"So, I was telling Larry Block the other day..."

See, now I have to be friends with Lawrence Block. Here's what happened: a friend of ours was looking to dispose of around nine grocery sacks of books. I said I would get rid of them, but, being a meddlesome twit (obvs), I perused her castoffs and among the stacks found this:

This is one of those reissue pulp things from the same imprint that did that Stephen King The Colorado Kid thing which you sometimes think of buying at Half Price Books. Well, the Bride read it, I am reading it (having my same suspense book problem I often have, which is being nervous about what is going to happen to characters, so only read about 40 pages a stretch, then go back to whatever safe ephemera is close to hand until I saw logs), and I must say it's fantastic. SO, I then needed to see all about Lawrence Block, right, so his wiki bio says he went to Antioch, right here in Yellow Springs, and that his detective character Matthew Scudder is in AA! What the hell? Old LB says nothing about the auto-biographical aspects, in deference to anonymity issues!

So, now I have to have a cookout where both Danny Trejo and Larry Block come, and whatsit from Blur.