« Comme portrait non seulement d'un homme, mais d'une ville qui change au fil des ans, vous ne trouverez pas mieux. »Crime Scene Scotland ReviewsC'est toute la vie de Matt Scudder, l'un des plus grands personnages de roman policier, que Lawrence Block nous laisse entrevoir au fil des onze nouvelles de ce recueil. Du privé alcoolique qui a quitté la police après avoir tué accidentellement une fillette lors d'une fusillade à celui qui, maintenant sobre, continue inlassablement de traquer le crime, nous assistons aussi à tous les changements de la ville que jamais il ne quitta. Cette ville, c'est la New York des années 70 à celle d'aujourd'hui. Portrait éblouissant, La Musique et la nuit est un savant mélange de dialogues à l'emporte-pièce, de moments d'une tendresse infinie et d'émerveillements inattendus. Une balade new-yorkaise dans la vie de Scudder, le personnage qui a valu à son créateur les plus belles récompenses internationales du roman policier. L'ouvrage est préfacé par Brian Koppelman, grand réalisateur, scénariste, entre autres, de Ocean's Thirteen, et fan absolu des aventures de Matt Scudder.

La musique et la nuit

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 .

Tanner On Ice

La balade entre les tombes

WIN, LOSE, OR DIE. Whether it's child's play or for the highest stakes, whether we stick to the rules or cheat, we all play games - for fun, for thrills, for love or money, to prove we're the best or make an opponent knuckle under. And the games we play, with cards or dice or nothing but our wits, reveal something deeply personal about the players. In this powerful new anthology, Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Lawrence Block has assembled an all-star team for the ultimate game night. Sit down at the checkerboard with S. A. Cosby, assemble jigsaw puzzles with David Morrell, or play marbles for the fate of the world with Joe R. Lansdale. In Jeffery Deaver's hands, an innocent game of Candyland takes twists the Parker Brothers could never have imagined. Science-fiction grandmaster Robert Silverberg uncovers painful truths about destiny while betting on the turtle races in a Caribbean resort. And Lawrence Block himself out-Hitchcocks Hitchcock with his classic story of murder victims swapped by strangers on a handball court. From hide-and-seek to Russian roulette, from mahjong to Mouse Trap, it's a game lover's dream - but beware: your turn is coming, and while winning isn't everything, sometimes losing can be deadly. And here's Publishers Weekly's starred review: "One of the most impressive of the 17 crime stories involving games in this stellar anthology from MWA Grand Master Block (In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper) is Block's own "Strangers on a Handball Court." It riffs on Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, as the title suggests, and provides a wholly fair plot with a gut-wrenching surprise. Even knowing that multiple twists are coming doesn't negate their impact in Jeffery Deaver's devious "The Babysitter, " which opens with a classic trope: the innocent everyperson who stumbles on a deadly secret. When the charges of 17-year-old Kelli Lambert get bored playing Candy Land, Kelli's search for another board game leads her into peril after the parents of the kids she's watching suspect she's spotted their secret plans to torch a casino so they can establish their own casino. David Morrell shines with the subtle and creepy "The Puzzle Master, " in which a couple become addicted to jigsaw puzzles by a particular artist, only to find potentially ominous clues linking disparate bucolic scenes. The wide range of stories and games in them begs for a sequel."

Playing Games

Nicholas Edwards vit avec sa femme et sa fille à La Nouvelle-Orléans où il rénove et revend des maisons dévastées par le passage de l'ouragan Katrina. Entre sa famille et sa collection de timbres, il oublie peu à peu son ancienne vie. Alors que ses affaires périclitent, un nouvel ouragan survient sous la forme d'un coup de téléphone de son ancien agent, Dot, qui lui propose de reprendre du service et de redevenir l'homme qu'il fut : Keller, le tueur à gages. 
De New York aux Caraïbes, en passant par Cheyenne, Keller reprend du service et enchaîne les contrats en y mettant tout son savoir-faire. Du grand art.

