Finished: Block's 'A Diet of Treacle'

I knocked off another short novel by Lawrence Block over the weekend. Oddly enough, I even had to look up one of the words in the title: A Diet of Treacle.

Never heard of treacle before. Apparently it’s a British molasses type mixture. My old-school dictionary didn’t even have an entry for it, so I had to Google it.
 British. molasses, especially that which is drained from the vats used in sugar refining.

Also called golden syrup. A mild mixture of molasses, corn syrup, etc., used in cooking or as a table syrup.

 The title didn’t really make any sense until I finished the book and thought about it.  The book begins with a quote from Alice in Wonderland that helps make it more understandable.

The title is actually better than its original title in 1961: Pads Are for Passion.

Anita Carbone was a good girl—and it bored her.

That’s why she took the long subway ride down to Greenwich Village, home of the Beats and the stoners, home to every kind of misfit and dropout and free spirit you could imagine. It was where she met Joe Milani, the troubled young war veteran with the gentle touch. But it was also where she met his drug-dealing roommate—a man whose unnatural appetites led to murder ...

 Reviewers call this a beatsploitation novel because he seems to be knocking the beatniks/hipsters of the 1960s in Greenwich Village and their sex and drugs lifestyle.

My favorite thing about the book is that it’s not all tied together until the last sentence. I love that. The book is dark. Really dark, even by my standards. Unlike most murder mysteries, he doesn’t actually get to the murder until you’re two-thirds through the book. Usually they say you have to have the murder in the first 100 pages. But, Block being Block, makes it work.

Very interesting work. Well worth the read. I gave it a 7- on the 10-point Haugenometer.