Passport to Peril

by Lawrence Block

  “New York was never home,” she said, “and never could be home.”

  “Could Ireland?”

  Her voice wouldn’t work; something seemed to be stuck in her throat. She swallowed but it wouldn’t go away.

  “I was thinking,” he said. “About Farrell—I mean Curtin, I keep calling him Farrell. His disguises. First a priest and then a friar.”

  She nodded.

  “I hope it didn’t leave you with a permanent fear of clergymen. Because I think the two of us ought to see one together one of these days. On the way to Connemara. Ellen…”

  And then, with a little sob, she was in his arms. She tasted his mouth on hers, felt his strong arms around her, holding her tight.

  I never shall marry

  I’ll be no man’s wife

  I’m bound to stay single

  All the days of my life

  Ah, but the song was a lie, a lie!

  After a few moments she eased herself out of his arms. He reached for her again and she drew away.

  “Someone will see us,” she said.

  “Not a chance.”

  “But we’re in a pub, a public house…”

  “Silly girl,” he said. “Why do you think they call it a snug?”

  She smiled a lazy smile. “How very clever of them,” she said dreamily, “to call it a snug. For snuggling. How sweet!…”

  And then she went to him, and neither of them said anything for a long time.

  A New Afterword by the Author

  In 1966 I was living at 16 Stratford Place in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I’d spent a year in Wisconsin as an editor in the coin supply division of Western Printing, and just when it looked as though I might have a future in the corporate world, I realized it was the last thing I wanted. I’d been writing books all along, and I moved east and resumed writing full-time.

  My agent, Henry Morrison, came to me with an assignment. Lancer Books, for whom I’d written a few books during Larry T. Shaw’s editorship, wanted to publish a romantic espionage thriller in the tradition of Helen MacInnes. I hadn’t read anything by Ms. MacInnes, though I knew the byline; her books were published in hardcover and frequently wound up on bestseller lists. Mine would be published as a paperback original, and bestseller status would be not even a fleeting dream.

  I don’t know if I actually read any of the books which were to be my model. I probably skimmed a couple. I knew what was required—a clean, sweet, likable American girl as the heroine; a reasonably exotic foreign locale; and a couple of people who were not what they appeared to be, including an evident villain who would become the unlikely hero and love interest and a dashingly attractive good guy who would turn out to be an absolute rotter.

  I could do that.

  I knew just where to set it. Ireland. Where else?

  I’d actually been to Ireland, which gave it a leg up on the rest of the world. In the fall of 1964, a few months after a move to Racine, Wisconsin, my wife and I flew to Limerick and spent the better part of two weeks driving around Ireland. We spent a day in Edinburgh, Scotland and a few days in England, but Ireland got the bulk of our business.

  Aside from brief forays into Canada and Mexico, this was my first time out of the States, and if it felt like an adventure, it felt even more like a homecoming. It’s clear to me that I spent at least one past life in Ireland. Among my earliest memories are of listening to Irish songs on the radio. (There was a girl who sang “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral That’s an Irish Lullaby” on a local amateur show, and I’m pleased to report that she was the winner three weeks running.) I had a set of The Book of Knowledge, and from it I learned all the words to “The Wearin’ o’ the Green.”

  When I had begun selling short fiction and was casting about for a book to write, I decided a novel of the Irish rebellion and civil war might be a good choice. But what did I know about it? I amassed an extensive library of English and Irish history and read a surprising amount of it. Around the time that my interest in numismatics (currency) was steering me toward the job in Wisconsin, I began collecting Irish coins, tokens, and medals.

  No question, then. I’d set the book in Ireland.

  Ever since the trip, I’d been picking up records of Irish folk music. The Clancy Brothers, of course, but also a slew of Folkways albums on which various singers, some more gifted than others, collected songs of the 1798 Rising and other blighted periods in the land’s sad history. As G. K. Chesterton wrote:

  For the great Gaels of Ireland

  Are the men that God made mad,

  For all their wars are merry,

  And all their songs are sad.

  Well, why not make my heroine a folksinger? Why not send her to Ireland to collect songs? There, of course, she could meet the wolf in sheep’s clothing and the sheep in wolf’s clothing, and things could look decidedly dark for a while, but eventually the sun would burst through. I mean, it would have to, sooner or later. As far as we could make out, it was always either raining or about to rain in Ireland, but maybe I could cheat and have a little sunshine toward the end.

  I went to New York to write the book. Don Westlake had sublet a studio apartment on West Twenty-fourth Street in Chelsea; he’d lived there briefly during a marital rough spot, and kept it as a sometimes office until the lease was up. I moved in and brought home Passport to Peril ten days later. I don’t know if the title was mine, though I rather think it was. I know the pen name was mine, and I know that forty-five years later nobody else on earth knew it.

  Henry knew back then, but I’m sure he’s long since forgotten. My first wife would have known, but I don’t think she ever read the book, and I would be surprised if she recalls anything about it. Irwin Stein at Lancer would have known but would have had no reason to remember. Among the book-collecting fraternity, no one had a clue. This book, and Fidel Castro Assassinated, are the two works of mine that somehow escaped detection. The latter, written under the name Lee Duncan, was recently reprinted as Killing Castro by Hard Case Crime. Passport to Peril now makes its first post-Lancer appearance as an ebook, and I can only hope you’ve enjoyed it.

  I read it myself recently to ready it for publication, and I was surprised to find that I liked it. Remember what William Butler Yeats wrote?

  Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

  It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

  True, too, of the Ireland of the 1960s. It was a curious pleasure to revisit the time and place, if in my own work.

  —Lawrence Block

  Greenwich Village

  Lawrence Block (lawbloc@gmail.com) welcomes your email responses; he reads them all, and replies when he can.

  A Biography of Lawrence Block

  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 d
ozens 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.

  A four-year-old Block in 1942.

  Block during the summer of 1944, with his baby sister, Betsy.

  Block’s 1955 yearbook picture from Bennett High School in Buffalo, New York.

  Block in 1983, in a cap and leather jacket. Block says that he “later lost the cap, and some son of a bitch stole the jacket. Don’t even ask about the hair.”

  Block with his eldest daughter, Amy, at her wedding in October 1984.

  Seen here around 1990, Block works in his office on New York’s West 13th Street with, he says, “a bad haircut, an ugly shirt, and a few extra pounds.”

  Block at a bookstore appearance in support of A Walk Among the Tombstones, his tenth Matthew Scudder novel, on Veterans Day, 1992.

  Block and his wife, Lynne.

  Block and Lynne on vacation “someplace exotic.”

  Block race walking in an international marathon in Niagara Falls in 2005. He got the John Deere cap at the John Deere Museum in Grand Detour, Illinois, and still has it today.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1967 by Anne Campbell Clark

  cover design by Elizabeth Connor

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-0969-1

  This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com