Every time I looked at the title of this book, a piano started plinking in my head and Nina Simone’s voice started rattling around my brain. Honestly, I kinda liked that!

As far the book, a drunk husband accidentally kills his wife when she falls and hits her head after he punches her. He flees to Buffalo and tries to create a new identity there. After he makes “An ancient and heavenly connection”, he finds work with the local mob. Works his way up, makes nice with the new boss, and lives the big life. 'Till the end.

It's a good story, but the transition from being an insurance salesman to being mobbed up didn't seem realistic. The mob story itself is a good read, I just didn't buy that the man at the beginning could become that guy, so seamlessly and easily. If it really could be that easy, I'm gonna keep a closer eye on my insurance agent! ( )

Sinner Man (2016) by Lawrence Block. Don Barshter is sick of his job, sick of his wife, sick of the country club lifestyle, sick of it all. The only thing he looks forward to is a good stiff drink, and another after that one. Not yet completely a drunk, he is on the slide to the gutter up until the night he “accidentally” kills his wife. A slap during their usual Friday night argument, she fell back, hits the fireplace and that’s all she wrote.
Don knows it was an accident and reaches for the phone, even picks it up. But he doesn’t call anyone. He spends the rest of the evening, after placing the body in a closet, thinking on what next to do. He had been selling insurance for years, was good at it, but knows no matter what happens with the cops, his career is over. So he comes up with a plan of sorts.
He empties the bank accounts, drifts out of his small Connecticut town and rides a bus to Buffalo. His plan it to try to blend into the local crime community, try to get noticed as a tough guy, a man who won’t be pushed. A stand-up guy. Upon whom one his employers won’t run some type of background check.
It takes a short while of visiting the “right” kind of bars, taking no guff from Canadians, until he gets an intro to the local mob. With that Nat Crowley is a new-born man.
But the past can never stay hidden and before long Nat faces hard decisions.
While the story is very good, it is only half of this book. Lawrence Block has written many, many novels, the most famous of which are the Matthew Scudder books, but this was his first crime novel. In his early days he used many an alias to tag onto the pulp books he was churning out, including some soft-core porn titles. He would type up a story, ship it out and, payment in hand, forget about it. But when the Hard Case Crime publishers came to him with a request for his first crime story, it took a lot of looking and a plea to the public for a copy. His readers came through for him and after a quick buff-up, the book went to press.
Sinner Man is a great example of the crime noir genre from the mind of a writer who would soon master the craft. ( )

inner Man is yet another in a line of lost pulp novels now published by Hard Case Crime. Sinner Man was a full novel that Block submitted for publication during his Midwood erotica period, but somehow never made it to the printing presses. When you pick up a now-famous writer's lost first novel, you either find a juvenile early work good only to complete your collection or sonething special. I really enjoyed this novel and think it's worth a read.

Block does a few clever things with this novel and he definitely has the man on the run theme going here, but the man on the run this time is not some innocent guy being framed. Don Barshter did the crime, but he ain't doing the time. The other clever thing is that the lead character is a chameleon who slips into a new role quickly shedding his old identity. The twist being that his new identity is that of a hardcore mafia hood: Nathaniel Crowley. Part of the fun here is wondering why he slips so easily from being Mr Insurance salesman to being a hard case. Was it such a change for him or is that who he always was underneath it all.

There are also other prominent themes here, including the comparison of square life in a nine to five job and the house in suburbia with the Life of someone on the edge of the law.

If you've read a bit of Block, you definitely hear his narrative voice here and the subtle irony in that voice. There's plenty of action here as the main character Nat Crowley climbs the ranks of mafiadom. It's also filled with some sexy, passionate scenes. In the end, what you have here is a pulpy, sexy, fine story that evokes another era. You wonder if this might be movie material as well. ( )

Killing his wife was an accident, man-slaughter at worst, but when he hides the body and sets off to re-invent himself insurance salesman Don Barshter becomes Nat Crowley, mobster. But growing into that role turns the woman he could have loved into someone who doesn't even like him. When she gets a chance she plans revenge.

A great read. Lawrence Block wrote this early in his career and it shows that he was already a masterful writer. The story had a twist that I thought I could see coming with a twist on top of that, which I also anticipated. ( )