I’ve read quite a few books by Lawrence Block — they’re a bit hit or miss. That is, he writes well, but his plots often leave much to be desired.
This is from an early series, and I haven’t read any of these books before.
Well, yes, this is wittily written as usual. You can’t argue with lines like “Now is the winter of our discotheque”. But also like I kinda expected, the plot is basically one-thing-happens-and-then-the-next-and-then-magic-resolve.
And the hero in this book is as high concept as all Block’s heroes — it’s a spy guy that has a brain damage that makes it impossible for him to sleep! Catchy! Or not!
And jeeze, some of the plot elements are gross, even for a humorous spy thriller kind of thing from 1968.
True:
I was going to dnf this book at 85%, yes 85% that’s how bad it was. This series has steadily gotten worse and the culprit is wordiness, a lot of it. Something which could have been written in 2 paragraphs is drawn out to 15 pages – I kid you not.
For such a short book, it’s amazing how much of it is pure filler.
Here Comes A Hero (1968) by Lawrence Block (Buy used, 3.68 on Goodreads)