Lawrence Block Books in Order (Updated September 10, 2026)

Lawrence Block is an American crime writer whose career spans private-eye fiction, comic mysteries, espionage, hit-man stories, pulp novels, erotica, short fiction, memoir, and books about writing. His best-known recurring characters are Matthew Scudder, burglar and bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr, professional killer Keller, sleepless adventurer Evan Tanner, and Chip Harrison.

Block’s bibliography is unusually large because he began publishing during the paperback-original era and used several pseudonyms early in his career. The cleanest approach is to keep each recurring character in a separate series and treat the many standalones, pseudonymous novels, collections, and nonfiction books as their own groups.

Five very different Lawrence Block starting points

• For serious New York crime: Begin Matthew Scudder with The Sins of the Fathers.
• For comic mysteries: Begin Bernie Rhodenbarr with Burglars Can’t Be Choosers.
• For a hit man as protagonist: Start Keller with Hit Man.
• For international adventure: Start Evan Tanner with The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep.
• For a short, unusual early series: Start Chip Harrison with No Score.

Matthew Scudder novels in story order

Matthew Scudder is a former New York police detective who leaves the department after an accidental shooting kills a young girl. When the series begins he is living in a Manhattan hotel, drinking heavily, doing unofficial investigative favors for money, and giving part of what he earns to churches.

Scudder changes more than most long-running detectives. He ages in real time, confronts alcoholism, becomes sober, develops lasting friendships, marries Elaine, and eventually reaches retirement age. That makes reading order especially worthwhile.

1. The Sins of the Fathers (1976): The father of a murdered young woman hires Scudder to understand why she died after the man accused of killing her hangs himself in jail, leading Matt into a case built around family, guilt, sexuality, and hidden identity.
2. Time to Murder and Create (1977): Small-time criminal Jake Jablon hires Scudder in advance to investigate his death if anything happens to him, leaving Matt with several blackmail victims who all had reason to want Jake dead.
3. In the Midst of Death (1976): Corrupt police officer Jerry Broadfield agrees to testify about departmental corruption and then becomes the prime suspect in a prostitute’s murder, leaving Scudder to determine whether a bad cop can still be innocent of this particular crime.
4. A Stab in the Dark (1981): After serial killer Louis Pinell admits seven old ice-pick murders but denies killing Barbara Ettinger, Scudder reopens the cold case and searches for a separate murderer who escaped notice for nearly a decade.
5. Eight Million Ways to Die (1982): A sex worker named Kim hires Scudder to help her leave her pimp and is then murdered, forcing Matt to pursue the killer while his own drinking reaches a crisis point.
6. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1986): Set earlier during Scudder’s drinking years, three seemingly separate favors for bar acquaintances intersect in a story about robbery, extortion, murder, and the community surrounding Matt’s nightly life in Manhattan ginmills.
7. Out on the Cutting Edge (1989): Scudder searches Hell’s Kitchen for a young woman who disappeared after coming to New York to become an actress and becomes increasingly involved with Elaine and the world around Mick Ballou.
8. A Ticket to the Boneyard (1990): Psychopath James Leo Motley is released from prison years after Scudder lied to help convict him, then begins murdering people connected to Matt in a campaign designed to destroy his sobriety and his life.
9. A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1991): Scudder is asked to prove that a wealthy man arranged his pregnant wife’s murder, but another case involving a missing boy leads into an especially disturbing investigation of exploitation and murder.
10. A Walk Among the Tombstones (1992): Drug trafficker Kenan Khoury hires Scudder after kidnappers murder his wife despite receiving a ransom, and Matt realizes the killers may have carried out similar crimes before.
11. The Devil Knows You’re Dead (1993): Scudder investigates the murder of Glenn Holtzmann after a suspect is quickly arrested, but the dead man’s relationships and the evidence around the case suggest that the obvious solution may be wrong.
12. A Long Line of Dead Men (1994): A private group whose members have met annually for decades hires Scudder after an improbable number of them die from accidents, suicides, and other apparently natural causes.
13. Even the Wicked (1997): A vigilante calling himself the Will of the People announces targets before killing them while Scudder becomes involved in another investigation concerning a protected criminal and the limits of private justice.
14. Everybody Dies (1998): Violence strikes Mick Ballou’s organization and people close to Scudder begin dying, forcing Matt into a case where loyalty to his friend brings him directly into a criminal war.
15. Hope to Die (2001): After a wealthy Manhattan couple is murdered and the apparent killers later die themselves, Scudder suspects an unseen third participant who manipulates other people into committing violence for him.
16. All the Flowers Are Dying (2005): Scudder encounters a highly intelligent killer who studies victims carefully and constructs elaborate identities, making the investigation one of Matt’s most dangerous late-career confrontations.
17. A Drop of the Hard Stuff (2011): A sober Scudder looks back at his first year in Alcoholics Anonymous and the murder of childhood acquaintance Jack Ellery, whose attempt to make amends may have placed him in danger.

