Resume Speed Single edition by Lawrence Block Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
Download As PDF : Resume Speed Single edition by Lawrence Block Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks 
From the legendary author of A Walk Among the Tombstones comes this gripping tale of sudden endings and new beginnings. When a man called Bill spots a sign in a restaurant window, he grabs his carry-on and gets off his bus. Within an hour he’s got himself a job as a short-order cook, and a start on a whole new life in Cross Creek, Montana. Things just fall into place. He applies for a library card, and the next thing you know he’s having dinner with the librarian. One thing leads to another, and he can see a whole new life stretching out before him…
Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy.
Resume Speed Single edition by Lawrence Block Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
There are many facets of fiction-writing that Lawrence Block is an acknowledged master of, in either short story or novel form or both. One of those is the "slow boil," especially in his shorter fiction. I realize that sounds like a contradiction in terms: how can a short piece have slower builds than a novel? The thing with a novel is, the slow build of tension is a necessity. The author has to set several plots to heating, and has to fill several hundred pages before any of them can come to a full boil. In novellas and short stories, that type of gradual increase in tension is much harder to pull off, and Block usually manages it well. So it's no surprise he does that here. In a scant 50 or so pages (Amazon says 60, but that includes cover and end matter), he introduces us to Bill Thompson, a wandering man. Bill is a nice guy, a hard worker, a charmer. But he's on the run from something. Block lets us go for almost half the story before we even start to get hints as to what that might be ... and it's not frustrating at all. We're so engrossed in how Bill is settling into this small Montana town that he picked simply because he saw a "help wanted" sign in a restaurant window as his bus glided through town, that we're not really paying attention to the small clues the author is dropping that something's not quite right.This novella is also a quiet story. No gunfights, no graphic sex (the main character does have sex, but Block modestly glosses over it), no thefts, not even a bar-fight. And that makes the slow boil even more effective. Because of how intimate and quiet and nice most of the story is, because of how "in Bill's head" we get, the ending hits even harder. I saw what was coming, hoped to hell I was wrong, and walked away feelling it was both inexorable and inevitable.
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Resume Speed Single edition by Lawrence Block Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks Reviews
Lawrence Block returns with a novella of “slow burn” psychological suspense. It begins with Bill Thompson boarding a bus in the night, blood and scratches on his arms, running away from an event he does not clearly remember from the night before. The story follows him for several months as he attempts to put together the pieces of his life in a new town. Most of the narrative concerns itself with how he makes new human connections, finds companionship, and begins to build a new future for himself.
It is a testament to Block’s craft, superb characterization, and thrifty dialog that he maintains building tension in a tale with no violence or action. Block teases out the dark and terrifying backstory slowly until the surprising conclusion.
I could easily give five stars, but my one complaint is that it felt derivative of Donald Westlake’s novel Memory. The whole time I was reading I kept thinking how similar the characters and situations seemed, and that detracted from my experience.
Lawrence Block is a master of the carefully-plotted crime story, among many other good things. His Scudder and Rhodenbarr novels are full of complex details and deviant surprises. A sprightly humour is also evident in these stories. The Keller books are an absolute delight, written as they are with a keen sense of the macabre that is clothed in the quotidian ( a word that a character in one of the Keller stories actually uses ). I don't read too many crime novels, but Block is a delightful exception. This book, "Resume Speed", is written in a manner that is rather different from his usual approach. The settings, characters and events are all quintessential Block. In fact the opening of the story reminded me of the very first Keller story in which one of Keller's preoccupations is finding a small town in America where he could live and be happy, far from the big city. But then, as we proceed into the heart of the tale, we begin to detect a difference. This is a story that hides something very central and then ends the story without revealing it explicitly. That technique is actually rather powerful as a fictional device. Block uses indirection, or subtext, perhaps, to create a mood or an atmosphere in which the things that are unsaid, that the reader guesses at, form the crux of the story. This creates a fictional world that is in some ways parallel to real life, where the stories are almost always an invention, or a series of inventions that are placed on the scaffolding of a life that is really without beginning or end. Most fiction has its appeal through the people and events in the contrived world that it creates, which certainly has a correspondence to the real one, but nevertheless, is artifice. In this short novel, Block has begun to dispense with artifice and is beginning to play with reality in a more direct way than he has done before. I am eager to see where this leads. "Resume Speed" is a story that could happen to you or me, or the people we know. It begins with the an ancient trope -- the man on the run, from somewhere, someone or something. And it leads to something unexpected. Like his central character, Block too is perhaps engaged in a departure -- but a writer's departure in this case, a departure from his usual style. I recommend this story very highly to readers of Block's previous books. But for those unfamiliar with his writing, I probably would not suggest this as a starting point. In summary, this short book is very well done, and a fine work from a brilliant writer.
I don't usually write reviews, but I couldn't resist. Somebody complained that he thought he was "buying a book and only got 60 pages for $2.99.." This person must buy his reading material by the pound. He'd rather have 300 pages of crap for his $2.99 than 60 pages of golden prose by one of America's finest word smiths - Lawrence Block. Perhaps he doesn't understand what a "novella" is. It is plainly stated in the description, and on the cover of "Resume Speed" that it is a novella. The very definition of a novella is a piece that is longer than a short story, shorter than a full novel. Let me tell you and him - ANYTHING written by Lawrence Block is really priceless. And we are privileged to be able to buy his work at such a pittance. This complainer is either the world's greatest skin flint, or he should stick to James Patterson.
There are many facets of fiction-writing that Lawrence Block is an acknowledged master of, in either short story or novel form or both. One of those is the "slow boil," especially in his shorter fiction. I realize that sounds like a contradiction in terms how can a short piece have slower builds than a novel? The thing with a novel is, the slow build of tension is a necessity. The author has to set several plots to heating, and has to fill several hundred pages before any of them can come to a full boil. In novellas and short stories, that type of gradual increase in tension is much harder to pull off, and Block usually manages it well. So it's no surprise he does that here. In a scant 50 or so pages ( says 60, but that includes cover and end matter), he introduces us to Bill Thompson, a wandering man. Bill is a nice guy, a hard worker, a charmer. But he's on the run from something. Block lets us go for almost half the story before we even start to get hints as to what that might be ... and it's not frustrating at all. We're so engrossed in how Bill is settling into this small Montana town that he picked simply because he saw a "help wanted" sign in a restaurant window as his bus glided through town, that we're not really paying attention to the small clues the author is dropping that something's not quite right.
This novella is also a quiet story. No gunfights, no graphic sex (the main character does have sex, but Block modestly glosses over it), no thefts, not even a bar-fight. And that makes the slow boil even more effective. Because of how intimate and quiet and nice most of the story is, because of how "in Bill's head" we get, the ending hits even harder. I saw what was coming, hoped to hell I was wrong, and walked away feelling it was both inexorable and inevitable.
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