‘The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes’: Author continues down dark path with new novel

The collision of sex and violence drives Lawrence Block's new novel, 'The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes.” Both are vividly depicted in the book, which finds an ex-cop trying to help a woman off her husband after her intention to do so has already come to the attention of the authorities.

Block, whose career began in the late 1950s, got his start penning sex-fueled noir titles, often under various pseudonyms. But as his renowned Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr series took off in the mid-1970s, the more sexually explicit material took a back seat.

That changed in 2003 with the publication of 'Small Town,” Block's reaction to 9/11 that featured a not insignificant amount of kinky activity. The publishing house Hard Case Crime launched the next year, rereleasing as its first offering Block's 1961 novel 'Mona” as 'Grifter's Game.”

Since then, Hard Case Crime has republished quite a few early Block novels (and he's republished other erotically-tinged work on his own). The house has also published new noir by the author, including 2011's 'Getting Off” and 'The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes.” In both books, Block fully exercises his sexual imagination to titillate and to shock.

The new book, like earlier forays into the erotic, explores trauma and fantasy and boundaries in a layered, if often disturbing, way while also offering an engaging puzzle: can the two lovers pull off the kind of murder that is, on the face of it, impossible to pull off?

If your experience with Block is limited to the 'Burglar” books featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr, 'The Girl with the Deep Blues Eyes” might seem like the work of an entirely different fellow (though his gift for snappy, believable dialogue features prominently in this book, as in all of his work). But if you've read the early and late novels, the new book will certainly seem in keeping with Block's darker, uninhibited imaginings.