A Stab in the Dark is the fourth book in the series, and the first in which it begins to dawn on Matt that there might be soemthing the slightest bit problematic about his drinking. He’s hired when the police crack an old case of his, an Icepick Killer who murdered a batch of women years ago. But one of the victims can’t be tied to the man in police custody, and Scudder’s hired by her father to find out who really wielded the icepick. Scudder’s investigation takes him to a loft on Lispenard Street, where he meets and becomes involved with Jan Keane—who will play an important role in several future books, including #17, A Drop of the Hard Stuff.

A Walk Among the Tombstones, the tenth Matthew Scudder novel, finds him hired by Kenan Khoury, a Lebanese-American drug trafficker living in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge. Two men snatched his wife off the street, collected a six-figure ransom, and gave her back—in pieces. Scudder, assisted by TJ and a pair of computer hackers known as the Kongs, stays with the case all the way to a high-tension finale in Green-Wood Cemetery.

A Long Line of Dead Men, #12 in the series, recounts the story of the Club of Thirty-one, an ongoing secret society that traces its origins clar back to ancient Babylon. Its members meet once a year until only one man is left to recruit thirty others and start it all anew. But the current crop of members is shrinking at an unlikely rate. Is someone killing these men? And can Matthew Scudder do anything about it?

Ah, I see some hands raised. All right, I’ll take a few questions.

Those are all Kindle links. What about Nook? What about Apple? What about Kobo and Sony Reader and…

The books went live first on Amazon, and those are the links you’ll find above. But they’ll be eVailable everywhere, for all platforms. Here, for Kobo and Sony users, are Smashwords links for Stab, Walk, and Long Line. Nook and Apple links will appear here in due course.

When you ePublished The Night and the Music, you also came out with a handsome trade paperback edition. I liked mine so much I bought copies for several of my friends. Are you going to do the same for these three books?

Absolutely, but it’ll take a little while. My guess is the trade paperback editions should be on sale sometime in April. As with The Night and the Music, they’ll be available from online retailers, and the price will be the same, too—$16.99.

Suppose I want a signed copy?

Again, same story as with The Night and the Music. We’ll have copies for sale at LB’s Bookstore, and you’ll also be able to obtain the book from a select group of mystery specialty booksellers.

Except it wasn’t, because over the years the book found an audience, small, but enthusiastic. For some readers it was the one book of mine they just didn’t get at all; for others, it was the one they re-read twenty times.

This email turned up in my mailbox this morning, and it’s my great pleasure to share it:

Greetings Lawrence,

Innen Ray Parchelo
Dharma teacher
Red Maple Sangha,
Renfrew Ontario

http://www.realperson.com

I’ve posted the full review on Jill’s page. But here’s a taste:

“I just now got around to reading one and chose Threesome as my first. (Though this is bisexual polyamorous pulp, rather than lesbian pulp.) There’s no denying that the intention of this sort of novel was to shock and titillate, to appeal to the prurient side of the reading masses. And there’s no denying that Threesome delivers on that promise. But to dismiss the novel as merely a piece of salacious pulp would be to miss the forest for the trees.

“Threesome has an unusual structure in that the chapters rotate between the three characters, and all are supposedly chapters that each character contributes to a manuscript for what they initially intend to be an erotic bestseller. These fictional book chapters even include asides, notes to the others, and comments on word and grammar usage. Yet far from being distracting, these add to the humor. The structure not only works, but it works very well as the story is revealed in layers from the past and present.

“I count twenty-five passages that I underlined on my Kindle while reading. Some because they were laugh-out-loud funny, some because of clever wording, and some because they were insightful. Yes, I said insightful, and I meant it. It feels really odd (embarrassing?) to admit that one of my most highlighted books on my Kindle is an erotic pulp novel, but there you are. The funny is what surprised me the most. Threesome is downright hilarious, not because of the subject matter, but because of how witty Block is. His writing style is wonderful…”

Read the rest on Jill Emerson’s Page—

Read Andrew Wheeler’s full review…

Yesterday I was glancing through The Night and the Music, my self-published collection of Matthew Scudder stories, and I came across the paragraph quoted above in the overview essay, “About These Stories…” It struck me that now was as good a time as any to supply what Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story.” And what better place to tell it than here?

In 1981, Arbor House published A Stab in the Dark, the fourth Matthew Scudder novel and the first hardcover. A year later they brought out Eight Million Ways to Die, and no sooner was that book in the stores than I got a call from Arnold Ehrlich, my editor at Arbor House.

