Sun 10 May 2009
Archived Review: LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Specialists.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[6] Comments
LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Specialists.
Foul Play Press, paperback reprint, 1985. First published as Gold Medal R2067: paperback original, 1969. Other reprint editions: Carroll & Graf, pb, 1993; James Cahill Publishing, Aliso Viejo, California, hc, 1996.
Most of Block’s early crime thrillers, including the Tanner series, were paperbacks, almost all from Gold Medal. The first Matt Scudder book was published by Dell in 1976, and although Scudder’s career is still going today, and in hardcover, Block’s own writing career didn’t take off until 1977, when the first “Burglar” book came out in hardcover (Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, Random House).
Which places The Specialists toward the end of the first stage of Block’s career, before he seems to have gone on a 4 or 5 year hiatus. While the book starts out sounding like a winner, its plot soon begins to hold together like a pile of yesterday’s oatmeal.
Picture a group of returned Vietnam war veterans who decide to continue their commando tactics against the forces of crime and corruption. From page 26: “All over the country there were dirty men with dirty money, men the law could never get close to, but once you took their money away, it turned clean.”
Villain: a New Jersey gangster who’s been laundering his ill-gotten gains by owning banks, and then robbing them (or at least one of them) for additional profit.
Problem: the good guys play as nasty as the bad guys. There’s no one to root for. Which may have been Block’s idea all along — it’s certainly a valid approach to a crime story — but while there are flashes of good characterization and even better side commentaries about the state of the world, there’s nothing here that even hints at the idea of subtlety.
[UPDATE] 05-10-09. This brief review does not mention the many books that Block wrote under pen names, nor any of the “sleazy” paperback originals he wrote early on his career, many of them having criminous content. Some of the latter have been resurrected within the last year or so by Hard Card Crime. See my review of Lucky at Cards as a prime example.
At the moment I cannot account for how negative this review was, and it was written only six years ago. The book really may be as bad I said it was, but reading my comments now, they wouldn’t persuade me against giving it another try.
If you’re a Lawrence Block fan but haven’t read the book yet, please do so, and let me know how wrong I was, if I was. (This statement also applies, of course, if you’ve already read the book.)
Other books by Lawrence Block which have been reviewed on this blog: Mona (1961), by me; and The Girl with the Long Green Heart (1965), by Ted Fitzgerald.
May 10th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
I read this recently and agree it is not one of Lawrence Block’s best books. I agree that it starts out good, but does not end well. I believe the version I read had some of the author’s notes and indicated that this was originally intended to be a series novel, and the book does read like it is the setup for a series, introducing characters that were probably intended to develop over several books. Obviously, the series was aborted after just one book (I think Lawrence Block mention to his publishers to just think of it as a one-book series!) which kind of leaves us with the setup for a series but nothing else. So my opinion was this book was not that worthwhile, and I am a big fan of pretty much all the other currently available Lawrence Block novels. I would recommend this one for completists only.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
This one reminded me a bit of Block’s Such Men Are Dangerous, a better book, but another where the amoral protagonist is no better than many villains, and in many cases worse. It can be pulled off, but here Block either doesn’t invest enough in the idea to do it, or didn’t quite have the chops yet to bring it off.
Almost all writers have hits and misses, even the better ones like Block. The Specialists is clearly a miss, but not a wide one.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Dan
That’s interesting that THE SPECIALISTS might have been intended as the first in a series. From the basic plot premise, I can see where it could easily have happened that way.
If so, I wonder who pulled the plug. Block or Gold Medal?
David
Donald Westlake is a fellow who seems to have pulled off the “amoral protagonist” concept better than Block. Even Keller, Block’s assassin-for-hire, seems to have doubts about the work he does. (I’ve not read any, so if I’m wrong about this, let me know.)
But I don’t think Parker ever did. Had doubts, that is.
— Steve
May 14th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I found this on Lawrence Block’s website:
Originally published as a Gold Medal paperback in 1969, this book was very deliberately designed to be the first in an action-adventure series. The heroes are five former Green Berets who pull military-style capers in aid of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. I wrote the one book and found out that, though this is a kind of book I like to read, it wasn’t one I liked to write. So I pulled the plug on the enterprise, much to the surprise of my agent, who kept saying he thought this was going to be the first of a series. (I finally told him I didn’t see any reason why he and I couldn’t think of it as a onebook series. I don’t know that that made him happy, but it kept him quiet.)
May 14th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Thanks, Dan. I’m glad you found that.
The key sentence here is “I wrote the one book and found out that, though this is a kind of book I like to read, it wasn’t one I liked to write.”
Which is why the book sort of fades away, wouldn’t you say? Lack of creative energy gives itself away, every time.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Steve – I agree. I think Lawrence Block went through all the motions of what was needed for the start of a good series, but lost interest somewhere along the line and ended up with just a single novel that really doesn’t stand on its own. If more books had come out, they may have made this book more worthwhile in retrospect.