These seventeen books form the principal Scudder novel sequence. Block’s own site notes one bibliographic complication: In the Midst of Death was originally published before Time to Murder and Create, but Block identifies Time to Murder and Create as book two and In the Midst of Death as book three.

Why Scudder’s sobriety divides the series into two different eras

The earliest Scudder novels are inseparable from alcohol. Matt does not initially call himself an alcoholic and structures much of his daily life around bars, whiskey, coffee, and the informal network of people he knows from drinking establishments.

Eight Million Ways to Die is the turning point. Later books follow his involvement with Alcoholics Anonymous and the challenge of remaining sober while continuing to work around violence, guilt, and people whose lives resemble paths he might have taken himself.

A Drop of the Hard Stuff later looks backward at this transition, which is why it works better near the end of the series than as an early chronological insertion.

Three Scudder companion books come after the seventeen novels

1. The Night and the Music (2011): This collection brings together Matthew Scudder short stories written across several decades, including cases set during both his police and private-investigator years.
2. A Time to Scatter Stones (2019): An elderly, long-sober Scudder helps a young former sex worker deal with an abusive client who refuses to let her leave him alone, giving the character a late novella-length return.
3. The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder (2023): Block lets Scudder narrate his own life from childhood through police work and the experiences behind the novels, making the book a retrospective capstone rather than a conventional mystery novel.

Read these after the seventeen novels. The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder supplies background reaching earlier than The Sins of the Fathers, but much of its value depends on already knowing the man Scudder becomes.

Bernie Rhodenbarr turns burglary into a puzzle-mystery career

Bernie Rhodenbarr is both a burglar and, as the series develops, a bookstore owner. His illegal profession repeatedly places him at murder scenes where admitting what he was doing would create almost as much trouble as being suspected of the killing.

1. Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (1977): Bernie accepts a paid burglary assignment and is caught in an apartment with a freshly murdered man, leaving him to solve the crime before police can make the obvious case against him.
2. The Burglar in the Closet (1978): Bernie’s dentist mentions valuable diamonds belonging to his estranged wife, but when Bernie enters her apartment he becomes trapped in a closet and witnesses the aftermath of her murder.
3. The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979): Now running Barnegat Books, Bernie becomes involved in the theft of a rare volume and another murder where literary knowledge matters almost as much as burglary skill.
4. The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (1980): Bernie enters an apartment expecting valuables and instead becomes entangled in murder, stolen property, and a mystery whose apparent solution proves too convenient.
5. The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (1983): Art, burglary, and murder collide when Bernie becomes involved with paintings and collectors whose interest in ownership goes well beyond ordinary appreciation.
6. The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (1994): After a long publishing gap, Bernie returns to a mystery involving baseball collectibles, murder, and the rare-object obsessions that fit naturally with his bookselling life.
7. The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995): Classic-film references and a mysterious woman draw Bernie into an adventure whose atmosphere deliberately echoes Humphrey Bogart movies.
8. The Burglar in the Library (1997): Bernie and Carolyn Kaiser visit a remote inn during a snowstorm, where Bernie’s desire to steal a rare book is interrupted by murder and an isolated-house puzzle.
9. The Burglar in the Rye (1999): Bernie is hired to steal letters connected to reclusive novelist Gulliver Fairborn, but murder at the hotel turns the literary burglary into another case he has to solve himself.
10. The Burglar on the Prowl (2004): A burglary intended partly as revenge places Bernie near another violent crime, and an extraordinary sequence of coincidences leaves him dealing with several murders.
11. The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (2013): Colonial silver, a Fitzgerald manuscript, a valuable portrait, collectible buttons, and murder pull Bernie back into active burgling after another long absence.
12. The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown (2022): Bernie unexpectedly finds himself in a version of New York where old-fashioned locks remain common and his bookstore is thriving, then learns that the famous Kloppmann Diamond is available to a burglar bold enough to take it.

