Larry Block’s first story – under his own name – came out in 1957. A 56 year career ain’t something to sneeze at. If you’ve never heard of him before Block is famous for his crime and mystery novels, specifically the series featuring Matthew Scudder (and that’s just one of his ongoing characters).

Catch and Release collects 17 crime / thriller stories that haven’t been collected elsewhere. Most of them are new – in the sense that they were published in anthologies and Ellery Queen in the last few years – with a couple dating back to the 60s. As a collection it gives you a genuine idea of Block’s great strength as a writer – his nack for telling an entertaining story.

In one sense Block is a traditional, possibly old fashioned crime and thriller writer. More often than not the heroes are men, hard on the surface, gooey in the centre. And the victims are women. If there’s a rapist or a serial killer it’s mostly going to be a bloke. And yes, there are a number of willing and able women presented in these stories. It’s all very pulpish, with a hint of the shaggy dog. But it’s also very entertaining, and not in a guilty pleasure type of way. Block is a genuinely good writer and while he might fall back on some old genre tropes, the storytelling always – well mostly – wins out.

He also doesn’t mind poking fun at himself and the genre with pieces like Scenarios (which he admits, a bit guiltily, is a little post-modern) or Welcome To The Real World which is the funniest crime / golf story I’ve ever read. And even stories that seem to follow the familiar trope, like Catch and Release still do something unexpected and, at least to me, original.

If you haven’t read anything by Block before then this is a good place start (or at least as good place as any). He shows with much skill, humour and some corking writing that there’s nothing wrong in entertaining people with the telling of a good story.