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A review by jakewritesbooks
69 Barrow Street; Strange Embrace by Sheldon Lord, Lawrence Block, Ben Christopher
3.0
This month’s Hard Case Crime was the hardest of the original releases to locate. A Lawrence Block twofer. Sadly, like most of Block’s early works, one only gets a glimpse of what a talented writer he would become…
69 Barrow Street is an erotic noir-ish paean to 1960s Greenwich Village. Block had a history early in his career of writing cheap erotic books but because he’s Lawrence Block, they came out better than his contemporaries. Still, while this one has its merits, it’s the sort of lipstick lesbian/Hero Penis/mammary obsessed tragedy that would be an interesting story with a better writer (like, say, Lawrence Block would become 15 years after this was published).
Strange Embrace is an entertaining little mystery tale in which the killer is very obvious, even for someone like me. I wish someone would adopt the Johnny Midnight presence for a new tv show. Hell everything’s an IP nowadays; maybe I just have to wait a few years.
69 Barrow Street is an erotic noir-ish paean to 1960s Greenwich Village. Block had a history early in his career of writing cheap erotic books but because he’s Lawrence Block, they came out better than his contemporaries. Still, while this one has its merits, it’s the sort of lipstick lesbian/Hero Penis/mammary obsessed tragedy that would be an interesting story with a better writer (like, say, Lawrence Block would become 15 years after this was published).
Strange Embrace is an entertaining little mystery tale in which the killer is very obvious, even for someone like me. I wish someone would adopt the Johnny Midnight presence for a new tv show. Hell everything’s an IP nowadays; maybe I just have to wait a few years.