There are twelve Bernie Rhodenbarr novels through The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown. Publication order is best because the bookstore, Bernie’s friendship with Carolyn, and Block’s playful treatment of New York and mystery conventions evolve with the series.

The Burglar in Short Order gathers Bernie’s shorter appearances

The Burglar in Short Order collects Bernie’s shorter fiction along with related material, including the prototype story that predates the formal series.

It should be treated as companion material rather than a thirteenth Bernie novel. The twelve full-length books remain the main sequence.

Keller is a professional killer with a strangely ordinary life

John Keller travels wherever his handler Dot sends him, kills the assigned target, and then returns to an otherwise quiet life. His interest in stamp collecting, routine, relationships, and eventually domestic stability creates the central contrast of the series.

1. Hit Man (1998): A sequence of linked stories establishes Keller as a capable contract killer whose loneliness, hobbies, therapy, relationships, and ordinary anxieties coexist with the fact that murder is his profession.
2. Hit List (2000): Keller begins to realize that someone is eliminating professional killers and that his own name may be on the list, turning the hit man into a potential target.
3. Hit Parade (2006): Keller worries about retirement and accepts a succession of jobs while calculating whether he has enough money to stop killing professionally.
4. Hit and Run (2008): Keller is framed for a political assassination while away on a job and has to cross America without usable identification, credit cards, or the support system he normally depends on.
5. Hit Me (2013): Living in New Orleans as Nicholas Edwards, Keller has a wife, child, construction work, and stamp collection until economic pressure and a phone call tempt him back into contract killing.

Keller’s Fedora comes after Hit Me

Keller’s Fedora, published in 2016, is a novella rather than Keller book six in the same full-length sense as the five principal volumes.

Keller travels by train to Illinois for a job but receives so little information about his target that he first has to play private detective. It is best read after Hit Me because it assumes the later domestic version of Keller.

Evan Tanner never sleeps

Evan Tanner lost the ability to sleep after a Korean War injury damaged his brain’s sleep center. He fills his permanent waking hours by joining obscure political movements and lost causes, which eventually turns him into an unconventional international adventurer who is mistaken for a professional spy by governments on both sides of the Cold War.

1. The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep (1966): Tanner travels toward Turkey seeking hidden Armenian gold while his connections with obscure political movements cause both American and Soviet intelligence to misunderstand who he actually works for.
2. The Canceled Czech (1966): Tanner enters Communist Czechoslovakia on another seemingly impossible mission involving a man the regime would prefer to keep under control.
3. Tanner’s Twelve Swingers (1967): Tanner attempts to smuggle a Latvian gymnast out of the Soviet Union but discovers that she refuses to leave without her eleven teammates, turning one rescue into twelve.
4. The Scoreless Thai (1968): Southeast Asia becomes the setting for another Tanner mission where political movements, revolutionaries, and his unusual network of international contacts prove essential.
5. Tanner’s Tiger (1968): Tanner’s latest lost-cause adventure takes him into another politically unstable environment where official intelligence services never seem certain whose side he is on.
6. Tanner’s Virgin (1968): Tanner becomes involved in a rescue and international journey shaped by the comic sexual and political complications characteristic of the series.
7. Me Tanner, You Jane (1970): Tanner travels into Africa for another mission where local politics, tribal conflict, outsiders, and the expectations created by adventure fiction all become part of Block’s satire.
8. Tanner on Ice (1998): After a twenty-eight-year publishing gap, Tanner is revealed to have spent decades cryogenically frozen and awakens in a post-Cold War world before being sent toward Burma on another improbable assignment.

