Lawrence Block is one of the most popular and celebrated writers of crime and mystery fiction in the world.
He’s especially well known for two long-running series he started writing in the mid-1970s: the novels featuring recovering alcoholic Private Investigator Matthew Scudder and the series featuring gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr.
Recently, Subterranean Press released Block’s 20th book in the Scudder series, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MATTHEW SCUDDER. Late last year, Block published his 13th Rhodenbarr novel, THE BURGLAR WHO MET FREDRIC BROWN.
Those two series alone have made millions of readers around the world fans of Lawrence Block and earned him multiple awards, including being named a mystery novel Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
Serious Block fans also appreciate his series of six novels about Keller, the contemplative hit man written between 1998 and 2016, his eight novels about the insomniac adventure Evan Tanner, published between 1966 and 1998.
Hard core Block fans also know he wrote dozens of other books and scores of magazine stories under various pseudonyms, including Sheldon Lord, Chip Harrison, Jill Emerson, Andrew Shaw, and several others.
But few Block fans are aware of the Lawrence Block stories that appeared in men’s adventure magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. That’s partly because most have never been reprinted—until now.
Wyatt Doyle and I have now filled that gap with the publication of the new book we co-edited with Larry, THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY: LAWRENCE BLOCK IN MEN’S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES. It’s now available in a lushly illustrated hardcover edition, a trade paperback edition, and as an eBook on Amazon worldwide.
You can also get copies of the print editions via my MensPulpMags.com bookstore. And, you can get a special numbered, limited edition of the hardcover, signed by Block himself via the website www.BlockNaked.com. (There are only 200 of those, so my advice is to grab one soon, while they last.)
THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY collects a dozen short stories and “Book Bonus” novellas by Block that appeared in various MAM issues, most of which have never been reprinted in their complete original form.
It also includes an exclusive introduction by Block providing background on the stories and the role they played in the early years of his career.
Wyatt Doyle and I also wrote a backgrounder on men’s adventure magazines for readers who are not familiar with the MAM genre.
The hardcover edition is 6″X9″ in size, 400 pages long and has a regular retail price of $39.95.
The hardcover includes full color reproduction of the covers of the men’s adventure magazines the stories come from, and the interior illustrations and photos used for them in the mags. It also includes eight special, full color sidebar articles and a bonus story by Block that’s not included in the paperback or ebook editions.
The special limited edition hardcover sold via www.BlockNaked.com costs $49.95.
The paperback edition is the standard 4 3/8″ x 7″ size and is over 400 pages long. It shows interior illustrations for the stories in black-and-white and costs $16.95. The Kindle ebook edition is $10.99. Like the paperback, it shows the original interior spreads for the stories in black-and-white.
The first five stories in this anthology are short stories Block wrote under the pseudonym Sheldon Lord.
That’s the pen name Block used for a series of 14 erotic novels he wrote for Midwood Books between 1958 and 1963.
The Sheldon Lord MAM stories included in THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY include two from the April 1958 issue of REAL MEN.
One is a non-fiction account of “The Greatest Ship Disaster in American History”—the disastrous fire on the New York City excursion steamship the General Slocum that led to the deaths of over 1,000 men, women and children and to major changes in maritime safety regulations.
The other story credited to Sheldon Lord in that issue is an action/adventure story titled “Queen of the Clipper Ships.”
When we showed it to Larry, he was both amazed and amused. He was amazed because he had never seen it and didn’t write it. He was amused because the editors of REAL MEN decided to credit the story to his fake name for some unknown reason. Because that’s such an oddity, he asked us to include both stories in the book.
The next Sheldon Lord story in the book, “She Doesn’t Want You!” from REAL MEN, June 1958 was definitely written by Block and was so popular with editors that it was reprinted in several other MAMs. We included a sidebar about those other uses, titled “Lust For Sale,” in the hardcover edition of the book.
That same year, Block wrote another maritime mayhem story for the November issue of REAL MEN credited to his Sheldon Lord pseudonym that’s included in the book. Titled “Pleasure Cruise for 137 Corpses,” it’s a grim account of the famed Morro Castle disaster.
The fifth Sheldon Lord story in THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY is “They Called Him ‘King of Pain.’” It’s about the infamous Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. Of all the evil, sadistic Nazis who committed heinous acts during World War II, Heydrich was among the worst. This story was first published in ALL MAN, May 1961. Then, as discussed in a sidebar in the hardcover edition of our book, it became another popular “Sheldon Lord” story that was reprinted in other MAMs.
The next MAM story by Block in our book is one of Block’s early thrillers. Titled “Killers All Around Me,” this one is set in a mental institution. It was first published in ALL MAN, September 1961 and is credited to a C.C. Jones, a pseudonym Block only used once, for that story.
It’s followed by a gritty “Sheldon Lord” crime story “Just Window Shopping,” first published in MAN’S MAGAZINE, December 1962. The artwork used for that story is interesting in itself, since it was borrowed from the covers of four paperback novels, as discussed in the special sidebar we included about it in the hardcover edition.
The biggest part of all three editions of THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY are novella-length “Book Bonus” stories by Block featuring two of my favorite Block characters: the New York City P.I. Ed London and the insomniac adventurer Evan Tanner. If you’ve never read any of his stories about those characters, you’re in for a special treat.
All three of these great mystery stories are reprinted in their full original form for the first time in THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY. (Versions in another collection of Block stories are not all the original complete versions as published in MAN’S.)
I love them all, but I especially love the one we picked as our book title: “The Naked and the Deadly,” an Ed London novelette originally published in MAN’S MAGAZINE, October 1962.
The second Ed London “Book Bonus” story we feature is “Stag Party Girl,” first published in MAN’S MAGAZINE, February 1963. In the hardcover edition we included sidebars on the sources of the interior artwork used for that story.
The third is “Twin Call Girls,” an Ed London novelette from MAN’S MAGAZINE, August 1963.
In the hardcover edition, we included special sidebars about the sources of the artwork used for “Stag Party Girl” and “Twin Call Girls.”
Block’s Ed London stories are followed by “Book Bonus” versions of two of his novels about Evan Tanner, one of the most unusual and intriguing characters Block created. Tanner is a multilingual, polymath with permanent insomnia from a brain injury who accidentally becomes a spy for a shadowy American agency.
Block wrote seven Tanner novels between 1966 and 1970, then brought him back for an eighth in 1986. In the novels, Tanner goes on wild, often humorous adventures to exotic places around the world.
Two of those novels were featured as “Book Bonus” stories in men’s adventure magazines. Both are reprinted in THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY. One is the “Great Istanbul Gold Grab,” a condensation of Block’s 1966 Tanner novel, THE THIEF WHO COULDN’T SLEEP, first published in FOR MEN ONLY, March 1967.
The other is “Bring On the Girls” a “Book Bonus” version of Block’s Evan Tanner novel THE SCORELESS THAI, from STAG July 1968.
The hardcover edition of the book includes a number of full color special sidebars that are not in the paperback edition, plus a bonus story Block wrote under the pseudonym John Warren Wells, which he used for a series of sexology books and magazine stories he wrote in the 1970s.
The Wells story we included is the “Erotic Life of the ‘Fly Me’ Stewardesses,” from MALE April 1974. It was one of many stories in men’s magazines about female flight attendants published in the wake of the hugely popular book COFFEE, TEA OR ME?, which was supposedly written by two stewardesses but actually penned by the prolific novelist and ghostwriter Donald Bain.
If you want to see more of what’s in THE NAKED AND THE DEADLY, click the image below to watch a cool video preview and review of posted by the popular retromedia maven and podcaster Jules Burt.