He wanted to know the title of my next Scudder novel.

Huh?

“Don wants to list the book in the catalog,” he explained. Donald I. Fine, the sui generis founder of Arbor House, approached publishing as if it were a mad race to the finish, and his lists of forthcoming books lacked the pinpoint accuracy of, say, the annual weather forecasts in the Farmer’s Almanac.

“Just let me have the title,” Arnold urged. “We can change it if we come up with a better one. Just something to let the world know that you’ve got another Scudder book in the works.”

Well, I didn’t—nor was I at all certain that I ever would. Scudder leaves an unfinished drink on the bar at the end of Eight Million Ways to Die, and goes straight to an AA meeting, and while that might be good for his liver, I felt it might well finish him as a character. The five books of the series, while individual novels in their own right, seemed to me to constitute a single mega-novel, and one that came to an end with his confronting the central problem of his existence and proclaiming himself to be an alcoholic.

Where could he go from there? Probably nowhere, I decided, and I’d have to find somebody else to write about. But meanwhile here was Arnold Ehrlich pestering me for a title, and I couldn’t know for certain that I was done writing about Scudder, and—

“Like a Lamb to Slaughter,” I said.

For no particular reason, all of the Scudder titles had run to five words. The Sins of the Fathers, Time to Murder and Create, In the Midst of Death, A Stab in the Dark, Eight Million Ways to Die—five words apiece, every one of them. It seemed to me that five-word titles had a cadence that seemed to match the books. (It was in fact a pattern that prevailed until the twelfth book, A Long Line of Dead Men, although I stretched a point in When the Sacred Ginmill Closes; dictionaries notwithstanding, I decided that ginmill was one word, not two.)

But I digress. The point is that for a while I’d spent odd moments coming up with possible titles for future Scudder books, and one that had come to mind was the five-word phrase I’d passed on to Arnold.

“Terrific,” he said, and that was the end of it.

Except it wasn’t.

Because a year or so later somebody called me to congratulate me on the great review I’d received in Penthouse. The reviewer had proclaimed Like a Lamb to Slaughter a solid entry in the Matthew Scudder series and a fitting sequel to Eight Million Ways to Die.

The reviewer explained what had happened: “The damn magazine has such a long lead time that even when I review from galleys, the book’s old news by the time my review is published. It’s frustrating to love something and give it a rave, only to find out it’s already been remaindered by the time Penthouse hits the stands. So once in a while I’ll see something in a publisher’s catalog, and it’s by a writer who never disappoints me and it’s in a series I know I can count on, and I’ll take a chance.”

Ah well. No harm, really, because it may startle you to hear this, but not that many people buy Penthouse for the book reviews…

That would have been sometime in 1983. It would be several more years before I wrote a sixth Scudder novel, but it was also in 1983 that Arbor House brought out a collection of my short stories, Sometimes They Bite. While a story about two fishermen on North Carolina’s Outer Banks supplied the book’s title, it was anchored by a Scudder novelette, “Out the Window.”

By the following year, Don Fine was no longer at Arbor House. A while back he’d sold his company to Hearst while staying on as publisher, but within a few years he’d sufficiently alienated the Hearsts so that they fired him. Eden Collinsworth replaced him as publisher, and one day she asked me when they might expect to see a new Matthew Scudder novel. After all, they’d announced Like a Lamb to Slaughter some time ago, and it would be nice to publish it.

I explained that might be a long time coming. But they’d done well with Sometimes They Bite, so how about another volume of short stories? And there was certainly no reason we couldn’t call it Like a Lamb to Slaughter.

Eden was uncertain. She wanted a new book from me for their next list, but short story collections had a limited audience, and what she really wanted was Scudder. Now I’d had the sense (or maybe it was pure luck) to hold back a second Scudder novelette from Sometimes They Bite, and I was now able to tell Eden that a Matthew Scudder novelette called “A Candle for the Bag Lady” could be the highlight of the new collection.

“I wonder,” she said. “Do you suppose that could be the title of the novelette as well? Like a Lamb to Slaughter?”

In a book he wrote as Hunt Collins, Evan Hunter has an agent tell his protagonist that a prospective publisher wants to change his title. “If he’ll publish the thing,” the writer says, “I don’t care if he calls it My Vagina Was Magenta.”

“You know,” I told Eden, “I think that’s the perfect title for both the novelette and the book.”

In that case, she said, they’d go ahead with it.

“That’s great,” I said, “and I think it’ll do fine. It’s off to a good start, you know. It already got a really strong review in Penthouse.”

