While he is probably best known as a novelist and short-story writer, Lawrence Block has produced a rich trove of nonfiction over the course of a sixty-year career.
Over the years, Block has written extensively for magazines and periodicals. Generally Speaking collects his philatelic columns from Linn's Stamp News, while his extensive observations of crime fiction, along with personal glimpses of some of its foremost practitioners, have won wide acclaim in book form as The Crime of Our Lives. Hunting Buffalo With Bent Nails is what he's got left over.
The title piece, originally published in American Heritage, recounts the ongoing adventure Block and his wife undertook, crisscrossing the United States and parts of Canada in their quixotic and exotic quest to find every "village, hamlet, and wide place in the road named Buffalo." Other travel tales share space with a remembrance of his mother, odes to New York, a disquisition on pen names and book tours, and, well, no end of bent nails not worth straightening. Where else will you find "Raymond Chandler and the Brasher Doubloon," an assessment of that compelling writer from a numismatic standpoint? Where else can you hear about Block's collection of old subway cars? Highly recommended.
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Lawrence Block is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a New York Times bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series and dozens of short stories and articles. He has won multiple Edgar, and Shamus awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of America, and many others. Aside from being a mystery writer, he has also written a number of episodes for television, including two episodes of the ESPN series Tilt; he also cowrote the screenplay for the film My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones. Block currently lives in New York City with his wife, Lynne.
Peter Berkrot, winner of Audie and Earphones Awards for narration, is a stage, screen, and television actor and acting coach. He has narrated over 450 works that span a range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, thriller, and children’s titles. His audiobook credits include works of Alan Glynn, Eric Van Lustbader, Nora Roberts and Dean Koontz. In film and television, he appeared in Caddyshack, America’s Most Wanted, and Unsolved Mysteries. He performs in regional and New York theaters and directs the New Voices acting school.