Huit millions de façons de mourir

Matt Scudder sta finalmente conducendo un'esistenza tranquilla. Il numero dei crimini è in diminuzione e la borsa in risalita. I rimodernamenti rendono più gradevoli i vecchi quartieri. Le strade di New York non sembrano più così violente. Poi si scatena l'inferno. Scudder scopre ben presto che i marciapiedi ben sistemati possono essere come sempre paurosi, violenti e macchiati di sangue. Vive in un mondo nel quale il passato è un campo minato, il presente è un terreno di battaglia e il futuro una domanda senza risposta. È un mondo nel quale nessuno è al sicuro, un universo caotico in cui non è garantita la sopravvivenza di nessuno. Nemmeno la sua. Un mondo in cui tutti muoiono. Alcune recensioni di Tutti muoiono: "È davvero elevato il numero di morti nell'ultimo romanzo di Scudder, che è anche il migliore dopo Un'altra notte a Brooklyn (A Walk Among the Tombstones ): vibrante, meditativo, ben articolato e con un finale eccezionale. Il tessuto narrativo di pensieri e azioni di Block, sempre senza smagliature, e il suo talento per dialoghi veri, divertenti e significativi raramente ha dato miglior prova di sé. Le pagine che conducono ai momenti culminanti hanno un tono quasi Shakespeariano nella rassegnazione umana di fronte alla morte."  ~Publishers Weekly "Un noir teso, uno dei migliori di Lawrence Block"~Cleveland Plain Dealer "Sconvolgente! Uno dei capitoli più strazianti, eppure più gratificanti, nella crescita di un eroe".~Philadelphia Inquirer "Molto, molto dark. E anche molto, molto buono" ~Denver Post

Tutti muoiono - Matthew Scudder, #14

Nous sommes à la fin des années 70.
L'illustre privé Matt Scudder a déjà quitté la police et tente, dans les bars, d'oublier Estrellita Rivera, la fillette qu'il a tuée au cours d'une arrestation mouvementée. Il est seul. Jusqu'à Jacob Jablon, alias " La Toupie ", qui ne lui téléphone plus. et dont on repêche le cadavre, dans l'East River. 
Est-ce le détective qui a contracté une dette à l'égard de l'escroc, ou l'inverse ? Peu importe. Scudder se lance sur la piste de celui - ou de celle - qui a commandité l'assassinat de son ami.
Il découvre que celui-ci faisait chanter trois personnes très haut placées. Toutes trois avaient d'excellentes raisons de faire exécuter " La Toupie ". Toutes trois ont maintenant d'aussi bonnes raisons de faire disparaître Scudder.

Tuons et créons, c'est l'heure

Pourquoi diable la belle Ilona décide-t-elle un jour d'entrer dans la librairie du bouquiniste-cambrioleur Bernie Rhodenbarr plutôt que dans une autre ? Et pourquoi l'invite-t-elle ensuite au cinéma où l'on passe une rétrospective Bogart ? Pour qu'il tombe amoureux d'elle ? Et si, plus prosaïquement, elle couvrait des opérations bancaires louches destinées à financer une cause nationaliste perdue d'avance ?

Tel est le dilemme auquel est confronté Bernie lorsqu'il fait le lien entre cet émoi qui le trouble et la visite d'un certain Hugo Canlemas qui, moyennant finances, l'a prié de voler un porte-documents frappé d'une couronne royale.

C'est alors que de bien sinistres personnages surgissent d'un passé, certes d'opérette, mais où l'assassinat et la corruption étaient monnaie courante...

Le Bogart de la cambriole

Une fois par an, en mai, 31 hommes, ou ce qu'il en reste, se réunissent dans un grand restaurant de new york pour dîner ensemble.
 Et lire la liste de leurs morts.  c'est là leur seule obligation.  le dernier membre de ce club, qui remonterait au roi salomon, a de plus pour tâche de recruter 30 autres hommes afin qu'à nouveau l'on se réunisse, et compte ses morts.  des morts qui sont justement bien nombreux dans cette dernière fournée.  alerté par lewis hildebrand, matt scudder décide de mener l'enquête.

Tous les hommes morts

Big-time dope dealer Kenan Khoury is a wealthy man, and it comes as no surprise when his wife Francine is kidnapped and a ransom demanded. Kenan pays up and his wife is duly returned to him - in small pieces left in the boot of an abandoned car, leaving private eye Matt Scudder to speculate on the motives of a very unusual kidnapper. Soon he is on the trail of a pair of ruthlessly sadistic psycopaths whose insanely cruel games have only just begun...

La Balade Entre Les Tombes

BORDERLINE "In the summer of 1958, I turned twenty years old. I had been working for a little less than a year as an editor at Scott Meredith Literary Agency, even as I had begun selling stories to crime fiction magazines. (All of this is detailed in A Writer Prepares, if you care.) I'd decided to return in the fall to Antioch College, and I'd left my job in May and spent June in my parent's house in Buffalo, writing my first novel. (Shadows, by Jill Emerson-if you care.) Now I was off to Mexico with my freshman roommate, Steve Schwerner, for an interlude of debauchery before the fall semester."We flew to Houston, then spent a day hitchhiking to Laredo, where we found an inexpensive hotel. The following day we crossed the border to the Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo, where we found our way to the large public square. We began walking around the square, and when one of the locals asked if we were looking for anything in particular, one or the other of us asked tentatively if we could perhaps buy some marijuana. 'Oh, no, señores, ' was the reply. 'Marijuana is not legal in Mexico.' We walked a little further, and asked the same question of another helpful citizen, who gave us the same answer pretty much word for word."'I guess it's not as easy as I heard, ' Steve said."We walked the rest of the way around the little park, and a dapper fellow approached us, announcing himself as Ernesto. 'I hear you guys are in the market for a little pot, ' he said."It was an interesting couple of weeks, that trip to Mexico. It did not end well, but that's another story. And BORDERLINE is also another story, its background drawn from those few days in Nuevo Laredo, its storyline the outflow of a young man's fertile imagination." ~Lawrence Block"It is wonderful piece of old-fashioned pulp and one of the amazing things about it is that it was written so long ago. It combines many of the risqué elements of Block's early writings in the dimestore paperback industry with the mystery elements of his later writings. Here, you have hippie hitchikers, professional gamblers, divorced housewives out to experience life for the first time, and a serial killer stalking and mutilating his prey. Block takes the reader into an amazing journey, first focusing on one of these people and then on the next and weaving them into this tale." ~Dave Wilde, Amazon reviewer

Borderline - The Classic Crime Library, #22

Moisson noire (2002)

Fifty books. Four Edgar awards. Two bestselling series. It all adds up to Lawrence Block, one of the bonafide masters of mystery fiction, and the creator of Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr. Now Bernie -- bookseller by day, burglar by night -- returns in his first adventure since The Bulglar in the Library, two years ago. This time, he's tapped to retrieve the lost letters of famed and reclusive author Gulliver Fairborn. But instead of the letters, Bernie finds one dead literary agent, a beautiful woman, and a cadre of cops in his way.

Huit millions de façons de mourir

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