My Guest this week is here indirectly. I have the honour to host an interview previous published in The Big Thrill Magazine conducted of one GIANT in the Thriller writing business by another. Ladies and Gentlemen...
Lawrence Block
A Master of Crime Fiction
Tells All
Interview By David Morrell
There are few contemporary authors I respect as much as Lawrence Block,
and I’m not the only one who feels that way, as his list of honors indicates:
Grand Master Award from Mystery Writers of America, four Edgars and four
Shamuses, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America,
Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers
Association ... and I’m just getting started.
The length of Larry’s career is equally impressive — more than five
decades. Read that again. More than five decades. Longevity isn’t as important
as quality, though, and he just keeps getting better, never disappointing in
the four (count them, four) splendid series that demonstrate the depth of his
talent, featuring cop-turned-detective Matthew Scudder, globetrotting insomniac
Evan Tanner, introspective assassin Keller, and hilarious bookselling burglar
Bernie Rhodenbarr (my personal favorite).
Among Larry’s more than 100 books, there are two non-fiction volumes
that ITW members should consider required reading: his collection of essays
about his friendships with such crime-writing legends as Donald E. Westlake and
Evan Hunter/Ed McBain (The Crime of Our Lives) and his writing book (Write for
Your Life).
But it’s Larry’s latest,
THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES, that we’re
here to talk about—an amazing update on the scorchers that James M. Cain
pioneered with The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity...
Hard Case Crime published THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES, giving it
one of their fabulous covers that re-create the classic look of crime novels in
the 1950s and 1960s. The cover is hot, but your novel is even hotter. What
inspired you to take a new look at this powerful sex-and-murder subgenre?
Hard Case reissued an early pseudonymous book of mine, Borderline, and
damned if it didn’t get far better reviews than I felt it deserved. And I was
telling my wife that it might be fun to write something similar—fast-paced,
pulpy, with the narrative drive more important than the plot. “It might,” she
said, and 15 seconds later—no joke—I sat up and said, “I’ve got an idea.” Now
most ideas wither on the vine, and that’s probably just as well, but this one
stayed with me and grew, and less than two months later I was writing it.
Borderline was published in the 1950s when you were learning your craft,
writing pulps under your many pseudonyms (ten that I know of). Damned good
pulps. Invaluable training. Booklist described the reissue of Borderline as a
gleeful mix of “soft-core pornography with a thriller plot.” THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES fits that description also, except that its sex scenes are more
than soft-core. What made you decide to push the “borderline,” so to speak?
Changing times, I suppose. Back in the old Nightstand/Midwood days,
which we’re now calling Midcentury Erotica, the sex scenes were as graphic as
they were allowed to be, and were specifically intended to arouse the reader
once a chapter. Well, the world has changed, and censorship has disappeared, so
it was natural for me to make the book as candid as possible—and at the same time
I was no longer aiming for an erotic effect per se, just trying to write
frankly and honestly. I’d gone there before—in my post 9/11 novel, Small Town,
in 2003, and more recently in Getting Off. (I received a surprising amount of
flak over Small Town from readers who were used to the more circumspect Bernie
Rhodenbarr; they felt they’d been ambushed. Happily, the cover of Getting Off
let everybody know what to expect.) I’m interested in people’s sex lives, and I
have to assume readers are, too. Faubion Bowers observed that sex is the one
interesting thing even boring people do. I’d hope my characters aren’t boring,
but in any event their sex lives are interesting.
In some examples of this sex-and-murder subgenre, the reader is only
told that the sex is powerful whereas you show it vividly and make the killer’s
motivation convincing. The set pieces are amazing narrative accomplishments.
Over the years, I wrote very few sex scenes because I always felt I was
censoring myself. How do you manage to avoid the trap of self-censorship? Was
there ever a moment when you thought you’d gone too far?
No, never. For some reason it all rang true for me, and I just let it
happen. You know, I grew up reading John O’Hara, and he did more in sex scenes
with pure dialogue than most people could manage with an entire film crew. And,
while I wrote
THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES entirely on spec, I figured
Charles Ardai at Hard Case was the most likely publisher for it. And I knew I
didn’t have to worry about holding back as far as Charles was concerned. He’d
proved that with Getting Off, where he actually suggested a wicked addition to
one scene that put it way way over the top. (And I , who ordinarily welcome
suggestions as enthusiastically as Trump welcomes immigrants, promptly embraced
it wholeheartedly.)
Lest we give readers the impression that this is erotica and not a
thriller, I need to emphasize the game of wits that the killer plays with the
police and the rocket pace of the story, with shockers I could never have
predicted. The leanness of the prose is a master class in thriller writing. One
technique I particularly admired is a scene that you describe twice, making me
(and the police) believe the first version, then revealing what actually
happened. Did you ever have a sense that you were finding new ways to tell this
kind of story?
I know the scene you’re referring to, and it seems to me I knew almost
from the moment I had the idea for the book that I would structure it that way.
By the time I sat down to begin the book, I’d had the scene in mind long enough
to know how to write it. And yet other things weren’t planned at all. The
realtor, who’s surely a significant presence in the very first chapter, just
turned up out of nowhere. She shows him a house, his offer’s accepted, and he
asks how they should celebrate. And she takes off her wedding ring and drops it
in her purse. Now where the hell did that come from? And where did she come
from? Writing’s a mystery, isn’t it? The more I do it, the less I understand
the whole business.
One final question and a change of topic. Recently one of your Matthew
Scudder novels, A Walk among the Tombstones, was released as a feature film,
starring Liam Neeson. I liked the movie a lot. What was your own reaction?
The film was ten years in development. After all that time, I didn’t
know what to expect, but I’m happy to say I loved it, thought Liam Neeson was
the perfect choice, and can’t say enough about the job Scott Frank did as
writer and director. The color/noir depiction of New York City is stunning.
Meanwhile, a television producer has optioned
The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes
and is shopping it for a one-season series, probably on cable. Dunno if
anything will happen, but I’m hopeful. And no, I have no idea who they might
cast; aside from the female lead’s eye color, I’d say it’s wide open.
I speak for a
lot of people when I say that my fingers are crossed. Thanks for visiting The
Big Thrill. This was a fun conversation.
When Lawrence isn't writing gritty crime thrillers or gathering awards for his work, he can be found here:
Thank you Lawrence for giving your permission for this interview to be reproduced here.
I confess to being in the throes of hero worship at the moment, first for being able to count on Lawrence for his collaboration on my blog and second for having had the opportunity to participate in the
MOSTLY MURDER - TILL DEATH mystery anthology project together with him. Yes, this has been a good year!
Eric @
www.ericjgates.com
