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Loading... Getting Off: A Novel of Sex and Violence (edition 2012)by Lawrence Block, Jill Emerson
Work InformationGetting Off: A Novel of Sex and Violence by Lawrence Block
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The pattern - pick a man up in a bar, go home with him, have sex with him, kill him, rob him, and leave him there. And she has given herself a mission - “purge the planet of her past and future lovers”! Well, that was fun, for a while. Then it got repetitive. And then, it just became a Penthouse Forum letter. The subtitle of this book is "A Novel of Sex & Violence", which it is, but much more sex than violence. A very strange book to be in the Hard Case Crime collection! Probably my least favorite of the collection to date. Getting Off by Lawrence Block is a fun story about a serial killer. Although that seems like an odd description, it is stunningly accurate. Block originally wrote the chapters of the story as stand-alone short stories for noir anthologies such as Akashic Noir's series. Eventually, he, with encouragement from Hard Case Crime, knit these episodic stories into a full-length novel. The cover states that the book is by Jill Emerson, one of Block's early psuedonyms. Thus, he quite candidly uses the book to pay homage to his early series of racy novels, written under such pen names as Emerson. The book being about a serial killer and told through her eyes also contains some echoes of Block's novel about Starkweather, the serial killer featured in Block's Not Comin Home To You. The plot line is simple and is no secret. Kit Tolliver was abused as a child and, at seventeen, blew her parents' brains out and set off into the world. She has no home, no regular job, and no regular identity. She basically goes from city to city, meets men, screws them, and kills them. Kit, of course, is stunningly beautiful and has no problem finding an endless supply of victims. She is the ultimate black widow, the ultimate femme fatale. The book is not simply about how Kit does this, but the humorous voice she uses in describing how she goes about doing this. Block does an excellent job of creating this character and her sardonic narration style. Kit also has a mission to find and kill the four lovers who survived and who could brag to their buddies about how they had her. For instance, there's the one who she thought she'd meet later and never heard from again. All she has is a name and she can't even remember the hotel he stayed at. Another survivor - well, Kit finds out he's now in prison serving a term for homicide. How is she going to get into prison to kill him? The episodes and how Kit deals with them are all distinct. The book keeps the reader interested throughout. Yes, Kit knows she has a compulsion. Well done. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesHard Case Crime (101)
"So this girl walks into a bar-- and when she walks out there's a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better. On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She's been doing this for a while, and she's good at it. And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her. She starts writing down names. And now she's a girl with a mission. Picking up their trails. Hunting them down. Crossing them off her list."--Dust jacket. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Read Kemper's review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/214970880. It's better than mine, by far. ( )