Anthologies

• Murder on the Run (1998)

• Death Cruise: Crime Stories on the Open Seas (1999)

• Master's Choice: Mystery Stories by Today's Top Writers and the Masters Who Inspired Them (1999)

• Mother's and Sons (2000)

• Opening Shots Vol. 1: Great Mystery and Crime Writers Share Their First Published Stories (2000)

• Opening Shots Vol. 2: Great Mystery and Crime Writers Share Their First Published Stories (2001)

Series

Bernie Rhodenbarr Series
An easy-going burglar.

1. Burglars Can't Be Choosers (1977)
   Bernie Rhodenbarr is a personable chap, a good neighbor, a passable poker player. His chosen profession, however, might not sit well with some. Bernie is a burglar, a good one, effortlessly lifting valuables from the not-so-well-protected abodes of well-to-do New Yorkers like a modern-day Robin Hood. (The poor, as Bernie would be the first to tell you, alas, have nothing worth stealing.)
   
   He's not perfect, however; he occasionally makes mistakes. Like accepting a paid assignment from a total stranger to retrieve a particular item from a rich man's apartment. Like still being there when the cops arrive. Like having a freshly slain corpse lying in the next room, and no proof that Bernie isn't the killer.
   
   Now he's really got his hands full, having to locate the true perpetrator while somehow eluding the police -- a dirty job indeed, but if Bernie doesn't do it, who will?

2. The Burglar in the Closet (1978, 2006)
   It's hard to ignore someone with his hands in your mouth. Bernie Rhodenbarr's all ears when Dr. Sheldrake, his dentist, starts complaining about his detestable, soon-to-be-ex wife, and happens to mention the valuable diamonds she keeps lying around the apartment. Since Bernie's been known to supplement his income as a bookstore owner with the not-so-occasional bout of high-rise burglary, a couple of nights later he's in the Sheldrake apartment with larceny on his mind -- and has to duck into a closet when the lady of the house makes an unexpected entrance. Unfortunately he's still there when an unseen assailant does Mrs. Sheldrake in . . . and then vanishes with the jewels.
   
   Bernie's got to come out of the closet some time. But when he does, he'll be facing a rap for a murder he didn't commit -- and for a burglary he certainly attempted -- unless he can hunt down the killer who left him hanging.

3. The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979, 2005)
   Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone legit -- almost -- as the new owner of a used bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village. Of course, dusty old tomes don't always turn a profit, so to make ends meet, Bernie's forced, on occasion, to indulge in his previous occupation: burglary. Besides which, he likes it.
   
   Now a collector is offering Bernie an opportunity to combine his twin passions by stealing a very rare and very bad book-length poem from a rich man's library.
   
   The heist goes off without a hitch. The delivery of the ill-gotten volume, however, is a different story. Drugged by the client's female go-between, Bernie wakes up in her apartment to find the book gone, the lady dead, a smoking gun in his hand, and the cops at the door. And suddenly he's got to extricate himself from a rather sticky real-life murder mystery and find a killer -- before he's booked for Murder One.

4. The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (1980, 2006)
   Bookselling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn't generally get philosophical about his criminal career. He's good at it, it's addictively exciting—and it pays a whole lot better than pushing old tomes. He steals therefore he is, period.
   
   He might well ponder, however, the deeper meaning of events at the luxurious Chelsea brownstone of Herb and Wanda Colcannon, which is apparently burgled three times on the night Bernie breaks in: once before his visit and once after. Fortunately he still manages to lift some fair jewelry and an extremely valuable coin. Unfortunately burglar or burglars number three leave Herb unconscious and Wanda dead . . . and the cops think Rhodenbarr dunnit.
   
   There's no time to get all existential about it—especially after the coin vanishes and the fence fencing it meets with a most severe end. But Bernie is going to have to do some deep thinking to find a way out of this homicidal conundrum.

