Dead Girl Blues

DEAD GIRL BLUES "It's been a long time since I read anything this hard-hitting and thought-provoking. DEAD GIRL BLUES is daringly original, both shocking and brilliantly told. At a time when many crime novels blend together, Grandmaster Lawrence Block again shows he's a one-of-a-kind author. " ~ David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder As a Fine Art You might as well know this going in: Lawrence Block's new novel is not for everyone. It's recounted in journal form by its protagonist, and begins when he walks into a roadhouse outside of Bakersfield, California, and walks out with a woman. And rapes and murders her. But, um, not in that order. Right. But it's what he does with the rest of his life that's really interesting… Lawrence Block has been writing and publishing crime fiction for sixty years. He's received recognition for lifetime achievement in the US and the UK. His books have won awards and occasionally show up on bestseller lists. Several of them have been fimed. Here's what he's said about DEAD GIRL BLUES: "I don't think it's terribly commercial. And there are elements that will put off a lot of readers. "But, see, Dead Girl Blues doesn't owe me a thing. I hadn't planned to write it, so it doesn't have to bring in money to justify the time I spent on it. The book is its own justification. I'll publish it myself, on my 82nd birthday, and all of y'all can buy it or not buy it, read it or not read it, and like it or not like it. "I've shown it to some friends whose opinions I trust, and they told me that Dead Girl Blues is one of the very best things I've ever written. And then they added that they could see where it might have problems. "So I read it again last week, and I realized DGB was exactly the book I wanted it to be. And how often does that happen? And what more could an old man possibly ask for?" "Dark and cold as the far side of the moon, but with prose as lean as a starving model, DEAD GIRL BLUES is like the dead body you can't help but look at. Sharp writing, characterization that comes right out of the reptilian brain, creepy crawly identification with the narrator that makes you squirm. I couldn't quit reading, and damn sure didn't want to. An honest look at the mind of someone of a cheerfully anti-social mindset, who just might frighteningly remind us of humanities flip-side and our universal connection to it. A grim masterpiece of storytelling." ~ Joe R. Lansdale "DEAD GIRL BLUES still claws at me. It's a time-release dread capsule that locked me in someone's shoes and made my gut twist all along the ride. Those of us who enjoy his work have seen him pull that off and marvel at how he manages it with seeming effortlessness. But this one. Maybe his best book, and that's saying something." ~Tom Straw "This is an astonishing novel, the most profound examination and evisceration of identity which I have encountered in decades. A stunning and terminally unsettling work, written in a style so accessible, so controlled, so utterly reasonable, that the reader as witness can only fall and fall into the cauldron of memory into some alteration neither ordained nor random but a terrible fusion of both." ~Barry N. Malzberg

Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His newest book, pitched by his Hollywood agent as "James M. Cain on Viagra," is The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes. His other recent novels include The Burglar Who Counted The Spoons, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; Hit Me, featuring philatelist and assassin Keller; and A Drop Of The Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, brilliantly embodied by Liam Neeson in the new film, A Walk Among The Tombstones. Several of his other books have also been filmed, although not terribly well. He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit and Write For Your Life, and has just published a collection of his writings about the mystery genre and its practitioners, The Crime Of Our Lives. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) And the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.