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Enough Rope is the Lawrence Block omnibus that pulls together more than eighty short stories from across his entire career. Reading it in long stretches is the kind of experience that reshapes how you think about the form. Block has been working at every level of the American crime story for sixty years, in every register from comic to procedural to genuinely chilling, and the range across these stories is remarkable.
The Bernie Rhodenbarr-style comic capers are here. The Matt Scudder short fiction is here, and the Scudder stories are some of his best. There are standalones in the Highsmith register, standalones in the Charles Willeford register, standalones in the Jim Thompson register. Block writes them all without ever losing his particular dry first-person voice.
The collection is a project that rewards being read out of order. Pick a story by setting or by length. The longer pieces are some of the cleanest novellas in American crime fiction.
Five stars. A monument to the form. Recommended without reservation to anyone who reads short crime fiction.
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