Borderline

March 24, 2014
First published in 1962, this erotic crime novel from MWA Grand Master Block (A Walk Among the Tombstones) packs plenty of vicarious thrills, sexual titillation, and taboo breaking. Meg, a recent divorcee who’s landed in El Paso, Tex., ready for some uninhibited fun, takes up with Marty, a professional gambler living south of the border. Then there’s Lily, the 19-year-old vixen who falls in with a group of young American hipsters living in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and ends up working as a prostitute. Lily is pursued by Cassie, a fellow call girl who gets her kicks with both men and women. In the midst of all this good clean action is Weaver, a psychopath who has fled Chicago after raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl. This first kill has awakened a hunger in Weaver that must be fed. Three pulp short stories from the same era round out the volume.

May 1, 2014
Hard Case Crime continues to resurrect Block's early work, often written pseudonymously, from the 1950s and early '60s. Gleefully mixing soft-core pornography with a thriller plot, Block churned out numerous of these bound-for-the-drugstore-paperback-rack quickies as he was gaining his sea legs for the more mature work that would come later. This one makes the most of its seedy border-town setting, jumping between El Paso and Jurez, as the paths of a gambler, divorc'e, hitchhiker, stripper, and psycho killer come together in an inevitable bloodbathbut not before a series of steamy, yet surprisingly stylish, couplings (There was a beginning, bittersweet and almost painful. There was a middle, fast and furious, a scherzo movement in a symphony of fire. And there was an ending, gasping, spent, two bodies washed up on a lonely, barren beach.) Who knew what lurked on those paperback racks, nestled beside the sundries, awaiting the hungry eyes of surreptitious readers? And, yet, along with the titillation, Block's inimitable craftsmanship shines through, along with flashes of his signature wit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)