Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf
Page 21
I hadn’t stolen the character. Ehrengraf was my own creation, sprung from my high forehead like Athena from the brow of Zeus. No, what I’d stolen was the plot itself.
And not from Melville Davisson Post, either. I’d lifted it from Fletcher Flora.
I don’t remember the title of the story, or just where and when it appeared. I’d guess it was published in Manhunt, probably in the mid-to-late fifties. While the details of the story have long since left my memory, I recall that it concerned a good friend of the narrator, who was in jail, charged with murdering a young woman. The narrator, operating on the principle that greater love hath no man than to lay down someone else’s life for a friend, gets his buddy off the hook by committing another murder or two with the identical MO. The friend, securely in jail at the time, has an unshakable alibi, and is thus off the hook for the first murder, which he did in fact commit.
I read the story, I liked the story, I forgot about the story, and years later I remembered it again and thought what a pleasure it would be to write that story. There was only one problem. Someone had already written it.
So I thought some more about it, and started poking it and probing it, looking for ways to change it. I decided that an artful attorney would make a good hero, and it struck me that he’d be particularly well motivated if he worked, as negligence lawyers do, upon a contingency basis. Martin Ehrengraf took shape at once, the minute I started writing the first paragraph. All his traits and mannerisms were somehow there from the beginning, as if he’d been waiting patiently for me to sit down and write about him.
I didn’t intend him as a series character, but characters have frequently surprised me in this fashion over the years, and I don’t think a month passed after I’d written the first Ehrengraf story before I found myself writing a second.
Fred Dannay was the first editor to see the first Ehrengraf story, and he snapped it up for EQMM. He wasn’t surprised when there was a second story, and did indeed hail my little lawyer as the reincarnation of Randolph Mason, and went on buying the stories as they rolled out of my typewriter. He passed on one, “The Ehrengraf Appointment”, finding it too gory for his taste. Rather than rewrite it for him, I sent it off to Mike Shayne, where I sold it for the price of a dinner, and not a great dinner, either. Fred bought the next one, and the one after that, and after his death in 1982 Eleanor Sullivan continued to take what Ehrengraf stories I managed to write.
But there haven’t been all that many of them. Early on, Otto Penzler told me he’d like to publish a collection of the Ehrengraf stories as soon as I got enough of them written to fill a book. That sounded good to me.
It never happened.
Ehrengraf’s problem, you see, is that he has a severely limited range. There haven’t been that many story ideas that have worked for him. I haven’t wanted to write the same story over and over, and have waited for variations to suggest themselves. There have thus far been only these eight which appear together now for the first time.
I can’t tell you there’ll never be another. I write these lines in May of 1994, the publication month of The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams, Bernie Rhodenbarr’s first book-length adventure in over a decade. If Bernie could come back after so long an absence, I can hardly rule out an eventual future appearance of the wily Martin Herod (or Harrod) Ehrengraf. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but I’m not going to say it’ll never happen.
For now, though—and perhaps forever—all the Ehrengraf stories are available in a single volume, arranged in the order in which they were written. I hope you like the dapper little fellow. I can tell you I had a good time writing about him.
Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village, 1994
That was then and this is now, and twenty years have passed without Ehrengraf’s having lost a step or a case. And I’m pleased to report that the reformation which sullied the latter days of Randolph Mason has not visited itself upon our little lawyer.
The story count for Ehrengraf now stands at twelve—the body count is of course a good deal higher—and it would please me if there should turn out to be more tales yet to be recounted. For now, though, it would seem that there are enough of them to warrant a new edition of the collected stories.
I hope you’ve enjoyed them. (Or, if you’ve cheated and read the afterword first, I hope such enjoyment lies in your future.)
It is my earnest wish for you, Gentle Reader, that you never have need of Ehrengraf’s services. But life is an uncertain enterprise; should you find yourself in such desperate straits, I can but wish that you secure an advocate who will represent your interests with the zeal and dispatch of Martin H. Ehrengraf.
And, after he’s worked his magic on your behalf, I trust you’ll have the good sense to pay his fee. In full, and at once.
It would be the greatest folly to do otherwise . . .
Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village, 2014
About the Author
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Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His most recent novels are The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; Hit Me, featuring Keller; and A Drop of the Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, who will be played by Liam Neeson in the forthcoming film, A Walk Among the Tombstones. Several of his other books have been filmed, although not terribly well. He’s well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, and The Liar’s Bible. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.
Email: lawbloc@gmail.com
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock
Blog: LB’s Blog
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Website: lawrenceblock.com