseller—and thief-on-the-side—Bernie Rhodenbarr; the gritty recovering alcoholic and private investigator Matthew Scudder; and Chip Harrison, the comical assistant to a private investigator with a Nero Wolfe fixation who appears in
No Score
,
Chip Harrison Scores Again
,
Make Out with Murder
, and
The Topless Tulip Caper
. Block has also written several short stories and novels featuring Keller, a professional hit man. Block’s work is praised for his richly imagined and varied characters and frequent use of humor.
A father of three daughters, Block lives in New York City with his second wife, Lynne. When he isn’t touring or attending mystery conventions, he and Lynne are frequent travelers, as members of the Travelers’ Century Club for nearly a decade now, and have visited about 150 countries.
A four-year-old Block in 1942.
Block during the summer of 1944, with his baby sister, Betsy.
Block’s 1955 yearbook picture from Bennett High School in Buffalo, New York.
Block in 1983, in a cap and leather jacket. Block says that he “later lost the cap, and some son of a bitch stole the jacket. Don’t even ask about the hair.”
Block with his eldest daughter, Amy, at her wedding in October 1984.
Seen here around 1990, Block works in his office on New York’s West 13th Street with, he says, “a bad haircut, an ugly shirt, and a few extra pounds.”
Block at a bookstore appearance in support of
A Walk Among the Tombstones
, his tenth Matthew Scudder novel, on Veterans Day, 1992.
Block and his wife, Lynne.
