Lawrence Block: Tanner On Ice

And, even if one was prepared for an action-adventure hero old enough to collect Social Security, how to explain his quarter-century absence? What the hell had he been doing since we saw him last? Sleeping? Not likely, since sleeping was the one thing he didn’t do at all.

Nope, I decided. There was no way to write more Tanner books. The folks at Dutton would be delighted if I did, as it would certainly kick-start the reprint series, but that wasn’t reason enough to do it. There were real impediments here, and no way around them. So I shrugged, as I often do, and said the hell with it, as I often do.

But I forgot to inform my subconscious mind.

What happened was I went to a concert. It was at Lincoln Center, and the New York Philharmonic was playing something or other, but all I recall of the evening is the idea that came to me. There are three things that happen to me at concerts, and I can’t cause them to happen, nor can I stop them from happening. One is sleep, and another is being absorbed in the music, and the third is a state where I’m very much awake but done concentrating on the music, so that my mind wanders.

Sometimes, while wandering, it produces (or allows the reception of) ideas.

Which is what happened that particular evening. All at once I thought of a way to account for the twenty-eight-year gap since we’d last heard from Tanner, and to keep him the age he’d been when we saw him last. The world had moved on, while he’d remained unchanged, fixed – yea, verily, frozen in time.

Once I had the idea, a world of possibilities opened, all of them deliciously Tanneresque. I couldn’t wait to write the book.

I decided to set it in Burma, a country Lynne and I had visited a couple of months earlier, at a time when I had not the slightest idea I’d even want to set a book there, let alone one starring Evan Tanner. And I decided to write it in Ireland, in the town of Listowel, in north Kerry.

If I did so today, I’d take along a laptop. But this was just long enough ago to make me nervous about trying to use a computer that far from home. So instead I took a pen and some legal pads and sat down at a table in my room at the Listowel Arms and wrote the book in longhand.

(The computer, incidentally, is blamed for the fact that books are longer than they used to be. Writing’s become so much easier that writers are self-indulgent, and natter on at greater length than they ought to. Well, I might be self-indulgent, and I very likely natter on longer than I ought to, but that trip to Ireland proved that the computer has precious little to do with it. I wrote every word with a ballpoint pen, and my hand ached at the end of each day’s session, and still the bloody book ran 90,000 words, which made it almost half again as long as Tanner’s earlier adventures, each of which had been pounded out far less effortfully on a Smith-Corona portable. So don’t blame the computer, my friend. Blame the windy old fart who’s tapping away at it.)

And will there be any additional Tanner novels? Is there a chance we’ll hear from him again?

Well, I’d tell you, I’ve learned, as they say, never to say never. Tanner surprised the daylights out of me by reappearing after twenty-eight years. The fellow would appear to have the life-cycle of a cicada. So look for him sometime in 2026.

Lawrence Block

Greenwich Village

The author is pleased to acknowledge the Listowel Arms Hotel, in Listowel, County Kerry, where this book was written. He is grateful, too, to Miriam Balmuth, Beverly Barsook, Ellen Benjamin, Ingeborg and Cody Engle, Jo Harberson, Lee and Wilson Harwood, Julia and Howard Klee, Margaret Milledge, Paul Smith, and Davida Tussman, brave travelers on the Burma Road, to Bob Schulte, and to Maren Rae and U Myint Oo.

Tanner’s return owes something, too, to the unflagging enthusiasm of those who knew him when, and who begged for a reappearance. Thanks to all of you, and especially to George Fowler.

And thanks to Sharon Nettles.

New York Times bestselling author LAWRENCE BLOCK is one of the most widely recognized names in the crime fiction genre. He has been named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and is a four-time winner of the prestigious Edgar® and Shamus awards, as well as a recipient of prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. He received the Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association, only the third American (after Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain) to be given this award. He is a prolific author, having written more than fifty books and numerous short stories, and is a devoted New Yorker who spends much of his time traveling. Readers can visit his website at www.lawrenceblock.com.