The first seven Tanner novels appeared from 1966 through 1970. Tanner on Ice deliberately explains the enormous real-world gap by freezing Tanner inside the story, allowing the character himself to confront a world that has changed while he has not.

Chip Harrison changes genres after book two

The four Chip Harrison books form one of the most unusual series in Block’s career. The first two are comic coming-of-age novels. Books three and four reinvent Chip as assistant to eccentric detective Leo Haig, an admirer of Nero Wolfe.

1. No Score (1970): Young Chip Harrison sets out into the world with sexual experience very much on his mind, producing a comic coming-of-age story rather than a conventional mystery.
2. Chip Harrison Scores Again (1971): Chip’s romantic and sexual education continues as he encounters another series of situations that test his confidence and understanding of adulthood.
3. Make Out with Murder (1974): The series changes direction when Chip becomes assistant to private detective Leo Haig and helps solve a murder in a lighthearted homage to classic detective fiction.
4. The Topless Tulip Caper (1975): Chip and Haig investigate another puzzle mystery, completing the four-book series in its detective-fiction phase.

The short story As Dark as Christmas Gets later returns to Chip and Leo Haig and is best treated as a supplement to books three and four.

Block’s major standalones are not one hidden series

Lawrence Block wrote many independent crime novels, especially early in his career. Some appeared under pseudonyms and were later republished under his own name, so alternate editions can easily look like new books.

1. Grifter’s Game (1961), originally Mona: Drifter Joe Marlin steals from hotel rooms and becomes involved with the wife of one of his victims, turning lust, theft, and a plan for murder into a classic noir trap.
2. Death Pulls a Doublecross, later Coward’s Kiss: A man becomes involved in a murder and attempted cover-up in one of Block’s early paperback crime novels.
3. You Could Call It Murder: An early private investigation develops around a death whose accepted explanation does not satisfy the people closest to the victim.
4. A Diet of Treacle: Drugs, drifting young people, crime, and self-destructive relationships create a darker portrait of people living outside conventional expectations.
5. After the First Death: Alex Penn is accused of murdering a sex worker during an alcoholic blackout and has to determine whether he committed the killing or was deliberately framed.
6. Sinner Man: After committing a violent act, an insurance salesman attempts to disappear into the criminal underworld under a new identity.
7. Such Men Are Dangerous: Paul Kavanagh’s attempt to transform himself into a stronger man pulls him toward weapons, violence, and a scheme with national consequences.
8. Ariel: Block shifts into psychological and supernatural territory through a family whose adopted daughter becomes connected to disturbing events in their new home.
9. Random Walk: A bartender abruptly leaves his ordinary life and begins walking east, attracting other people as the apparently aimless journey develops a strange collective purpose.
10. The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes (2015): Retired detective Doak Miller becomes involved with a married woman whose plan for murder draws him into a deliberately old-fashioned noir story.
11. Dead Girl Blues (2020): A man commits a horrific murder as a young adult and then spends the rest of his life building an outwardly ordinary existence around the secret of what he did.

This is a selective route through Block’s better-known independent crime fiction rather than a claim that all of his early paperback originals share continuity. His pseudonymous and midcentury work is extensive enough to be treated as a separate collecting project.

Martin Ehrengraf works better as a casebook than a novel series

Martin Ehrengraf is a defense attorney who is completely confident in the innocence of his clients and charges extraordinary fees only when he wins. The methods by which favorable outcomes occur are considerably more disturbing than his elegant manners suggest.

Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf collects the Ehrengraf stories. Readers looking for the complete character sequence can use the collection rather than treating every story as a separate book.

Lawrence Block’s books about writing

1. Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel: Block explains the practical process of moving from an idea to a finished novel, including plotting, drafting, revision, and the realities of publication.
2. Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: Essays on fiction writing address craft, professionalism, markets, habits, and how working writers solve recurring problems.
3. Spider, Spin Me a Web: Another collection of writing advice focuses on technique, storytelling decisions, and sustaining a career in commercial fiction.
4. The Liar’s Bible: Block revisits lessons about storytelling, creative habits, and the practical psychology of writing fiction.
5. The Liar’s Companion: A companion volume supplies further observations for fiction writers confronting craft and career questions.
6. Write for Your Life: Based on Block’s seminar, the book focuses on helping writers change habits, assumptions, and self-defeating attitudes that interfere with producing work.

