Getting Off: A Novel of Sex & Violence
By Lawrence Block and Jill Emerson
4/5
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About this ebook
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block is one of the most widely recognized names in the mystery 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 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 and an enthusiastic global traveler.
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Reviews for Getting Off
8 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I was really looking forward to reading this book! From the minute it arrived, it sat on the shelf, in the To Be Read pile, and whispered to me every time I walked by. You could tell by the cover that it was going to be racy. There was also the subtitle, “A Novel of Sex & Violence”, to give you a clue. And the publisher — Hard Case Crime. Doesn’t that just sound like it’s going to be a great book? And Lawrence Block’s Getting Off did not disappoint.This is a novel about a female serial killer, but a woman so interesting that sometimes you forget just what she is. She picks up men in bars, takes them home and has sex with them, then she drugs them and kills them. She takes their money, their credit cards, whatever she needs to pay her bills. When she gets bored, she moves on — new city, new neighborhood, new name. She’s been doing some version of that since she left home (and believe me, her leaving home was a story in itself).Katherine (at least that’s how she starts out) is a woman on a mission. She has decided that she needs to kill every man she’s ever had sex with. Now for some of us — most of us, I would guess — that’s not a really long list, at least not compared to Katherine’s. There are probably hundreds of men on her list, but since she kills most of them, it’s not too daunting. If only she could find them all…Read my full review at my website, Alive on the Shelves.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Getting 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. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This book has, hands down, the most lurid cover I've ever seen on a library book. Kate is a serial killer, a black widow in the extreme. She kills most men she sleeps with, but four have gotten away and she is obsessed with hunting them down. The police are never a factor in the story. Kate can just keep murdering at will. I might try one more in the series because I usually like Block's hitman series.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Like Block's Keller novels the most fun part is all the creative ways Kat finds to kill her victims. Plus all the sex and violence.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A woman kills the men she sleeps with. Realizing that several from when she first became sexually active have gotten away, she sets about tracking them down to deal with them.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The 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.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is the first book from "Hard Case Crime" since the imprint moved to British publisher Titan Books and what a cracker it is. Writing as Jill Emerson, the great Lawrence Block delivers exactly what it says on the cover: "a novel of sex and violence". The book tells the story of Katherine Anne Tolliver, a beautiful but deadly young woman, who sets herself the goal of killing ever man she's ever slept with. Although there aren't that many of them, they're not easy to find and Katherine has to criss-cross the States in her hunt to erase them. On her quest, however, it's almost inevitable that she hooks up and if she sleeps with any of these men she had little option but to kill them. Things become complicated, however, when Katherine finds herself in a lesbian relationship, falls in love and sleeps with her female companion. There are a million monotonous serial killer novels lining the shelves of bookshops, but you're guaranteed that a master such as Lawrence Block will do something different and extraordinary with the sub-genre, and with “Getting Off” he most certainly does. This is hardboiled crime fiction that twists and subverts and in best noir fashion turns the world on its head – good and evil blur and the difference between the two becomes close to impossible to differentiate: this is a story for our times if ever there was one. Block takes many diversions with his story – he has one of Katherine's ex-lovers being a now crippled Iraq war veteran. Her interactions with the soldier over a couple of short chapters builds into a powerful little anti-war story in its own right. The overall novel also manages to cast up a number of interesting conundrums: does the past define who we are? Does our upbringing condemn us? Can love change our nature and who we are? Block's writing is sharp, precise and relentlessly paced with clever use made of the flashback / flash forward narrative construction. In Katherine Tolliver, Block delivers a "heroine" that is vicious and fearsome, but also one that is beautiful, attractive, strong and independent. She is also a character that you cannot help but root for. If it isn't a statement of the obvious the book overflows with sex and violence, often in tandem. This won't be to everyone's taste but Block handles it with assurance. "Getting Off: A Novel of Sex and Violence" is a hugely powerful read – brutal, sexy, relentless, tense, gripping, with an ultra-dry sense of humour. This is simply a great, great story and one of the very best from "Hard Case Crime", which really says something about the quality on offer.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a filthy, violent and funny book. I loved it.Katherine Anne Tolliver likes to have sex with men and enjoys killing them afterward even more. She has been doing this for a while as she moves from state to state working low profile anonymous jobs. When an after-work get-together with office mates turns to talk of the number of sexual partners, she reveals that she has had only five partners (leaving out that they are only the ones who lived). A co-worker sets his sights on her and coyly says that six is his lucky number. As you can guess, not so lucky as it turns out.Thus begins her quest though not for the Holy Grail. She decides to find these five and eliminate the possibility that any of them might kiss and tell and give a satisfying completion to her pursuits. Of course, there are obstacles. How will she find them? Are they even alive? As it turns out, one is in prison; another went to fight in Iraq shortly after their encounter; a third has weaned himself from sexual desire. Along the way we learn, of course, about her Daddy issues, various sexual acts and her violent means of dispatching her partners. But we also learn other interesting facts, for example, about New York City neighborhoods and Mormon proxy baptism. The book is funny in a wry, black humor sort-of-way and I found myself rooting for Katherine to accomplish her goal.I have long been a fan of Lawrence Block, in particular, his Matt Scudder series (The latest of which is A Drop of the Hard Stuff), about an alcoholic ex-policeman who works unofficially as a private investigator, and his Keller series, about a stamp-collecting, fastidious hit man. I have also enjoyed many of his short stories (collected in the voluminous tome, Enough Rope). But I had not realized that his oeuvre writing as Jill Emerson, as he does in Getting Off, includes “sensitive lesbian fiction” and “candid erotica” (as the book jacket puts it). Obviously, this book is neither for the prudish nor faint-of-heart. But, if you are familiar with Lawrence Block, you might want to dip your toe in the water anyway. If do not know Lawrence Block, give him a try. I do not think you will be disappointed The book also marks my entrée into Hard Case Crime, which publishes hard-boiled crime fiction complete with lurid covers. I have already enjoyed two others, Quarry’s Ex and Choke Hold, which I may also review if I get around to it. Getting Off is the first of their books to be published in hardback and has also been selected as the inaugural read of the Coed Outdoor Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, as I learned from Lawrence Block’s Facebook entry.