SPEAKING OF MATTHEW SCUDDER…

…I’ve been reading about him lately. Three of the novels have gone out of print, and I’ve been able to get the rights back to A Stab in the Dark, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and A Long Line of Dead Men. I’ll be making them all available shortly, both as eBooks and as trade paperbacks, very much in the manner and format of The Night and the Music.

While the text is in pretty good shape—we were able to obtain digital files—I’ve still had to read each book and clean up those typographical errors that managed somehow to insinuate themselves therein. And that’s been an interesting experience. The oldest of the three, A Stab in the Dark, was written over thirty years ago, and I’m sure it’s been at least twenty-five years since I read it.

I’m not sure just when the books will be available, but if you follow this blog you’ll be among the first to know. I can tell you that the books will be similar in appearance to The Night and the Music, as you can tell from the preliminary cover art for Stab. And the pricing will be the same: the trade paperback editions will be priced at $16.99, while the eBooks will carry an introductory price of $2.99 which will increase to $4.99 after two or three months.

And yes, you’ll be able to order signed copies of the paperback from LB’s Bookstore. And most if not all of the mystery specialty booksellers who carry The Night and the Music will have these three books available as well.

EHRENGRAF

Reading those three Scudder novels has been enjoyable, I blush to admit, but it’s forced me to interrupt another enjoyable task, the ePublication of ten stories about that criminous criminal lawyer, Martin H. Ehrengraf, the dapper little chap who rarely sees the inside of a courtroom because all his clients somehow turn out to be innocent. I’ve made six of them available for Kindle and Nook (and some for Smashwords as well) and I’ll finish the job when the time becomes available.

Meanwhile, if you’d like an introduction to Ehrengraf, or want to renew your acquaintance, you might like to begin with The Ehrengraf Defense. The covers for all the stories are uniform, so just think how splendid they’ll look on your virtual bookshelf!

Also available: The Ehrengraf Presumption, The Ehrengraf Experience, The Ehrengraf Appointment, The Ehrengraf Riposte, and The Ehrengraf Obligation. Kindle links for those can be found on the About LB’s Fiction page of this blog site, but I know y’all are resourceful enough to ferret them out on your own, even as the Nooksters and Smashworders among you can find your way to the appropriate place.

I hope it won’t be long before Ehrengrafs 7 through 10 are available as well. And will there ultimately be a book? I think so, but first I hope to write a couple more stories to fill it out. Again, if this happens, you’ll learn about it here.

LB

It is, as I’ve remarked elsewhere, a slow way to get rich. But one of its pleasures is the lightning-fast nature of feedback. Publish yourself and you don’t have to wait months for a royalty statement to give you a clue how you’re doing. Up-to-the-minute sales figures are a mouse click away—and, if your OCD is in good repair, you can check them every fifteen minutes.

As of today, I’ve got 26 self-published works available for Nook and Kindle. (Many but not all of them are on sale as well at Smashwords and the Apple store.) The most recent is Generally Speaking; this compilation of my philatelic columns for Linn’s Stamp News went live just over a week ago. Two novellas, Keller in Dallas and Speaking of Greed, have been steady sellers for a couple of years.

Here’s a look at their relative performance in the month of December:

1. THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC. All the Matthew Scudder stories in a single volume, including two new ones appearing here for the first time ever. An original indie eBook—available also as a self-published trade paperback.

2. THE BURGLAR WHO SMELLED SMOKE. A Bernie Rhodenbarr locked-room story, originally published in the short-lived and much-missed Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine.

3. THE BURGLAR WHO DROPPED IN ON ELVIS. Another Bernie Rhodenbarr story, and oddly enough another locked-room is involved—the off-limits second floor at Graceland. First appeared in Playboy.

4. CATCH AND RELEASE. A savage story about a fisherman who likes to catch ‘em and let ‘em go. Its only appearance has been in Stories, the cross-genre anthology edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio. I guess people like this story and tell their friends; sales keep increasing from month to month. (And the cover came out really nice. That probably doesn’t hurt.)

5. KELLER IN DALLAS. A novella, continuing the saga after Keller settles down in New Orleans at the end of Hit and Run. In November I completed a fifth Keller novel, HIT ME, and Keller in Dallas is the first episode in the new book (coming in February 2013). The novella first appeared in American Stamp Dealer & Collector and was reprinted in Ellery Queen.

6. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT. A Bernie Rhodenbarr story, but told from the point of view of a woman who crosses paths with him in a Manhattan office building after hours. Commissioned by Savvy, but they folded before it could appear. Then it did or didn’t appear in Cosmopolitan—online sources disagree. (If it had “Burglar” instead of “Thief” in the title, it’d be vying with Catch And Release for the #4 spot.)

7. A CHANCE TO GET EVEN. A friendly poker game turns nasty. First published in Ellery Queen.

8. A BAD NIGHT FOR BURGLARS. Also first published in EQMM, but back in the mid-1970s. It was the first story they bought from me, and is clearly a precursor to the Bernie Rhodenbarr series.

9. WHO KNOWS WHERE IT GOES. A story that grew out of the economic collapse of 2008, and the consequences of unemployment. The title’s from the Junior Burke song. First publication was in EQMM.

10. SPEAKING OF LUST. Four archetypal old men play cards and each recounts a tale from his own experience. A very old-fashioned type of narrative, though there’s nothing out-of-date about the stories they tell. This had its sole appearance as the title novella of a hardcover anthology.

11. DOLLY’S TRASH AND TREASURES. Inspired by the TV shows about hoarders, this all-dialogue story was written for Maxim Jakubowski’s UK audio anthology, The Sounds of Crime, and later appeared in Ellery Queen.

12. A VISION IN WHITE. A tennis story. First appeared in EQMM.

13. AS DARK AS CHRISTMAS GETS. A Chip Harrison story, written for Otto Penzler’s Christmas series. A very slow seller in past months, but a hot ticket in December. I suppose it’ll return to hibernation now. Or maybe not—my friend Jaye Manus had an interesting reaction to the story, and blogged about it.

14. IN FOR A PENNY. Written for a BBC Radio series with a Noir theme, it subsequently appeared in Ellery Queen; I tucked it into Manhattan Noir 2 as well.

15. THREE IN THE SIDE POCKET. A nasty story that got entirely ignored in the eWorld; then I guess people liked it and word got around, and sales picked up. The title and cover notwithstanding, it has nothing to do with pocket billiards.

16. GENERALLY SPEAKING. My second indie book, subtitled “A Philatelic Patchwork.” It’s a collection of my first 25 monthly columns for Linn’s Stamp News, and it’s obviously aimed at stamp collectors, but I’ve heard from non-collectors who say it makes interesting reading. (I’d recommend sampling it; you can download a chapter or two free, and see if it’s something you want more of.)

17. SPEAKING OF GREED. A companion novella to #10, Speaking of Lust, which out-sold it last month by four to one. Now what does that tell us about you all?

18. YOU DON’T EVEN FEEL IT. A boxing story, written for an Otto Penzler anthology.

19. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD. A story about an ardent golfer who limits his play to the driving range—or tries to.

20. SCENARIOS. S J Rozan and Jonathan Santlofer co-edited The Dark End of the Street, an anthology mixing “crime” and “literary” authors. I suppose this story has its feet (iambic, no doubt) in both camps. And it’s as close as I care to come to post-modern.

21 (tied). ALMOST PERFECT and HEADACHES AND BAD DREAMS. The first is a baseball story that appeared in Playboy, the second a story about a psychic, and the perils of fame.

23. LIKE A BONE IN THE THROAT. Otto Penzler, who published it in Murder for Revenge and then chose it for his collection of the best noir stories of the century, called this the nastiest story he ever read. (Then why isn’t it selling better? Hmmm.)

24 (tied). SWEET LITTLE HANDS and TERRIBLE TOMMY TERHUNE. The first, written for one of the Hot Blood anthologies, is about a married couple with a hobby. The second is a tennis story, written at a time when I knew precious little about the game, and I’m afraid it shows.

26. HOW FAR. I suspect this one-act stage play will always be at the bottom of the list, because not that many of y’all are eager to read ePlays. It’s a very close adaptation of my short story, “How Far It Could Go,” and I myself am uncommonly fond of it in either form. I ePubbed it not in the expectation of selling many copies, but with the thought that someone might like it enough to stage it. Two characters, one simple set, a natural vehicle for theater-group production. . .ah well. I’m still waiting, people.

I find the list interesting, albeit that I have more of a stake in it than anyone else would. It’ll be interesting, too, to see how January compares with December. I intend to publish an updated list a month from now (if I remember) though probably without the annotation.

The list reflects relative sales for Kindle on amazon.com. That’s where the greater portion of my eSales come, and their report is easiest to reference. As far as I can tell, sales on other platforms run to pretty much the same pattern.

