Block, Lawrence
Entry updated 1 October 2026. Tagged: Author, Editor.
(1938- ) US author active since the 1950s, best known for his large output of notable crime, mystery and suspense fiction [mostly not listed below] including two major series respectively featuring the recovering alcoholic private eye Matthew Scudder and the bookseller-cum-gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr; both are chiefly set in New York. His first work of Fantastika was the short twist-ending Werewolf story "I'll Love You to Death!" in Monster Parade for September 1958. The fast-moving, atmospheric thriller Fidel Castro Assassinated (1961 as by Lee Duncan; vt Killing Castro 2005 as Block) is speculative or counterfactual in that the titular assassination plot against Fidel Castro (1926-2016) is actually successful. One late novel in the humorous Bernie Rhodenbarr sequence, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown (2022), pays explicit homage to Fredric Brown's What Mad Universe (September 1948 Startling; exp 1949) as Rhodenbarr finds himself in an alternate-universe or Parallel World version of New York.
There is some fantastic content in Block's anthologies At Home in the Dark (anth 2019) and Collectibles (anth 2021). He was honoured as Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1994 and inducted into the non-genre-specific New York State Writers Hall of Fame in 2026. [DRL]
Lawrence Block
born Buffalo, New York: 24 June 1938
works (very highly selected)
- Fidel Castro Assassinated (Derby, Connecticut: Monarch Books, 1961) as by Lee Duncan [pb/]
- Killing Castro (New York: Hard Case Crime, 2009) [vt of the above: pb/Sharif Tarabay]
- The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown (place not given: LB Productions, 2022) [Bernie Rhodenbarr: pb/Jeff Wong]
nonfiction
- Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers (New York: Arbor House, 1981) [coll: columns from Writer's Digest, including autobiographical material: hb/nonpictorial]
- A Writer Prepares (Birmingham, England: Short, Scary Tales Publications, 2021) [nonfiction: memoir: hb/Jeremy Pailler]
works as editor
- At Home in the Dark (place not given: LB Productions, 2019) [anth: pb/Ken Laager]
- Collectibles (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2021) [anth: hb/Ken Laager]
links
previous versions of this entry