Borderline E-Book

Lawrence Block

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

THE SCORCHING PULP NOVEL BY LAWRENCE BLOCK, AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 50 YEARS! On the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, five lives are about to intertwine — with fatal results. You'll meet MARTY: the professional gambler who rolls the dice on a night with... MEG: the bored divorcee who seeks excitement and finds... LILY: the beautiful hitchhiker lured into a live sex show by... CASSIE: the redhead with her own private agenda... and WEAVER: the madman, the killer with a straight razor in his pocket, on the run from the police and determined to go down swinging! This is MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block at his rawest and most visceral, a bloody, bawdy, brutal story of passion and punishment — and of lines that were never meant to be crossed. PLUS: Three of Block's rarest short stories from the pulps, mapping the border between sanity and depravity...

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Raves For the Work of Lawrence Block!

Also by Lawrence Block

Title Page

Copyright

Borderline

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

The Burning Fury

Chapter One

A Fire at Night

Chapter One

Stag Party Girl

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Available now from Titan Books

Raves For the Work of LAWRENCE BLOCK!

“Wonderful.”

—USA Today

“Addictive.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Reads like it’s been jolted by factory-fresh defibrillator pads.”

—Time

“A first-rate writer.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“Block grabs you…and never lets go.”

—Elmore Leonard

“[The] one writer of mystery and detective fiction who comes close to replacing the irreplaceable John D. MacDonald.”

—Stephen King

“The suspense mounts and mounts and mounts…very superior.”

—James M. Cain

“The narrative is layered with detail, the action is handled with Block’s distinctive clarity of style and the ending is a stunning tour de force.”

—New York Times

“Lawrence Block is a master of entertainment.”

—Washington Post

“One of the very best writers now working the beat.”

—Wall Street Journal

“Stellar…a master storyteller in top form.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Brilliant…For clean, close-to-the-bone prose, the line goes from Dashiell Hammett to James M. Cain to Lawrence Block. He’s that good.”

—Martin Cruz Smith

“No one writes the hard-boiled thriller better than Lawrence Block.”

—San Diego Union

“Lawrence Block is a master of crime fiction.”

—Jonathan Kellerman

“Ratchets up the suspense with breathtaking results as only a skilled, inventive and talented writer can do.”

—Orlando Sentinel

“Lawrence Block is addictive. Make room on your bookshelf.”

—David Morrell

“Remarkable…The suspense is relentless.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Lawrence Block is America’s absolute Number One writer of mystery fiction.”

—Philip Friedman

“The reader is riveted to the words, the action.”

—Robert Ludlum

“Block’s grasp of character is extraordinarily honest…his combining of the genre requirements has an expert touch.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Everything mystery readers love best.”

—Denver Post

“If Lawrence Block writes it, I read it.”

—Mike Lupica

“Marvelous…will hold readers gaga with suspense.”

—New York Newsday

“A superior storyteller.”

—San Antonio Express-News

“A smooth, chilling suspense novel that stretches nerves wire-tight before they snap.”

—Boston Herald

“Block knows how to pace a story and tighten the noose of suspense. He writes sharp dialogue and knows his mean streets.”

—San Francisco Examiner

“He is simply the best at what he does…If you haven’t read him before, you’ve wasted a lot of time. Begin now.”

—Mostly Murder

El Paso was a daylight town, quiet at night, and he walked the streets alone without seeing a single person. He was used to the night, and to silent walks down silent streets. In Tulsa, before the killing, before the little girl who had been so foolish as to ask him the time, he had been essentially a creature of the night. A quiet man. He had no friends in Tulsa. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him.

Weaver had been a nobody in Tulsa, a man who had never done a thing. Now, walking through El Paso by night, he was at least a somebody for once. He had done something. The something was a horrible thing, but he had done it, and they had put his picture in the newspapers and had broadcast his name over the radio. They called him Dracula, and they called him the Cannibal Killer, but now, for the first time, they knew who he was.

Better to be loathed as a fiend than to be thoroughly ignored, better to be hated than not to be known at all. One act of horror had given direction to his life, had elevated him from nobody to somebody.

He went on walking. He walked surely now, his stride powerful, his arms swinging easily at his side. He was the Angel of Death, he thought. His life had a mission, a strange and terrifying sense of purpose.

He thought of that little girl in Tulsa. Before, that girl had seemed to have been a dreadful mistake, an end. But she was not an end at all. She was a beginning. She was the first person he had killed.

She would not be the last…

OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKSBY LAWRENCE BLOCK:

A DIET OF TREACLE

GETTING OFF

THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART

GRIFTER’S GAME

KILLING CASTRO

LUCKY AT CARDS

SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKSYOU WILL ENJOY:

MEMORY by Donald E. Westlake

NOBODY’S ANGEL by Jack Clark

MURDER IS MY BUSINESS by Brett Halliday

QUARRY’S EX by Max Allan Collins

THE CONSUMMATA by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

CHOKE HOLD by Christa Faust

THE COMEDY IS FINISHED by Donald E. Westlake

BLOOD ON THE MINK by Robert Silverberg

FALSE NEGATIVE by Joseph Koenig

THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT by Max Allan Collins

WEB OF THE CITY by Harlan Ellison

JOYLAND by Stephen King

THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN by Elissa Wald

THE WRONG QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK(HCC-115)First Hard Case Crime edition: May 2014

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street London se1 0up

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

Copyright © 1958, 1959, 1962, 1963 by Lawrence Block

Cover painting copyright © 2014 by Michael Koelsch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Paperback Edition ISBN 978-1-78116-777-9Hardcover Edition ISBN 978-1-78329-057-4E-book ISBN 978-1-78116-778-6

The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

BORDERLINE

CHAPTER ONE

Marty let up on the gas about fifty yards from the Customs shed. He put the clutch on the floor, ground the gears slightly, dropping the big Olds into second. Then his foot eased down on the brake and the car pulled up where it was supposed to. He rolled down his window and let his face relax into an automatic smile.

The guy on duty was a Texas redneck with a hawk nose and a pronounced Adam’s apple. He grinned in recognition. “Anything to declare?”

“There’s two cases of tequila in the trunk,” Marty said. “And a hundred pounds of marijuana under the back seat. That’s about it.”

“Well, hell,” the Customs man said. “Just so you ain’t bringing back a dose or nothing. Go on.”

The Customs shed was just an extra checkpoint, and the men on duty there didn’t knock themselves out. There are, actually, two borders between the United States and Mexico. The official border is easily passable, and no passports or cards of identification are required. The working border is about sixty miles within Mexico, and that is where tourist cards are required and the Customs check is fairly rigorous. The reason for all this is a simple one. The border towns—Juarez and Tijuana and Nueva Laredo and Matamoros—thrive on American commerce. They operate under Mexican law and Mexican laissez-faire, yet they are easily accessible without a scrutinization or a host of red tape.

Marty smiled a final smile at the redneck, dropped the Olds down into first, gunned the motor and popped the clutch. The Olds shot forward, six years old and still the fastest piece of iron on the road. Marty was in Texas now. El Paso. Ciudad Juarez was behind him, behind the Customs shed, on the other side of the border.

He drove along Crescent, took a left at Brantwood, turned right again on Coronado Avenue. He pulled up alongside a parking meter, got out of the car. Someone had left five minutes on the meter for him. But it would take more than five minutes to eat, even in a greasy spoon. Hell, it took five minutes before coffee got cool enough for him to drink it. He dug a nickel out of a pocket of his gray gabardine slacks, stuck it into the meter’s hungry mouth, and crossed the street to the diner.