Klik på en miniature for at gå til Google Books
Indlæser... Four Lives at the Crossroads (Collection of Classic Erotica) (Volume 19)af Lawrence Block
Ingen Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
FOUR LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS is the latest addition to the Collection of Classic Erotica. But it came very close to being shoehorned instead into the Classic Crime Library.Back in the late 1950s and early 60s, when I was finding myself as a writer and producing a great quantity of books under pen names, some of the books I wrote were as much crime fiction as they were erotica. Indeed, several of those titles by Andrew Shaw and Sheldon Lord have since been republished under my own name by Hard Case Crime and Subterranean Press-and subsequently astonished me by garnering respectful reviews. BORDERLINE, LUCKY AT CARDS, and A DIET OF TREACLE are examples, and so to a degree is my forthcoming Hard Case title, SINNER MAN. A little light editing made them acceptable crime fiction for a contemporary body of readers.FOUR LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS almost made the cut. After Charles Ardai at Hard Case considered it and ultimately decided against it, I weighed adding it to my Classic Crime Library. A dark, savage tale of an armed robbery gone wrong, it's not a bad fit for the CCL-but the erotic content is high, and the editing required to make it less an erotic novel and more a crime novel seemed disproportionate. The metaphor that occurred to me, I must admit, was that of putting lipstick on a pig.I did some light editing anyway, much of which consisted of reversing the helpful contributions of some unnamed editor at Nightstand Books. So here's FOUR LIVES AT THE CROSSROADS, available for the first time since its initial appearance in 1962. I can but hope you'll enjoy it. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsIngen
Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerVurderingGennemsnit:
Er det dig?Bliv LibraryThing-forfatter. |
Four Lives at the Crossroads is from Block's early softcore years, but what really makes it a great story is that it's a crime story as well as a salacious romp through a small town in Indiana.
The crime fiction part of the story is a robbery planned like one out of one of Westlake's Parker series with a group of specialists coming together to pull off a heist. That portion is just as good as any crime fiction you could pick up.
Block combines it with a titillating tale of debauchery filled with a high school boy who learns a few tricks from an older woman and who then thinks he's the world's greatest lover, a young woman out to experience everything life has to offer including sex and who wants a ticket out of the small town, the town tramp, and the high school hot rodder who thinks he's the toughest guy in town. Combine that with voyuerism, sadomasochism, and a Kit Tolliver in waiting and you've got quite a story. What makes it work is that Block doesn't just give us titillating material. He talks about these characters with amusement and they are, of course, all connected.
All told, this book really stands out among Block's early work. It's not just a salacious dimestore trash novel but a good hard crime story that is really worth reading. You can also see the roots of some of his later ideas and themes. ( )