5. The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (1983, 2005)
   It's not that used bookstore owner and part-time burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr believes the less legal of his two professions is particularly ethical. (It is, however, a rush, and he is very good at it.) He just thinks it's unfair to face a prison term for his legitimate activities. After appraising the worth of a rich man's library -- conveniently leaving his fingerprints everywhere in the process -- Bernie finds he's the cops' prime suspect when his client is murdered.
   
   Someone has framed Bernie Rhodenbarr better than they do it at the Whitney. And if he wants to get out of this corner he's been masterfully painted into, he'll have to get to the bottom of a rather artful -- if multiply murderous -- scam.

6. The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (1994, 2005)
   Bernie Rhodenbarr is actually trying to earn an honest living. It's been an entire year since he's entered anyone's abode illegally to help himself to their valuables. But now an unscrupulous landlord's threat to increase Bernie's rent by 1,000% is driving the bookseller and reformed burglar back to a life of crime -- though, in all fairness, it's a very short trip. And when the cops wrongly accuse him of stealing a priceless collection of baseball cards, Bernie's stuck with a worthless alibi since he was busy burgling a different apartment at the time . . . one that happened to contain a dead body locked inside a bathroom.
   
   So Bernie has a dilemma. He can trade a burglary charge for a murder rap. Or he can shuffle all the cards himself and try to find the joker in the deck -- someone, perhaps, who believes that homicide is the real Great American Pastime.

7. The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995, 2006)
   Bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr's in love—with an exotic Eastern European beauty who shares his obsession with Humphrey Bogart movies. He's in heaven, munching popcorn with his new amour every night at a Bogart Film Festival—until their Casablanca-esque idyll is cut short by his other secret passion: burglary.
   
   When he's hired to pilfer a portfolio of valuable documents from a Park Avenue apartment, Bernie can hardly refuse. But the occupant's early return forces Bernie to flee empty-handed—and he soon finds himself implicated in a murder. Before you can say "who stole the strawberries?" he's hunting for a killer, up to his neck in the outrageous intrigues of a tiny Balkan nation . . . and menaced by more sinister fat men and unsavory toadies than the great Bogie himself butted heads with in pursuit of that darn bird!

8. The Burglar in the Library (1997, 2007)
   Bookseller and New-Yorker-to-the-bone, Bernie Rhodenbarr rarely ventures out of Manhattan, but he's excited about the romantic getaway he has planned for himself and current lady love Lettice at the Cuttleford House, a remote upstate b&b. Unfortunately, Lettice has a prior engagement—she's getting married . . . and not to Bernie—so he decides to take best buddy Carolyn instead. A restful respite from the big city's bustle would be too good to waste. Besides, there's a very valuable first edition shelved in the Cuttleford's library that Bernie's just itching to get his hands on. Did we neglect to mention that Bernie's a burglar?
   
   But first he's got to get around a very dead body on the library floor. The plot's thickened by an isolating snowstorm, downed phone lines, the surprise arrival of Lettice and her reprehensible new hubby, and a steadily increasing corpse count. And it's Bernie who'll have to figure out whodunit . . . or die.

9. The Burglar in the Rye (1999, 2007)
   Gulliver Fairborn's novel, Nobody's Baby, changed Bernie Rhodenbarr's life. And now pretty Alice Cottrell, Fairborn's one-time paramour, wants the bookselling, book-loving burglar to break into a room in New York's teeth-achingly charming Paddington Hotel and purloin some of the writer's very personal letters before an unscrupulous agent can sell them. Here's an opportunity to use his unique talents in the service of the revered, famously reclusive author. But when Bernie gets there, the agent is dead . . . and Bernie's wanted for murder. (He really hates when that happens!)
   
   Perhaps it's karmic payback; Bernie did help himself to a ruby necklace on his way out. (But it was lying there. And he is a burglar.) Now he's in even hotter water. And he'll need to use every trick in the book—maybe going so far as to entice the hermitic Fairborn himself out of seclusion—to bring this increasingly twisted plot to a satisfying denouement.

