The assignment from his editor is to produce a special Sunday supplement on interior decorating. For Qwilleran and his Siamese investigative cat, even interior decoration has its interesting side, murder for instance.

After moving into an old mansion whose previous owner committed suicide, prize-winning reporter Qwilleran and his two Siamese cats are disturbed by strange occurrences and start to investigate when Qwilleran's old girlfriend disappears.

That's the product description for Blackstone Audio's excellent rendition of You Could Call It Murder, expertly voiced by Peter Berkrot, and we could leave it at that-but there's an interesting backstory to the book, and the Classic Crime Library seems a good place to share it with you. In 1961, Lawrence Block was living in New York and earning a living writing Midcentury Erotica and crime fiction. He'd just sold his first book under his own name,...