‘Walk Among the Tombstones’ gets new movie life

By Danny Bloom

CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Lawrence Block, master storyteller with a sense of Yiddishkeit and gumshoe charm, has fans all over the world, mostly in North America, where his detective novels have done very well over the years, and you might not know it, but he also has fans in Taiwan, where his books have been translated into Chinese.

In fact, he is so popular in Taiwan among detective fiction fans that Block flew to Taiwan for a visit in 2008 where he spoke at several college campuses to enthusiastic audiences of young and old. When I read a news report that he would be speaking at a local college near my home in Chiayi City in southern Taiwan, I wrote to him in New York before he came over and told him I would love to meet up with him after his lecture for a cup of coffee and small talk. He said, “Sure, my landsman!”

So when Block, now 74, lectured at Chung Cheng University, speaking in English to students who understood perhaps 50 percent of what he was saying about his life as a crime novelist, I was sitting in the front row of the auditorium with my old-fashioned paper-bound notebook open and scribbling notes as he spoke. Later, over coffee, we chatted about this and that, and I asked him a few questions about
literary agents and publishers, and he asked me how I enjoyed my life in Taiwan (“Wonderful!” I told him, and even from his short visit here, he could see how friendly and warm the Taiwanese people are).

Over the years, we have kept in touch by email. Which brings me to this little bit of book news here:

Recently, Block, took to his home office blog in Manhattan, on the 12th floor of a building on West 12th Street, to tell his fans a bit of happy news.

“A Walk Among the Tombstones, the tenth book in my Matthew Scudder series, is scheduled to begin filming in February next year,” Block  told me in a recent email. “Scott Frank, who wrote the screen adaptation, will direct; the extraordinary Liam Neeson will star as Matthew Scudder. I couldn’t be happier. Neeson as Scudder struck me as a wonderful idea back when I saw him portray Michael Collins in the eponymous film. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see in the role.”

He added on his blog: ”Plans call for filming  to commence in February in — get this — New York City. Readers often ask who’d be my ideal Matt Scudder (or Bernie Rhodenbarr, or Keller) and I usually change the subject. But now it’s safe to tell you that, ever since I saw him in ‘Michael Collins’, Neeson has been up at the top of my personal Scudder wish list. I couldn’t be happier about either the star or the writer/director, both of them genuine artists and brilliant professionals. My book’s in good hands.”

Who’s Mathew Scudder?

By the tenth book in the popular ”Scudder” series, which began in 1976 and resulted in A Walk Among the Tombstones being published in 1992, he’s become ex-cop, an unlicensed private detective and a recovering drunk. He gets hired to try to find a woman who has been kidnapped, and the more he learns the more he realizes this is a very big story with an even bigger backstory.

Scudder made it to Hollywood once before when Jeff Bridges played him 8 Million Ways To Die,” according to Block. He also told me by email that it’s not the first time that ‘A Walk Among The Tombstones‘ got greenlighted. Harrison Ford was scheduled to play Scudder in the earlier deal but it never worked out, he told me.

As ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones first appeared in print in 1992,  it’s been a long 20-year wait for a film version. Fingers crossed.  L’chaim!

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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World.   He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com