Afterthoughts by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Novel
ISBN: 9781453226353
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Short stories

The Martin Ehrengraf stories

Back in 1977 I wrote a short story about a criminous criminal attorney named Ehrengraf. Fred Dannay, who published the story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, liked Ehrengraf and encouraged me to write more. In 1994 Jim Seels brought out the existing Ehrengraf stories in a limited edition, with the title Ehrengraf for the Defense. Ed Hoch provided a very generous introduction for the volume, in which he recounted his own experiences in this regard with Fred. My afterword, which follows here, picked up on what Ed had to say. I should note that there have been a couple more stories in the series since Seels brought out his book; all of them (so far!) may be found in Enough Rope.

Amazing what you find out. To think that Fred Dannay was once interested in a continuation of Melville Davisson Post’s Randolph Mason stories! To think that Ed Hoch once undertook to provide it!

I, of course, had no idea. When I wrote the first Ehrengraf story in 1977, I didn’t know anything more about Melville Davisson Post than his name. Fred Dannay was crazy about the story, and heralded Ehrengraf as a lineal descendant of Randolph Mason.

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. And I may have been just a tiny bit sensitive on the subject. Because, while I hadn’t pilfered any ideas from Post, the first Ehrengraf story was an example of what I’ve elsewhere called creative plagiarism.

I hadn’t stolen the character. Ehrengraf was my own creation, sprung from my high forehead like Athena from the brow of Jupiter. No, what I’d stolen was the plot itself.

And not from Melville Davisson Post, either. I’d lifted it from Fletcher Flora.

I don’t remember the title of the story, or just where and when it appeared. I’d guess it was published in Manhunt, probably in the mid- to late fifties. While the details of the story have long since left my memory, I recall that it concerned a good friend of the narrator, who was in jail, charged with murdering a young woman. The narrator, operating on the principle that greater love hath no man than to lay down someone else’s life for a friend, gets his buddy off the hook by committing another murder or two with the identical MO. The friend, securely in jail at the time, has an unshakable alibi, and is thus off the hook for the first murder, which he did in fact commit.

I read the story, I liked the story, I forgot about the story, and years later I remembered it again and thought what a pleasure it would be to write that story. There was only one problem. Someone had already written it.

So I thought some more about it, and started poking it and probing it, looking for ways to change it. I decided that an artful attorney would make a good hero, and it struck me that he’d be particularly well motivated if he worked, as negligence lawyers do, upon a contingency basis.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.