Tue-moi

À l'heure du numérique, difficile de gagner sa vie avec une modeste boutique de livres anciens et d'occasion sur la 11e Rue Est de New York... Heureusement, Bernie Rhodenbarr a d'autres atouts dans sa manche. Cambrioleur chevronné, on fait souvent plus volontiers appel à lui pour ses talents de crocheteur de serrures que pour ceux de bouquiniste. Mais lorsque "M. Smith", un mystérieux collectionneur, lui propose une petite fortune pour plusieurs vols (incluant aussi bien le manuscrit de L'Étrange Histoire de Benjamin Button de F. Scott Fitzgerald que d'inestimables cuillères en argent), Bernie ignore dans quelle histoire improbable il met les pieds. 

Car, pendant ce temps, une riche vieille dame a été retrouvée morte à son domicile, apparemment terrassée par une attaque lors d'un cambriolage qui aurait mal tourné. Toutefois les raisons de son décès ne sont pas si évidentes, et l'expertise de Bernie est également requise par son meilleur ennemi, le policier Ray Kirschmann, afin de l'aider dans son enquête... 

Voleur rémunéré et détective amateur, notre (anti-)héros trouve en outre des messages rageurs sur la porte de la librairie qu'il est bien obligé de délaisser... Y aurait-il encore des gens qui lisent ?

Le voleur qui comptait les cuillères - Une aventure de Bernie Rhodenbarr

Broadway Can Be Murder started out to be a novel based on Johnny Midnight, a TV series which everyone has long since forgotten. Except, of course, that nothing manages to be forgotten in the Internet Age. I, whose job it was to knock out 50, 000 words of Johnny Midnightish prose and dialogue, had forgotten when it ran and who was in it, but Google took no time at all to remind me that the title role was played by Edmund O'Brien, and that the series ran during the first nine months of 1960. And if you want to know more about it, well, Google and Wikipedia are there to enlighten you. I was in New York, newly married, living at 110 West 69th Street. I was writing short stories for crime fiction magazines, erotic novels for Midwood and Nightstand, and fielding assignments that my agent steered in my direction. Two of these were from paperback publishers who had acquired the book rights to a TV drama and wanted to hire someone to write a book. First up for me was a show called Markham, which starred Ray Milland. Belmont was to be the publisher, and I had to write that book twice.  My first effort turned out to be too good to waste its fragrance on Belmont's desert air, and my agent had me change the title and the names of the characters and sold the thing to Gold Medal. So I had to write it again, and I did, and they liked it okay and published it. Next up was Beacon Books, with "Johnny Midnight" as both the book's inspiration and its title. I wrote it, but by the time Beacon was preparing it for publication, the series had been canceled. The publisher saw no reason to pay a licensing fee for a moribund show, and accordingly changed names: Johnny Midnight became Johnny Lane, and his trusty servant morphed from Uki to Ito. And Lawrence Block became Ben Christopher for the occasion. I don't know what kept me from using my own name, the book was crime fiction rather than the erotica that seemed to call for a pen name, but I do remember that my great friend Donald E. Westlake had recently done some sort of tie-in novel and hung the name Ben Christopher on it, telling me it would be his pen name for tie-ins he was anxious to forget. I horned in on the name, and if Don found this irksome he kept it to himself. Someone at Beacon picked the title. Strange Embrace. Well, there's a lesbian element in the book, and I guess they wanted to play it up, and "strange" was a useful code word toward that end. It retained that title when Subterranean Press put it in a splendid double volume with 69 Barrow Street, and when I first reissued it in the Classic Crime Library. But it doesn't really fit the book at all, making a hard-edged crime novel set in the world of New York theater look like a bt of Beacon erotica. Thus it's new title: Broadway Can Be Murder it now is and shall be. Ray Milland I should add, had no better luck than Edmund O'Brien; his show Markham was canceled after a single season. Belmont evidently didn't get the news in time to act on it, and they dutifully published the book as Markham: The Case of the Pornographic Photos. When I okayed a reissue years later by another publisher I changed the title to You Could Call It Murder-and it's available now with that title, in paperback or ebook, as Classic Crime Library #12. (And the book it was written to replace, which Gold Medal called Death Pulls a Doublecross, is now #13 in the Classic Crime Library with my original title restored: Coward's Kiss.) And here's CCL #19, Broadway Can Be Murder. Enjoy it!

