You Gotta Get Up If You Want to Get Off

If you're a fellow Lawrence Block fan (and if not, what the hell's the matter with you?) you have to admit: we are living in golden times. There's a brand new Matt Scudder novel, A Drop of the Hard Stuff, out this spring from Mulholland Books. There's a virtual treasure trove of ebook editions of many hard-to-find Block novels available on your Kindles and your Nooks and iPads. (If you haven't already ready, drop a ten spot on Such Men Are Dangerous, a short-but-blistering action thriller unlike anything else you've ever read. Trust me; you'll thank me in the morning.)

And now comes word that a brand-new Block novel is leading the relaunch of Hard Case Crime from a.) a new publisher, and b.) in hardcover.

Strangely it's Block writing as one of his former pseudonyms, a la Stephen King/Richard Bachman. Confused? Let Charles Ardai explain:

GETTING OFF: A Novel of Sex and Violence by Lawrence Block (writing as Jill Emerson) -- The story of a beautiful young woman who sets off on a mission to kill every man she's ever slept with (and she's slept with quite a few). For this book, Lawrence Block is reviving a pseudonym he hasn't used in almost 40 years, under which he wrote seven particularly sexy books back in the day. When he saw how sexy this new one was coming out, he thought...that's the Jill Emerson in me coming out again...

Me? I'm already sold. By the premise, as well as that 1970s-style chunkalicious font and the rather, uh, cheeky Gregory Manchess cover art.

(And that's just the beginning for the new Hard Case. Getting Off will be followed by a new Mickey Spillane/Max Allan Collins, a new Max Allan Collins, and a new Christa Faust.)

So yeah. These are golden times.