Strange Embrace/69 Barrow Street (A Hard Case Double)
69 Barrow Street, originally published in 1961 under the name Sheldon Lord, is the kind of smutty pulp novel that would have remained lost in the thrift-store spinner racks if not for two facts. One, Sheldon Lord went on to become Lawrence Block, and two, it’s actually kind of good. Read straight, it’s the raunchy, melodramatic tale of a kept Greenwich Village painter who turns a lesbian straight—but it’s impossible not to see Block winking out from behind some of the breathless hyperbole. Strange Embrace (1962), originally published under another Block pseudonym, Ben Christopher, is less a sex book with a crime in it than a mystery with a little sex thrown in. Broadway producer Johnny Lane is about to open a surefire hit when he finds his leading lady nude in bed with her throat slashed. Someone doesn’t want the play to open. It’s a by-the-numbers showbiz caper, but again, there are funny bits, such as a Japanese butler who only pretends to be inscrutable. Block’s afterwords explaining each book’s origins will be pure catnip for fans. --Keir Graff