A few years ago I noticed something mildly unusual about the titles of the Matt Scudder books by Lawrence Block. See if you notice the same thing. Here are the titles of the first four:

The Sins of the Fathers
Time to Murder and Create
In the Midst of Death
A Stab in the Dark

Block wrote these books about Scudder from 1976-1981. They were good, but didn’t appear to be leading to bestseller status. But then he wrote Eight Million Ways to Die, a seminal book in the field. Even at this point he thought he was done with the character, but he went on to write another classic, the prequel When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, and it was off to the races. Here are the next four titles:

Eight Million Ways to Die
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
Out on the Cutting Edge
A Ticket to the Boneyard

Notice anything yet? No? Then take a look at the next three:

A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
A Walk Among the Tombstones
The Devil Knows You’re Dead

That’s 11 books in a row with five words in the title! I noticed the pattern after book 7, and thought it was an interesting marketing choice. I can only think of one other writer who has gone for a series with the same number of words in the title. Robert Ludlum started with The Scarlatti Inheritance and followed up with The Osterman Weekend, The Matlock Paper, The Gemini Contenders… 17 three word titles in all during his lifetime, with more still continuing to appear after his death. S.S. Van Dine did it too, but his pattern involved more than just the number of words.

Here’s Scudder book number 12, which doesn’t conform:

A Long Line of Dead Men

When this book came out I wondered why they changed the pattern. I said to myself, “Why would they do that? 11 in a row, and then they changed it!” It would have been easy enough to call the book, for example, Long Line of Dead Men, or This is the 12^th Scudder, or even This Title Has Five Words. I mentioned it to a buddy of mine who also liked the Scudders, and he just looked at me like I was crazy.

But he was unfamiliar with the mystery world in general and unaware of the long tradition of using patterned or sequenced titles. Sue Grafton with her alphabet series, and Janet Evanovich with her One For the Money, Two For the Dough, etc., are the most direct examples, but other writers such as Van Dine, Ellery Queen, John D. MacDonald, and C.W. Grafton (yes, her father) were doing this kind of thing long ago.

So I decided to ask an editor I know, who can usually answer these kinds of questions. I said to her, “Why would they do that? 11 books in a row, and then they changed it!”

She looked at me like I was crazy.

She assured me it was a coincidence, and that no one else in the world would ever notice such a thing, and by the way, did I know I was crazy?

I was unruffled by this obviously uninspired opinion.

At the next Bouchercon (the World Mystery Convention) I saw Larry Block himself waiting for an elevator in the hotel lobby. I saw my chance to settle the matter and satisfy my curiosity. Knowing that the titles may have been chosen by his publishers I asked him, “Why would they do that? 11 books in a row, and then they changed it!”

He looked at me like I was crazy.

What do you think? What are the odds of 11 books in a row being published with five word titles? Has this ever happened before in the history of publishing? It had to be done on purpose, right?

Or am I just crazy?

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