10. The Burglar on the Prowl (2004)
    Sophisticated yet down-to-earth, philosophical yet practical, Bernie is a gentleman who knows and loves his territory, the gloriously diverse and electric streets of Manhattan; a connoisseur who surrounds himself with the finer things in life, including his tailless Manx tabby, Raffles, and good friends like his neighbor Carolyn. In fact, it's a friend who gets him in his latest jam. Bernie is minding his own business when he's asked for a favor -- a neat, uncomplicated bit of vengeful larceny that will reap a tidy profit -- an offer the intrepid thief can't refuse.
    
    But with a few days to go before the crime, Bernie gets restless. So what does a burglar do to change his mood? Go on the prowl, of course. Though not the best way to do business, as he well knows. This bit of prowling lands Bernie in a pile of trouble that includes four murders and the burglary of his own home. Caught in the center of a deadly mystery, he must use his wits and wiles to connect the dots and add up the coincidences. Because if Bernie doesn't catch a killer, he'll lose not only his freedom but his life.
    
    Infused with the rich atmosphere of New York City and filled with a smart, charming cast of characters headed by the stylish Bernie, The Burglar on the Prowl is an engaging and delightfully suspenseful tale sure to be savored by Block fans old and new.

• No Score (1970, 1996)

• Chip Harrison Scores Again (1970, 1997)

• Make out with Murder (1974, 1997)
  Passions can be deadly in a game of kiss-and-kill! Also known as Five Little Rich Girls.

• Topless Tulip Caper (1975)
  Now a man about town working for a famous detective, Chip Harrison finds himself at a Times Square Club waiting for his latest client, a stripper, to finish a night's work. When she completes her set, she introduces him to her roommate, a dancer who's targeted for murder...and killed in the club right before their very eyes! The list of suspects is as long as the line outside the club, and now it will take all of Chip's street smarts to trap a killer!

• Introducing Chip Harrison (1984)

• The Affairs of Chip Harrison (2001)

• The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep (1966, 2007)
  Evan Michael Tanner hasn't slept in more than a decade—not since a small piece of battlefield shrapnel invaded his skull and obliterated his brain's sleep center. Still, he's managed to find numerous inventive ways to occupy his waking hours.
  
  Tanner is a card-carrying member of hundreds of international organizations, from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Order to the Flat Earth Society—not because he believes in their myriad lost causes, he's simply a joiner by nature. Besides, it gives him something to do.
  
  The Russians think Tanner is a CIA operative on a covert mission. The CIA is certain he's a Soviet agent. Actually, he's in Turkey pursuing a fortune in hidden Armenian gold. But Tanner's up for anything, including a little spycraft, if it helps him reach his big payday. And if need be, he'll even start a small revolution . . .

• The Canceled Czech (1966, 2007)
  Evan Tanner ran head-first into a piece of shrapnel in Korea, and now he can't sleep. Ever. Which can be an asset for a dedicated linguist, term paper forger, thief, lost cause enthusiast . . .
  
  Spy.
  
  Tanner takes on jobs for a covert intelligence organization so secret that even those who work for it have no idea who they're working for. Now his nameless supervisor wants him to sneak behind the Iron Curtain, storm an impregnable castle in Prague (alone!), and rescue an old Slovak who's got a pressing date with a hangman's noose.
  
  The trouble is the prisoner is an unrepentant Nazi who makes Goering look like Mister Rogers. Tanner hates Nazis. If he's caught (which is likely) the U.S. will deny that they know him. And Tanner will be executed. After being tortured, no doubt. All in all, there are many excellent reasons why Tanner should refuse this assignment.
  
  So, naturally, he says yes.

• Tanner's Twelve Swingers (1967, 2007)
  Sometime spy Evan Tanner has accepted impossible assignments for many reasons: money, thrills, to have something to occupy his waking hours (twenty-four of them every day, in fact, since battlefield shrapnel obliterated his brain's sleep center). But this might be the first time he's put his life on the line . . . for love.
  