By the same token, the links in the above list are to Amazon. But I certainly don’t want to neglect all you Nookies, so here’s an unannotated list with Nook links:

THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC
THE BURGLAR WHO SMELLED SMOKE
THE BURGLAR WHO DROPPED IN ON ELVIS
CATCH AND RELEASE
KELLER IN DALLAS
LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
A CHANCE TO GET EVEN
A BAD NIGHT FOR BURGLARS
WHO KNOWS WHERE IT GOES
SPEAKING OF LUST
DOLLY’S TRASH AND TREASURES
A VISION IN WHITE
AS DARK AS CHRISTMAS GETS
IN FOR A PENNY
THREE IN THE SIDE POCKET
GENERALLY SPEAKING
SPEAKING OF GREED
YOU DON’T EVEN FEEL IT
WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD
SCENARIOS
ALMOST PERFECT
HEADACHES AND BAD DREAMS
LIKE A BONE IN THE THROAT
SWEET LITTLE HANDS
TERRIBLE TOMMY TERHUNE
HOW FAR

If I haven’t wished any of y’all a Happy New Year, I’ll do that now. 2011 was not the easiest year on record for the human race, but I found it a joy in many ways, not least of all because it was the year I found myself embracing blogging and social media and indie publishing. And I’m very happy with the whole deal. Writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, is at root a way of talking to people, so why wouldn’t I enjoy it?

LB

If you’re still with me, let me tell you a little about it. Like Keller, I collected stamps as a child. I stayed with the hobby a little longer than my fictional hit man, but drifted away from it in my late twenties, and sold my collections when my first marriage failed. Around fifteen years ago I took it up again—and shortly thereafter so did Keller. (How’s that for coincidence?)

It was in the last chapter of the first book, Hit Man, that Keller returned to the philatelic fold. (He thought it would enrich his planned retirement, but instead it depleted his retirement fund and kept him on the job.) Through the subsequent books—Hit List, Hit Parade, and Hit & Run—Keller’s pastime has played a prominent role, and a special philatelic edition of Hit & Run found a receptive market among stamp collectors.

In mid-2009, after I’d been writing about Keller and his stamps for over a decade, I wrote an article on my own return to collecting. I sent it to Michael Baadke, editor of Linn’s, and we agreed that I would contribute a column once a month…and I’ve done so ever since. The column’s overall title, like that of the new book, is Generally Speaking.

If you’re a regular or occasional reader of Linn’s, now’s your chance to get all the columns in one package—or to send them to that philatelic friend who got an eReader for Christmas.

If you have even a passing interest in stamps, but don’t subscribe to Linn’s, you’ll probably find much to interest you in Generally Speaking. It’s written from the perspective of a worldwide collector of philately’s first century, 1840 to 1940, and treats topics ranging from some of the decisions a collector has to make (“Mint or Used?”, “Condition, Condition, and Condition”) to the manner in which international conflict enriches our hobby (“The Philatelic Upside of War”) and a stamp collector’s perspective on the German hyperinflation of 1923 (“How Much is That Dachshund in the Fenster?”).

And if you’re a Keller fan, you may find Generally Speaking of interest even if you regard a stamp as just something to paste on an envelope. It may give you a fuller sense of what Keller’s doing when he’s sitting with a magnifier in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other, and why he finds the whole business so satisfying. (And it’s information that may enrich the experience of reading Hit Me, the fifth Keller novel, coming from Mulholland Books in February 2013.)

Whatever your level of philatelic interest, you can get a no-cost glimpse of Generally Speaking. Any of the listed sites, Kindle Nook Smashwords, will allow you to download a free sample chapter. If it’s not to your taste, all you’re out is the few minutes it’s taken you to read the sample. If you like it enough to buy the whole book, all you’re out is $2.99.

And if you’re wondering whether there’ll be a paper edition of the book, well, you’re not alone. I’m wondering myself. My guess is that this one will be eBook only, but time will tell. As it so often does.

AND A REMINDER…

The Night & The Music, the complete Matthew Scudder short stories, was ePublished three months ago at an introductory price of $2.99. Sometime after the first of the year it will go up in price, most likely to $4.99. If you don’t yet own it yourself, or if you’d like to slip a gift into the eReader someone just got for Christmas, you’ll save two bucks by doing it sooner rather than later.

Here are links for The Night & The Music. Go for it! Kindle Nook Smashwords Apple

The price for the trade paperback will remain unchanged at $16.99. Go to Matthew Scudder’s Page for more about that.

PRE-ORDER FOR SAVINGS!

