The author of dozens of acclaimed novels including those in the Scudder and Keller series, Lawrence Block has long been recognized as one of the premier crime writers of our time. Now, the breathtaking skill, power, and versatility of this Grand Master are brilliantly displayed once again in a mesmerizing new thriller set on the streets of the city he knows and loves so well.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.
THIS ONE’S FOR THE RABBIT
Once again, it’s my great pleasure to thank the Ragdale Foundation, of Lake Forest, Illinois, where this book was written.
Between the time my last book was published and this one completed, I lost three dear old friends, and list them now in the order of their passing: Dave Van Ronk, Jimmy Armstrong, and John B. Keane, to whom
Earlier, I lost my mother, who came to the end of a good long life two weeks and two days after the twin towers fell. Like my wife and daughters, she read each of my books in manuscript. Thus she had a chance to read
By the time Jerry Pankow was ready for breakfast, he’d already been to three bars and a whorehouse.
It was, he’d discovered, a great opening line. “By the time I had my eggs and hash browns this morning...” Wherever he delivered it, in backroom bars or church basements, it got attention. Made him sound interesting, and wasn’t that one of the reasons he’d come to New York? To lead an interesting life, certainly, and to make himself interesting to others.
And, one had to admit, to plumb the depths of depravity, which resonated well enough with the notion of three bars and a whorehouse before breakfast.
Today he was having his breakfast in Joe Jr.’s, a Greek coffee shop at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Twelfth Street. He wasn’t exactly a regular here. The whorehouse was on Twenty-eighth, two doors east of Lexington, right around the corner from the Indian delis and restaurants that had people calling the area Curry Hill. Samosa and aloo gobi wasn’t his idea of breakfast, and anyway those places wouldn’t open until lunchtime, but he liked the Sunflower coffee shop on Third Avenue, and stopped there more often than not after he finished up at the whorehouse.