Broadway Can Be Murder - The Classic Crime Library, #17

«Mon patron est un amateur qui se prend pour un détective de génie. Et le pire, c'est que c'est vrai. Témoin, cette histoire de poissons empoisonnés et de strip-teaseuse rectifiée, semblait-il, par une sarbacane à fléchette enduite d'un truc sévèrement dangereux. Mais... lisez plutôt.»

L'aquarium aux sirènes

Nel sedicesimo romanzo che ha per protagonista Matthew Scudder, Un Campo di Fiori Morti, Lawrence Block, autore best seller del New York Times, porta questa serie, già più volte premiata, a un nuovo livello di suspense e di profondità di caratterizzazione. Dopo il successo di critica e di pubblico di Spera di Morire, Block spinge Scudder - e il lettore - sull'orlo dell'abisso. Scudder, personaggio complesso che è cresciuto e invecchiato in tempo reale, affronta l'implacabile sfida della mortalità. Ma deve anche lottare con un avversario determinato, implacabile e gelidamente inumano, forse il più indimenticabile che Block abbia mai creato. In un carcere della Virginia un uomo attende l'esecuzione per tre orrendi omicidi che lui giura, nonostante prove inconfutabili, di non avere commesso. Uno psicologo che afferma di credere al condannato trascorre ore nella sua cella nel Braccio della Morte, e infine assiste, tra gli spettatori, alla letale iniezione. Terminato questo lavoro, lo psicologo rientra a New York dove ha affari in sospeso. Nel frattempo, Scudder ha accettato di indagare sull'amante di una sua amica, conosciuto on-line, e chiaramente sospetto. Sembra semplice. All'inizio. Ma quando delle persone cominciano a morire, e le vittime sono sempre più vicine a loro, diventa chiaro che sono opera del pervertito killer. E il bersaglio finale potrebbero essere Matt ed Elaine Scudder. La suspense è mozzafiato, l'esito sempre incerto. Una serie che ha prodotto un grande numero di riconoscimenti e premi - l'Edgar, lo  Shamus, il Philip Marlowe, il Maltese Falcon - arriva a una nuova vertiginosa altezza. In questo romanzo Lawrence Block, che ha recentemente ricevuto il premio  Diamond Dagger per tutta la sua carriera dalla Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom, è al top della forma. Luigi Garlaschelli desidera ringraziare Emanuela Guizzo per l'attenta correzione delle bozze. Recensioni-AUDIOFILE MAGAZINE:"Con un titolo preso dalla ballata irlandese "Danny Boy", il sedicesimo romanzo avente per protagonista Matthew Scudder è il più dark che Lawrence Block abbia scritto da anni. Dopo che una donna conosciuta a una riunione degli Alcolisti Anonimi gli chiede di indagare sul  background del suo nuovo boyfriend, il cammino di Scudder  si incrocia con quello di un geniale serial killer che cambia ogni volta i suoi metodi e non lascia virtualmente alcuna traccia della propria identità". PUBLISHERS WEEKLY"Matt Scudder, lo straordinario detective privato creato da Block, protagonista di molti best-seller, è sulla breccia da trent'anni; e se invecchiando la sua vita non è stata gentile e delicata, certamente è stata densa di avvenimenti. In questa sedicesima straordinaria uscita (dopo Spera di Morire del 2001), Scudder, che ha ora sessant'anni e più, dimostra di essere duro e resistente come sempre, quando si trova ad affrontare il più astuto e subdolo killer che abbia mai messo alla prova il suo coraggio. I fan di Scudder non saranno sorpresi nello scoprire che il killer è collegato ai delitti irrisolti di Spera di Morire, né che Elaine e Scudder siano diventati il bersaglio dell'assassino. La narrazione si sposta senza fatica dal punto di vista di Scudder al pensiero e alle azioni del killer, la cui astuzia, coraggio e pura crudeltà marchiano a fuoco le pagine. Aggiungete dei brillanti colpi di scena e otterrete un'ottima miscela di brividi, creata da un maestro dello scrivere, qua nella sua forma migliore."

La musique et la nuit

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