  Tanner's agreed to smuggle a sexy Latvian gymnast—the lost lady love of a heart-sick friend—out of Russia. With the Cold War at its chilliest and the Iron Curtain slammed shut, this will not be easy, especially since everybody in Eastern Europe, it seems, wants to tag along, including a subversive Slav author and the six-year-old heir to the nonexistent Lithuanian throne.
  
  But that's not the biggest hurdle. The gymnast refuses to budge unless Tanner rescues her eleven delightfully limber teammates as well—and that might be raising the bar too lethally high for even the ever-resourceful Evan Tanner to clear.

• Two For Tanner (1967, 2007 as The Scoreless Thai)
  Evan Tanner can't sleep. Ever. Which gives him plenty of free time to get involved in lots of interesting endeavors in all sorts of exotic locales.
  
  Now Tanner's in Thailand with a partially baked plan and a butterfly net, hoping to snare a beautiful missing chanteuse who's metamorphosed into an international jewel thief. Tanner hopes everyone will buy his disguise as a rare butterfly researcher. And everyone does . . .
  
  Except the guerilla band holding him captive. They intend to remove his head when the sun rises, so Tanner must put his fate in the hands of a randy Thai youth who will do anything for a woman, even set a suspected spy free. Soon they're running through the jungle together, chased by bandits, soldiers, and yellow fever, and racing headlong into the heart of darkness—and into the flames of war.

• Here Comes a Hero (1968)
  She was the purist of the pure -- until Tanner found her in one of the Far East's most notorious pleasure palaces.

• Tanner's Tiger (1968, 2007)
  The Cold War's boiling over. Global tensions are near the breaking point. So what's the perfect assignment for a super-spy who hasn't slept since the Korean conflict? A fun-filled trip to the Montreal World's Fair!
  
  The adorable little girl he's escorting—who, under different circumstances, would be sitting on the Lithuanian throne—can hardly contain her excitement, but it isn't all playtime for Evan Tanner. Some mysterious disappearances, apparently linked to the fair's Cuban exhibition, need to be looked into.
  
  Keeping his mind on business, however, won't be easy after an insatiable lovely in a tiger skin falls into Tanner's arms, and a mother lode of dangerous drugs falls into his lap. But the biggest, deadliest suprise is the terrorist plot Tanner's tumbling into, and he'll have to think and act quickly to prevent the visiting queen of England from being blown to smithereens.

• Me Tanner, You Jane (1970, 2007)
  It's a jungle out there.
  
  Literally. At least for Evan Tanner, eternally sleepless sometime superspy, who finds himself in Africa on the trail of the AWOL ruler of tiny Modonoland. It seems the petty despot's gone missing, and he's taken the state treasury along with him.
  
  No stranger to impossible missions and international peril, Tanner's been in over his head before. This time, however, he's in imminent danger of being buried alive. And it all has to do with the CIA, white supremacists, moderate revolutionaries . . . and a blond jungle bombshell named (no joke!) Sheena. Tanner's always been a sucker for a pretty face and a curvaceous body, especially one that's wrapped in leopard skin. But this red hot renegade daughter of a local missionary is a maneater.
  
  Which means this time Tanner's goose is well and truly cooked.

• Tanner On Ice (1998, 2007)
  Cold War superspy Evan Tanner lost the ability to sleep on a battlefield in Korea. So where the heck has he been since the '70s?
  
  Frozen. Cryogenically. A Tanner-sicle. Which he never thought would happen when he walked into a basement in Union City, New Jersey, more than a quarter century ago. Now he's unthawed and ready to rumble, and his somewhat addled, former super-secret boss, "the Chief," is glad his favorite operative's active again.
  
  Tanner awoke to a different world, though some bad things have remained the same . . . or gotten worse. Even before he can fully acclimate himself to this perplexing future, Tanner's off to Burma (which isn't really Burma anymore) to pose as a monk, destabilize the government, dodge a lethal double-cross, and rescue a beautiful prisoner.
  
