Enough Rope By Lawrence Block

If this isn’t enough rope for you, you need to seriously rethink what you’re planning to tie up. This 900-page expanded version of 1999’s Collected Mystery Stories gathers 83 short stories spanning the career of mystery master Block. He’s also a prolific novelist, but this tome is the best showcase for Block’s command of style; he does breezy romantic comedy, cold vindictiveness, Hitchcockian irony, and Chandleresque world-weariness and he does them all damn well. As a mystery author, Block gives the lion’s share of his work over to recurring series characters, all of whom make appearances here. Seeing them together shows what a motley crew he’s created. There’s Mephistophelian lawyer Martin Ehrengraf, who goes to any extreme necessary to prove a client’s innocence, especially if they’re guilty. And there’s the far breezier Bernie Rhodenbarr, dashing gentleman thief who steals cash and hearts with a Cary Grant smile. Block’s lasting legacy as a noir author will surely be his rich and melancholy books about alcoholic detective Matt Scudder. But his stories in Rope are inessential curiosities, like deleted scenes in a DVD. (Also see 1986’s When the Sacred Ginmill Closes , still Block’s best novel, or wait for Harrison Ford’s upcoming film of A Walk Among the Tombstones .)