{"id":8,"date":"2001-08-08T09:30:58","date_gmt":"2001-08-08T13:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=8"},"modified":"2001-08-08T09:30:58","modified_gmt":"2001-08-08T13:30:58","slug":"block_lawrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2001\/08\/block_lawrence\/","title":{"rendered":"Block, Lawrence: (201) No Score"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

I just read another subway book, one that I started on the subway to work and finished over my morning bagel at my desk—it was a very short book. It also wins my prize this year for “Most Misleading Cover Copy.” The book is No Score<\/cite> by Lawrence Block<\/strong>, the first in the Chip Harrison series. Now, Block is a well-known mystery writer; I’ve been reading his Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries all summer and enjoying them greatly. (The made-up Sue Grafton titles are a hoot.) Block does first-person smartass narration really well, and after having exhausted the Bernie books, I decided to try some of his other stuff. (Light stuff. Apparently some of his other books are very dark.)<\/p>\n

The Chip Harrison books looked pretty promising, at least according to that back cover copy I mentioned. To quote: “IT IS A MYSTERY why a big man with a big gun turns Chip’s dream of desire into a nightmare of danger . . . IT IS A MYSTERY that Chip has to solve fast and furiously in a sizzling and suspenseful adventure . . .”<\/p>\n

Well, no, it’s not. Chip’s an inch away from getting laid in Chapter One (which is not what I was expecting, as Bernie always draws a discreet curtain over his own affairs, but then, this isn’t Bernie), the guy with the gun bursts in, and then we get most of a book’s worth of backstory on how he got there. And when we get back to the guy with the gun—there’s absolutely no mystery about it.<\/p>\n

To be fair, I’ve just gone to Block’s website<\/a> and he admits that the first two Chip Harrison books “are not mysteries at all (although you couldn’t tell that from the packaging of the Signet paperbacks). They’re erotic coming-of-age novels.” (I’d link right to the page, but it’s annoyingly framed, so I can’t. The original version of this post had a link that skipped the Flash intro, but there’s some odd things going on with the URLs, so rather than have you get a 404 . . . ) The third apparently turns into a mystery novel.<\/p>\n

No Score<\/cite> is a very fast, light read. Just don’t expect a mystery out of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read another subway book, one that I started on the subway to work and finished over my morning bagel at my desk—it was a very short book. It also wins my prize this year for “Most Misleading Cover Copy.” The book is No Score by Lawrence Block, the first in the Chip Harrison … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Block, Lawrence: (201) No Score”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,54,6],"tags":[141],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-chip-harrison","category-mystery","tag-block-lawrence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}