Threesome [Mass Market Paperback]

Jill Emerson (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (1970)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000H0W8US
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,279,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Block attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Leaving school before graduation, he moved to New York City, a locale that features prominently in most of his works. His earliest published writing appeared in the 1950s, frequently under pseudonyms, and many of these novels are now considered classics of the pulp fiction genre. During his early writing years, Block also worked in the mailroom of a publishing house and reviewed the submission slush pile for a literary agency. He has cited the latter experience as a valuable lesson for a beginning writer.

Block's first short story, "You Can't Lose," was published in 1957 in Manhunt, the first of dozens of short stories and articles that he would publish over the years in publications including American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and the New York Times. His short fiction has been featured and reprinted in over eleven collections including Enough Rope (2002), which is comprised of eighty-four of his short stories.

In 1966, Block introduced the insomniac protagonist Evan Tanner in the novel The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep. Block's diverse heroes also include the urbane and witty bookseller--and thief-on-the-side--Bernie Rhodenbarr; the gritty recovering alcoholic and private investigator Matthew Scudder; and Chip Harrison, the comical assistant to a private investigator with a Nero Wolfe fixation who appears in No Score, Chip Harrison Scores Again, Make Out with Murder, and The Topless Tulip Caper. Block has also written several short stories and novels featuring Keller, a professional hit man. Block's work is praised for his richly imagined and varied characters and frequent use of humor.

A father of three daughters, Block lives in New York City with his second wife, Lynne. When he isn't touring or attending mystery conventions, he and Lynne are frequent travelers, as members of the Travelers' Century Club for nearly a decade now, and have visited about 150 countries.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Erotic Pulp Fiction? (Kindle Edition Review), January 19, 2012

By 

Robin L. McLaughlin (Seattle, Wa.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Threesome (Kindle Edition)

As the punctuation in my review title indicates, I'm sure there's some question as to whether erotic pulp fiction can qualify as excellent fiction. The novel Threesome, written by Lawrence Block and published in 1970 under the pen name Jill Emerson, helps to answer that question in the positive.

I became interested in pulp fiction, more specifically, pulp fiction with lesbian content, a couple years ago. I've been aware since the 1980s that there was a lesbian pulp era in the 1950s-1960s, but I'd never really bothered to learn anything about it or read any of the books until relatively recently. As I was educating myself on the web, Jill Emerson's name came up plenty, though not always positively. There's that whole exploitation thing to deal with from the viewpoint of a lesbian and a feminist.

But we all have our literary weaknesses and guilty pleasures, and lesbian pulp has become one of mine, even if only in small, occasional doses. So when the Block/Emerson novels went on sale for 99 cents this last November I snagged several to add to my pulp collection on my Kindle. (As an aside, I had already read two Block crime novels prior to this, so was already sold on his writing talent.)

I just now got around to reading one and chose Threesome as my first. (Though this is bisexual polyamorous pulp, rather than lesbian pulp.) There's no denying that the intention of this sort of novel was to shock and titillate, to appeal to the prurient side of the reading masses. And there's no denying that Threesome delivers on that promise. But to dismiss the novel as merely a piece of salacious pulp would be to miss the forest for the trees.

Threesome has an unusual structure in that the chapters rotate between the three characters, and all are supposedly chapters that each character contributes to a manuscript for what they initially intend to be an erotic bestseller. These fictional book chapters even include asides, notes to the others, and comments on word and grammar usage. Yet far from being distracting, these add to the humor. The structure not only works, but it works very well as the story is revealed in layers from the past and present.

I count twenty-five passages that I underlined on my Kindle while reading. Some because they were laugh-out-loud funny, some because of clever wording, and some because they were insightful. Yes, I said insightful, and I meant it. It feels really odd (embarrassing?) to admit that one of my most highlighted books on my Kindle is an erotic pulp novel, but there you are. The funny is what surprised me the most. Threesome is downright hilarious, not because of the subject matter, but because of how witty Block is. His writing style is wonderful.

I guess I'll finish with a comment on my 5 star rating. Most of us who review using the entire scale, not just 1 and 5 stars, have a personal system for what each rating means. On my personal scale 5 stars means the book was excellent, or possibly extraordinary, *for what it is*. I don't read a Sue Grafton mystery and only give it 3 or 4 stars because it in no way attains the lofty literary heights of To Kill a Mockingbird. So with that in mind, I simply had no choice but to assign 5 stars to Threesome in order to be true to my rating scale.

KINDLE NOTE: The ebook edition is very well done, and includes chapter marks on the progress bar. It's clean of formatting errors and I only noticed a couple typos. The one thing I dislike about the Open Road ebooks I've read so far is that the copyright info is included at the back, yet there's no link in the TOC to go directly there. And in this case, they did not include the original copyright and publishing info. I always like to know when a book was originally published because that helps give context to what I'm about to read.