  The world's still full of conspiracy, corruption, greed, political chicanery—and beautiful women. So Tanner's back with a vengeance, with a lot of lost time to make up for.

• Tanner's Virgin (2006)
  The CIA, the FBI, the KGB, Interpol—not one of the world's premier intelligence organizations knows quite what to make of Evan Michael Tanner. Is he a spy, a mercenary, a footloose adventurer, or simply a screwball sucker for hopeless causes?
  
  (Actually he's a little bit of all of the above. Plus he never sleeps. Ever.)
  
  One thing's for sure: Tanner's a true romantic, which is why he can't refuse a distraught mother who begs him to rescue her lost, pure-as-driven-snow daughter. Phaedra Harrow (nee Deborah Horowitz) once shared Tanner's apartment but not his bed. And now the virginal beauty's been abducted by white slavers in the Afghan wilderness.
  
  Finding Phaedra will be difficult enough. Bringing her back alive and unmolested may be impossible. And first Tanner will have to swim the English Channel, survive trigger-happy Russian terrorists . . . and maybe pull off a timely assassination or two.

1. Hit Man (1998)
   Keller is your basic urban Lonely Guy.He makes a decent wage, lives in a nice apartment.Works the crossword puzzle. Watches a little TV. Until the phone rings and he packs a suitcase, gets on a plane, flies halfway across the country...and kills somebody. It's a living. But is it a life? Keller's not sure. He goes to a shrink, but it doesn't work out the way he planned. He gets a dog, he gets a girlfriend. He gets along.

2. Hit List (2000)
   Keller is a regular guy. He goes to the movies, works on his stamp collection. Call him for jury duty and he serves without complaint. Then every so often he gets a phone call from White Plains that sends him flying off somewhere to kill a perfect stranger. Keller is a pro and very good at what he does. But the jobs have started to go wrong. The realization is slow coming yet, when it arrives, it is irrefutable: Someone out there is trying to hit the hit man. Keller, God help him, has found his way onto somebody else's hit list.

3. Hit Parade (2006)
   John Keller is everyone's favorite hit man: a new kind of hero for a new, uncertain age. He's cool. Reliable. A real pro: the hit man's hit man. The inconvenient wife, the aging sports star, the business partner, the retiree with a substantial legacy. He's taken care of them all, quietly and efficiently.
   
   Keller's got a code of honor, though he'd never call it that. And he keeps the job strictly business. "What happens is you wind up thinking of each subject not as a person to be killed but as a problem to be solved. Now there are guys doing this who cope with it by making it personal. They find a reason to hate the guy they have to kill. I don't know what's a sin and what isn't, or if one person deserves to go on living and another deserves to have his life ended. Sometimes I think about stuff like that, but as far as working it all out in my mind, well, I never seem to get anywhere."
   
   But while Keller might be a pragmatic and crack assassin, he's also prone to doubts and loneliness just like everybody else. There was a psychotherapist once. A dog. Even a woman. And though he's got Dot, his wisecracking contact and sometimes confidante, and his precious stamp collection, these days, it doesn't seem to be enough.
   
   Keller's been at this business a long while. Just maybe it's time to pack it in and find a nice little house in the desert. Only problem is, retirement takes money. And to get money, he's got to go to work. . . .

4. Hit and Run (2008 release)

Matthew Scudder Series
A recovering alcoholic private investigator.

1. The Sins of the Fathers (1976)
   The pretty young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer—a minister's son—hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's fatherhas come to Matthew Scudder for answers, sending the unlicensed private investigator in search of terrible truths about a life that was lived and lost in a sordid world of perversion and pleasures.

2. In the Midst of Death (1976)
   Bad cop Jerry Broadfield didn't make any friends on the force when he volunteered to squeal to an ambitious D.A. about police corruption. Now he's accused of murdering a call girl. Matthew Scudder doesn't think Broadfield's a killer, but the cops aren't about to help the unlicensed P.I. prove it -- and they may do a lot worse than just get in his way.