In a recent newsletter I wrote about Hard Case Crime #69, published in conjunction with Subterranean Press, and containing two early pseudonymous books of mine, Strange Embrace and 69 Barrow Street; the hardcover volume will have the books bound back to back in the manner of the old Ace double volumes.

The book’s scheduled for publication the end of May. The list price of $30 is very reasonable, given the production quality of Subterranean’s work. (Alas, I can’t vouch for the quality of the novels themselves.) But I’ve just learned that Amazon has the double volume available for pre-order at $19.80, a savings of 34%. That kind of savings would seem to argue for an early order, and would also ensure you of a first edition copy of a book that might sell out in a hurry.

Sometime after the first of the year, the price of the eBook will increase, probably to $4.99. That still makes it reasonable—eleven stories, two of them new, plus Brian Koppelman’s thoughtful essay on Scudder’s impact on his 15-year-old self, along with my notes on the stories. But $4.99 is more than $2.99, and I wanted to give you all a little time to save two bucks and get the book at the introductory price. The $2.99 price is guaranteed at least through the first of January.

If you figured you’d buy the book sooner or later, well, sooner is two dollars cheaper than later. If you’re looking for virtual stocking stuffers for all those friends who are getting eReaders for the holidays, you can stuff more stockings at $2.99.

Here you go: Kindle Nook Smashwords Apple

THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC is also available as a 6 x 9 trade paperback, with the handsome cover you see above. It’s priced at $16.99, and that’s not going to change. The book’s available online from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

If you’d like an autographed copy, you can order directly from LB’s Bookstore. We’re only able to ship to US addresses; fourteen leading mystery booksellers have signed copies for sale, and most if not all can fill overseas orders.

It’s been particularly gratifying this month to see A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF turn up on so many best-of-the-year lists. The book’s continued to sell nicely, in hardcover and eBook, since its May publication, but all these mentions have given it a lift all across the board. Mulholland’s paperback edition will be coming February 1. You already own this one, right? Well, just in case you don’t—

How to end this? Oh, right. Let me wish you and yours all the joys of the holiday season, and all the very best for 2012.

LB

When I read this in the New York Times this morning, the sense of loss I felt was beyond what one might expect upon the death of an important and admirable man. It seemed to me as though I had lost a friend, and I had to remind myself that I’d never met or corresponded with Mr. Havel, that we had no friends or acquaintances in common, and that I’d never even read his work or paid more than cursory attention to his political activities.

So why this sense of loss?

Then it came to me. In 1998, after a 28-year hiatus, I published an eighth book about Evan Tanner, called Tanner on Ice. It begins with an explanation of Tanner’s long absence; having run afoul of agents of the Swedish government, he’d been drugged and consigned to a freezer in the sub-basement of a house in Union City, New Jersey. Now, thawed out, he finds himself thrust into an incomprehensibly altered world.

But let me quote a bit from my favorite author:

“So much to find out! So much to catch up on!

“A lot of it was exciting. It had been evident even back in the early Seventies that Europe was in the process of becoming one nation, and that process had continued, but so had its opposite. Yugoslavia was a prime example, having during those same years become five nations, but it was by no means an isolated example. The bad old USSR had become more than a dozen nations, and even Czechoslovakia had somehow found it incumbent upon itself to bifurcate into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Four short years before my personal Ice Age began, Russian tanks had rolled through the streets of Prague. Now Vaclav Havel, whom I’d met once in a garret in Montparnasse, was president of the country. I remembered him as a chain-smoking young playwright, a gentle idealistic dreamer, and now the son of a gun was a head of state.”

Well, that explained it. He wasn’t a friend of mine. He was a friend of Tanner’s. A friend, that is to say, of a figment of my imagination.

I read somewhere that Isabel Allende has come to realize she can no longer trust her memory, that the fabrications of her fiction have become as real to her as her actual experiences, and she finds herself unable to distinguish between them. I don’t think that has happened to me yet, but I’m beginning to see how it could.

Because, although I’m in no danger of believing I met Mr. Havel in Paris, the quasi-recollection of that meeting is surprisingly real to me. The low sloping ceiling, the buzz of conversation, the windows shuttered against the chill night air, the smell of his Gauloises cigarettes…

There are meetings with other individuals, meetings which actually took place, that I don’t recall anywhere near as vividly.

Ah well. Requiescat in pace, Vaclav Havel. The world’s loss is great. I’ll miss your presence in it.

And so, in a rather more personal way, will Evan Tanner.