The Times I Met Lawrence Block

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Lawrence Block in my newsletter. A friend responded and included a picture of him with LB which made me slightly jealous. You see I met Block before but didn’t get a picture either time.

I first fell in love with LB’s work while I was in the Army and stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. I found The Burglar in the Closet in paperback at the PX, read the blurb, and decided I’d try it. *

I raced through Bernie Rhodenbarr’s second adventure and loved it which led me to more of the Burglar books as well as Block’s Matthew Scudder novels. I also read many of Block’s one-off stories and dug those, too.

In the late nineties, I sent Block and email explaining how much I loved his books and how his latest story kept me up into the wee hours just so I could finish it. He graciously replied (this was the early days of the internet) and said he we planning to visit Spokane on his book tour. He asked for a suggestion on where he should appear and I recommended Auntie’s Bookstore, the region’s premier indie bookstore then and now.

When he showed up at Aunties for the reading, I attended and he thanked me for the venue endorsement. Later he signed my book, and I floated out on cloud nine without asking for a picture.

I’d only been reading him for about ten years at that point and am pretty sure I hadn’t even written my first short story.

Fast forward nearly three decades from when I first read The Burglar in the Closet and I’ve read most of Block’s work by now. He’s part of my big three—the authors who most influenced my writing career—Lawrence Block, John D. MacDonald, and Richard Stark (a pen name for Donald Westlake).

At the 2019 Bouchercon Mystery Conference in Dallas, Texas, a friend who shares my love of Block’s work mentioned the author was in attendance. Immediately, I got excited and went looking for him. I attended a panel where he was one of the authors on the dais.

Later that afternoon, I spotted him sitting in a chair fiddling with what looked like a Blackberry phone. He was older than I remembered, which was certainly my idealization working against me. Block’s earliest works were published in the late 1950s, so he was bound to age like the rest of us.

He also seemed shorter than I remembered. Perhaps it was the chair he was sitting in or the fact that he was eighty years old, but I remembered him being a big man. Hell, this was Lawrence freaking Block after all. He was a giant in my world.

I interrupted his fiddling to reintroduce myself. He graciously shook my hand, then I continued to ramble how I loved his work and to thank him for all the great books. Fortunately, the look in his eye let me know I was coming off as crazy. I cut my blabbering short of reminding him of our first meeting. I said thanks once more and hurried away. Again with no picture.

Still, I got to talk with Lawrence Block twice albeit both times were brief. I only wish I could’ve done the same with John D. MacDonald and Donald Westlake.