3. Time to Murder and Create (1976)
   Small-time stoolie, Jake " The Spinner" Jablon, made a lot of new enemies when he switched careers, from informer to blackmailer. And the more "clients", he figured, the more money -- and more people eager to see him dead. So no one is surprised when the pigeon is found floating in the East River with his skull bashed in. And what's worse, no one cares -- except Matthew Scudder. The ex-cop-turned-private-eye is no conscientious avenging angel. But he's willing to risk his own life and limb to confront Spinner's most murderously aggressive marks. A job's a job after all -- and Scudder's been paid to find a killer -- by the victim...in advance.

4. A Stab in the Dark (1981)
   Louis Pinell, the recently apprehended "Icepick Prowler," freely admits to having slain seven young women nine years ago -- but be swears it was a copycat who killed Barbara Ettinger Matthew Scudder believes him. But the trail to Ettinger's true murderer is twisted, dark and dangerous...and even colder than the almost decade-old corpse the p.i. is determined to avenge.

5. Eight Million Ways To Die (1983)
   Nobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it also—and she wanted out. Maybe Kim didn't deserve the life fate had dealt her. She surely didn't deserve her death. The alcoholic ex-cop turned p.i. was supposed to protect her, but someone slashed her to ribbons on a crumbling New York City waterfront pier. Now finding Kim's killer will be Scudder's penance. But there are lethal secrets hiding in the slain hooker's past that are far dirtier than her trade. And there are many ways of dying in this cruel and dangerous town—some quick and brutal ... and some agonizingly slow.

6. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1986)
   In the dark days, in a sad and lonely place, ex-cop Matt Scudder is drinking his life away -- and doing "favors" for pay for his ginmill cronies. But when three such assignments flow together in dangerous and disturbing ways, he'll need to change his priorities from boozing to surviving.

7. Out on the Cutting Edge (1989)
   Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Schudder is the best—and now the ex-cop-turned-p.i. is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the lost, he's finding love—and death—in the worst possible places.

8. A Ticket To The Boneyard (1990)
   Twelve years ago, Matthew Scudder lied to a jury to put James Leo Motley behind bars. Now the ingenious psychopath is free. And the alcoholic ex-cop-turned-p.i. must pay dearly for his sins. Friends and former lovers -- even strangers unfortunate enough to share Scudder's name -- are turning up dead. Because a vengeful maniac is determined not to rest until he's driven his nemesis back to the bottle...and then to the boneyard.

9. A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1991)
   A successful socialite's beautiful wife was raped and murdered in her own home -- and Matt Scudder believes the victim's "grieving" husband was responsible for the outrage. But to prove it, the haunted p.i. must descend into the depths of New York's sex-for-sale underworld, where young lives are commodities to be bought, perverted...and destroyed.

10. A Walk Among the Tombstones (1992)
    A new breed of entrepreneurial monster has set up shop in the big city. Ruthless, ingenious murderers, they prey on the loved ones of those who live outside the law--knowing full well that criminals will never run to the police no matter how brutal the threat. So other avenues for justice must be explored--which is where ex-cop-turned-p.i. Matthew Scudder comes in. Scudder has no love for the drug dealers and poison peddlers who now need his help. Nevertheless, he is determined to do whatever it takes to put an elusive pair of thrill-kill extortionists our of business. For they are using the innocent to fuel their terrible enterprise.

11. The Devil Knows You're Dead (1993)
    In this city, there is little sense and no rules. Those who fly the highest often come crashing down the hardest -- like successful young Glenn Holtzmann, randomly blown away by a deranged derelict at a corner phone booth on Eleventh Avenue. Unlicensed p.i. Matt Scudder thinks Holtzmann was simply in the wrong place at the worst time. Others think differently -- like Thomas Sadecki, brother of the crazed Vietnam vet accused of the murder, who wants Scudder to prove the madman innocent. But no one is truly innocent in this unmerciful metropolis --including Matther Scudder, whose curiosity and dedication are leading him to dark, unexplored places in his own heart...and to passions and revelations that could destroy everything he loves.

