One Night Stands and Lost Weekends - Lawrence Block Audiobook

Written by Lawrence Block
Read by Scott Brick, Mike Chamberlain, John H. Mayer, Robert Forster
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: November 18, 2008
Duration: 13:05:04

In 1958–a young writer named Lawrence Block submitted a story titled “You Can’t Lose” to Manhunt magazine. It was published, and the rest is history.

One Night Stands and Lost Weekends is a sterling collection of short crime fiction and suspense novelettes penned between 1958 and 1962 by a budding young master and soon-to-be Grand Master–an essential slice of genre history, and more fun than a high-speed police chase following a bank job gone bad.

This collection of 25 short stories and three novellas represents the apprenticeship years of Edgar-winner Lawrence Block, written, as the author explains in the introduction, when “my typewriter still had training wheels.” The first half of the collection are cliché-ridden samples of pulp writing composed by a still-maturing writer.

A review - Scott Brick and Mike Chamberlain are unable to help these works. But John H. Mayer, the third of three alternating readers, puts a gruff, wry edge to his voice, making the stories enjoyable.

Robert Forster, of the 1970s TV program “Banyon” and, more recently, “Heroes,” steals the show with his reading of the three novellas featuring private eye Ed London. These pieces, all originally published in 1963, are gems of private eye writing.

The three novellas featuring New York City PI Ed London, starting with “The Naked and the Deadly,” are taut classic hard-boiled noir, with the gumshoe tangling with treacherous women and lying clients. Closer to the MWA Grand Master’s usual level, they blend suspense, a puzzle and an appropriately cynical first-person narrative voice, and will leave even newcomers hungry for more.