Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #101574 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 205 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Reprinted for the first time since its pseudonymous publication nearly 50 years ago, this tour of the 1950s Manhattan underworld begins with Anita, a good college girl with a bright but predictable future, who comes to Greenwich Village to find what else is out there. Block's New York is a noir wonderland, populated with junkies and beatsters (the dark predecessor to the modern hipster) spouting angular tough-guy dialogue, in which Anita plays curious, confused Alice. Down the rabbit hole, she meets Joe, an aimless loser, and his roommate, Shank, a violent drug dealer whose earnings provide them with a life of leisure. When psychopathic Shank murders a cop, however, they all go on the run toward an uncertain fate. Block effortlessly immerses himself in the mind space of Joe and Shank, reporting their world of drugs, sex and disaffection with a matter-of-factness that hits hard, all the more convincing because Block never makes an overt effort to convince. A potboiler morality play at its finest, the novel doesn't deliver much action until its last third, but the slow build of the first two will give readers the delicious (and all-too-rare) feeling that anything could happen. (Jan.)
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Customer Reviews

More Block in my Diet
It's a rare crime novel that sends the reader to a dictionary just to learn the definition of a title word. That's what I had to do for "treacle" in Lawrence Block's A Diet of Treacle. Bachelor's degree, Master's degree. I hold both and didn't' know that word. Go figure. Now, I do. It's an odd word, evoking fantastical things and people, not criminals and guns. Sure enough, the opening quote is from Alice in Wonderland. One word of advice: when you finish the novel, go back and re-read the excerpt. You'll have your `a-ha' moment. I did.

The cover synopsis focuses on Anita Carlone, good girl who is bored with life so much so that she starts living with her new man, Joe Morelli, and his roommate/sugar daddy, shank. As the novel progresses, I kept wondering why the focus was on her. This was clearly a book with three protagonists. Each person has his or her own life view and that worldview influences his or her decisions and reactions.

Joe and Shank live in Greenwich Village circa 1960: pre-JFK, pre-Vietnam, pre Summer of Love, pre-counterculture. They both smoke weed that Shank sells, talk in beat lingo, and that's about it. I have to praise the reader, Christian Conn, for employing different voices to bring these cats to life, Shank, especially. Conn gives Shank the nasally quality of a weasel. At first, I didn't like the reading. Then, I began to fear what's behind the voice. Block skillfully gives a little background on Shank early on so that each subsequent scene has some underlining tension to it.

As the story progresses, I kept waiting for the murder the cover blurb ("She went looking for thrills...and found murder") promised. It finally arrived at, of course, the most inopportune moment. One can guess what happens next. However, as their flight and hiding out continues, I kept wondering why Shank kept bothering to keep Joe and Anita around. Shank himself wonders why, too. Maybe it goes back to the quote. I couldn't figure it out, but the quote ties directly into the last sentence.

I rewound the track a few times, listening to the last line over and over before I smiled. As I mentioned in my reviews for Money Shot and Kiss Her Good-bye, it's a great book when the last sentence delivers a punch. This last sentence doesn't deliver that kind of blow, but it's a good one. It makes you pause and think, which is sometimes just as good as a punch in the gut.
[...]

Reviewing: "A Diet Of Treacle"
Set in the late fifties in New York City, this novel released again by publisher Hard Case Crime, considers the odd triangle formed by three characters all driven by the need to be hip and not square. A variation on the Romeo and Juliet star crossed lovers theme with the added complication of another person who is not blood family and yet the three form a sort of dysfunctional family for a time.

Anita Carbone lives in Uptown with her mom and has a good if not great life. But, the young lady is bored and doesn't want the all too predictable future that is expected of her. So, from time to time she ventures out and into the Village in a quest for something she can't define. Her forays out are never planned and she isn't really sure what she is looking for as she just wants something different with the hint of possibly forbidden.

A rather stoned Joe Milani knows exactly what he wants with her when he spies her sitting a few tables away in a coffee house located in Greenwich Village. Joe is a war veteran who certainly hasn't had it easy on his return home and now doesn't want much more out of his life than getting high, drinking coffee at The Palermo, and making a few bucks here and there. Content to drift through life convinced that things are what they are and are unchangeable including his own place in life, he lives with his roommate and friend Leo Marsten, also known by one and all by the name "Shank." What starts as a dare between the two of them soon has surprising results as Joe, despite Shank's opinion, does manage to pick up Anita and eventually an unlikely romance.

While the two lovers are completely opposite in every way, the complicating factor is the dark personality of Shank. A small time drug dealer and hood, he gets any woman he wants and only rarely has to display the knife he is known for in the neighborhood. He has plans, albeit unfocused plans in the beginning, for the future. Once he starts on a course of action he isn't about to change it no matter the consequences to those around him.

Beyond being a criticism of the beat movement, this novel is a rather flat read featuring simplistic characters on an obvious road to ruin. The good girl, Anita, is portrayed as stunningly naïve about everyone and everything while Joe is the stereotypical war veteran deeply scarred by battle and yet filled with a good heart that will be unleashed by the right woman. Through Anita, Joe slowly discovers that there is more to life than being stoned all day and that they could have a future together if they broke free of the darkly evil, Shank. Beyond all that is implied by his nickname, he is a twisted force of simmering evil that is gradually and relentlessly poisoning everyone and everything he touches.

Hard Case Crime publishes good books and ones that I usually like but this one was a strong exception. This read didn't work for me as I was bored most of the book. The characters never came alive for me or mattered in any substantive way, the writing seemed flat and dated possibly because it was originally published in 1961, and the ending was vague and unsatisfying. At 205 pages it was a quick, but lack luster read.


Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2008

Vintage Block
Block is a grand master who never disappoints. This 1961 reprint offers a rat and roach's eye view of the beatster's Village. Two barely-likeable individuals and one distasteful thug come together and form a dysfunctional trinity. When the latter begins killing anyone and everyone who gets in his way the other two start to reconsider their triangulated relationship and the degree to which it is guaranteeing them a one-way trip to a ride on Old Sparky. Decision time.

As always with Block, the plotting is economical, the dialogue excellent, the multi-dimensional characters contributing to a bad juju stew. The suspense holds and the resolution is satisfying. Another gift from the past via Hard Case Crime. Enjoy.