12. A Long Line of Dead Men (1994)
    An ancient brotherhood meets annually in the back room of a swank Manhattan restaurant—a fraternity created in secret to celebrate life by celebrating its dead. But the past three decades have not been kind to the Club of 31. Matthew Scudder—ex-cop, ex-boozer—has known death in all its guises. Which is why he has been asked to investigate a baffling, thirty-year run of suicides and suspiciously random accidents that has thinned the ranks of this very select group of gentlemen. But Scudder has mortality problems of his own. For this is a city that feeds mercilessly on the unsuspecting—and even thepowerful and those who serve them are easy prey. There are too many secrets here—and too many places for a maddeningly patient serial killer to hide . . . and wait . . . and strike.

13. Even the Wicked (1997)
    Matthew Scudder knows that justice is an elusive commodity in the big city, where a harmless man can be shot dead in a public place criminals fly free through holes in a tattered legal system. But now a vigilante is roaming among the millions, executing those he fees deserve to die. He calls himself "The Will of the People"—an ingenious serial killer who announces his specific murderous intentions to the media before carrying through on his threats. A child molester, a Mafia don, a violent anti-abortionist—even the protected and untouchable are being ruthlessly erased by New York's latest celebrity avenger.
    
    Scudder knows that no one is innocent—but who among us has the right to play God? It is a question that will haunt the licensed p.i. on his journey through the bleak city grays, as he searches for the sanity in urban madness. . .and for a frighteningly efficient killer who can do the impossible.

14. Everybody Dies (1999)
    Matt Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. The crime rate's down and the stock market's up. Gentrification's prettying-up the old neighborhood. The New York streets don't look so mean anymore.
    
    Then all hell breaks loose.
    
    Scudder quickly discovers the spruced-up sidewalks are as mean as ever, dark and gritty and stained with blood. He's living in a world where the past is a minefield, the present is a war zone, and the future's an open question. It's a world where nothing is certain and nobody's safe, a random universe where no one's survival can be taken for granted. Not even his own.
    
    A world where everybody dies.

15. Hope to Die (2001)
    When Byrne and Susan Hollander are killed in a brutal home invasion, the whole city catches its collective breath. A few days later the killers turn up dead behind a locked door in Brooklyn. One has killed his partner, then himself. The city sighs with relief. The cops close the case.    Matt and Elaine Scudder were in the same room with the Hollanders hours before their deaths. In spite of himself, Scudder is drawn to the Hollander case. The closer he looks, the more he senses the presence of a third man, a puppet master who manipulated his two accomplices, then cut their strings when he was done with them.    The villain who looms in the shadows is one of Block's most inspired creations, cold and diabolical, murdering for pleasure and profit. Nobody but Scudder even suspects he exists -- and he's not done killing.    He's just getting started....

16. All the Flowers Are Dying (2005)
    A man in a Virginia prison awaits execution for three horrific murders he must have committed but swears he didn't . . .
    
    An aging investigator in New York City has seen too much and lost too much -- and is ready to leave the darkness behind . . .
    
    But a nightmare is coming home -- because a brilliant, savage, patient monster has unfinished business in the big city . . . and a hunger that can be satisfied only by fear and the slow, agonizing death of Matthew Scudder and the woman he loves.

• Death Pulls a Double Cross (1961) -- aka Coward's Kiss
  New York City private investigator Ed London has a problem. Or rather, the problem is his brother-in-law's. Jack Enright's mistress, a woman with secrets of her own, has been shot to death in the apartment that he pays for. But when the body, moved by London to Central Park, is finally identified, London knows he must act quickly to find her killer, before the killer and the police find him.

• Mona (1961)

• The Case of the Pornographic Photos: A Markham Mystery (1961) -- aka You Could Call It Murder
  A missing person case brings private eye Roy Markham to the remote winterbound 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.