His nonfiction extends well beyond writing advice

1. Step by Step: A Pedestrian Memoir: Block writes about walking, long-distance races, travel, aging, and the surprising place pedestrian endurance came to occupy in his life.
2. Afterthoughts: A Piecemeal Memoir: Essays about individual books become a memoir of Block’s career, revealing where projects came from and what he remembers about writing them.
3. The Crime of Our Lives: Block collects essays and personal memories about crime fiction and many of the writers who shaped the genre.
4. A Writer Prepares: Memoir and reflection cover the early years before Block became an established professional writer.
5. Generally Speaking: Block gathers his columns on stamp collecting, a lifelong interest also shared by Keller.
6. Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails: A later collection of nonfiction pieces ranges across subjects that interest Block without limiting itself to crime fiction or writing instruction.

A Lawrence Block reading route that shows his range

1. The Sins of the Fathers: Begin with serious crime and Matthew Scudder.
2. Eight Million Ways to Die: Reach Scudder’s defining confrontation with alcoholism.
3. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes: See Block revisit Scudder’s drinking years with greater maturity.
4. Burglars Can’t Be Choosers: Switch completely into comic mystery.
5. The Burglar in the Library: Sample Bernie’s classic locked-in-country-house style.
6. Hit Man: Meet Keller and see Block turn a contract killer into a strangely domestic protagonist.
7. Hit and Run: Read the Keller book with the strongest continuous thriller structure.
8. The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep: Sample Block’s international comic-adventure side.
9. The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes: Finish with a modern return to classic noir.

What is current in Lawrence Block’s bibliography?

Lawrence Block remains active as a writer, editor, publisher, and curator of his backlist. His official site continues to feature new collections, anthologies, special editions, and reissues alongside his established series.

The most recent full-length Bernie Rhodenbarr novel is The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown from 2022. The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder followed in 2023 as a retrospective character memoir rather than a conventional Scudder mystery.

Keller’s latest dedicated fiction remains the novella Keller’s Fedora. No new full-length Keller, Evan Tanner, or Chip Harrison novel is listed on Block’s official site as of September 2026.

Questions about Lawrence Block’s many series

What is the first Matthew Scudder book?

The Sins of the Fathers is the first Scudder novel.

How many principal Matthew Scudder novels are there?

There are seventeen principal novels through A Drop of the Hard Stuff, followed by collections, the novella A Time to Scatter Stones, and The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder.

Why is Scudder book two dated later than book three?

In the Midst of Death was originally published before Time to Murder and Create, but Block identifies Time to Murder and Create as the second Scudder story in series order.

How many Bernie Rhodenbarr novels are there?

There are twelve through The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown.

How many Keller books are there?

There are five principal book-length Keller collections and novels from Hit Man through Hit Me, followed by the novella Keller’s Fedora.

How many Evan Tanner novels are there?

There are eight, ending with Tanner on Ice.

Why was there such a long gap before Tanner on Ice?

Block turned the twenty-eight-year publishing gap into part of the story by having Tanner spend the missing decades cryogenically frozen.

How many Chip Harrison books are there?

There are four. The first two are coming-of-age comedies, while the final two are mysteries featuring detective Leo Haig.

The clearest way through Lawrence Block

Do not try to combine everything into one publication chronology unless you are studying Block’s career itself. Read Matthew Scudder as one seventeen-novel sequence, then add his late companion books. Keep Bernie Rhodenbarr’s twelve novels together, Keller’s five principal books together, Evan Tanner’s eight adventures together, and Chip Harrison’s four books together.

After that, choose the standalones, pseudonymous paperbacks, short-story collections, and nonfiction according to subject. Block’s range is part of the appeal, but the books become much easier to understand once the serious Scudder novels, comic Bernie mysteries, Keller stories, Tanner adventures, and early paperback work are recognized as deliberately different parts of the same long career.