• The Girl With the Long Green Heart (1965, 2005)

• Deadly Honeymoon (1967, 2003)
  A charming little cabin in the isolated Pennsylvania woods. It should have been the perfect beginning to a long and happy marriage. Then five shots rang out in the quiet woods and shattered Dave and Jill Wade's perfect honeymoon. Terror had come crashing through their cabin door, snuffing out all thoughts of love. Now all that Dave and Jill Wade felt was haste -- hate and the overwhelming desire for revenge.
  
  *The movie Nightmare Honeymoon (1973) was based on the Deadly Honeymoon novel

• After the First Death (1969, 2002)
  It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why? before the police do.

• The Specialists (1969, 1993)

• Ariel (1980, 1996)

• Code of Arms (1981) with Harold King

• Into the Night (1987; completion of novel by Cornell Woolrich)

• Random Walk (1988)

• The Perfect Murder: Five Great Mystery Writers Create the Perfect Crime (1991) by Jack Hitt, Lawrence Block, Tony Hillerman, Donald Westlake, et al)

• Cinderella Sims (2003) (Originally titled $20 Lust)

• Small Town: A Novel (2003)
  That was the thing about New York -- if you loved it, if it worked for you, it ruined you for anyplace else in the world.
  
  In this dazzlingly constructed novel, Lawrence Block reveals the secret at the heart of the Big Apple. His glorious metropolis is really a small town, filled with men and women from all walks of life whose aspirations, fears, disappointments, and triumphs are interconnected by bonds as unbreakable as they are unseen. Pulsating with the lives of its denizens -- bartenders and hookers, power brokers and politicos, cops and secretaries, editors and dreamers -- the city inspires a passion that is universal yet unique in each of its eight million inhabitants, including:

  • John Blair Creighton, a writer on the verge of a breakthrough

  • Francis Buckram, a charismatic ex–police commissioner -- and the inside choice for the next mayor -- on the verge of a breakdown

  • Susan Pomerance, a beautiful, sophisticated folk-art dealer plumbing the depths of her own fierce sexuality

  • Maury Winters, a defense attorney who prefers murder trials because there's one less witness;

  • Jerry Pankow, an ex-addict who has turned being clean into a living, mopping up after New York's nightlife

  And, in the shadows of a city reeling from tragedy, an unlikely killing machine who wages a one-man war against them all.
  
  Infused with the raw cadence, stark beauty, and relentless pace of New York City, Small Town is a tour de force Block fans old and new will celebrate.

• A Diet of Treacle (2008)

Jill Emerson

• Threesome (1970)

• Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man (1971, 2000)

Paul Kavanagh

• Such Men Are Dangerous (1969, 2003)
  A very dangerous man. That's Paul Kavanagh, an ex-Green Beret with nothing but time on his hands -- until he gets an offer to steal a shipment of tactical nuclear weapons form the U.S. government -- and finds himself a partner, George Dattner, who has the cold eyes of a trained killer. Each of these men alone is dangerous. But anyone who tries to stop them together is guaranteed not to come out of it alive!

• The Triumph of Evil (1971)

• Not Comin' Home to You (1974)

William Ard

• Babe in the Woods: A Lou Largo Novel (1960)
  Writing as William Ard.

• Swiss Shooting Talers and Medals (1965) by Delbert Ray with the assistance of Block

• The Plot Thickens (1997), Mary Higgins Clark, ed.
  Includes works by Ann Rule, Carol Higgins Clark, Donald E. Westlake, Edna Buchanan, Janet Evanovich, Lauren DeMille, Lawrence Block, Linda Fairstein, Mary Higgins Clark, Nancy Pickard, Nelson DeMille, and Walter Mosley

• The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Third Annual Collection (2002), Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, eds.
  Includes works by Anne Perry, Ed McBain, Jeffrey Deaver, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, Margaret Coel, Nancy Pickard, Ruth Rendell, and others.