"I Leave You," "Walk Among the Tombstones" open today

Now this is what I call a major week for book adaptations. Jonathan Tropper's THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU hits the big screen thanks to director Shawn Levy ("Night at the Museum," "Date Night," other movies that don't have "Night" in the title) starring Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Corey "Hemingway in 'Midnight in Paris'" Stoll and Adam Driver as siblings coming home for their father's funeral. Watch out for Ben Schwartz ("Parks and Recreation," "House of Lies") as a childhood friend turned rabbi.

For the dramatic minded, check out "A Walk Among the Tombstones," the first time mystery writer Lawrence Block's PI Matthew Scudder has appeared onscreen. (I read A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES back in 2009.) Scudder, a depressed ex-cop in AA, takes a case involving a kidnapped and murdered woman that takes him to dark places in New York City. For you "Downton Abbey" fans, this movie also costars Matthew Crawley, er Dan Stevens. (Irresistible film trivium: Block cowrote "My Blueberry Nights," Wong Kar-Wai's English-language debut.) "A Walk Among the Tombstones" is in possession of a kick-ass trailer and was directed and written by Scott Frank ("Get Shorty," "Out of Sight"). Why did I write all this when I could have just written "Liam Neeson is a badass, in the US this time"?

Also in theatres today: "The Maze Runner," based on the YA book by James Dashner of the same name, and "Hector and the Search for Happiness," based on the Paulo Coelho novel (nooope) and starring Simon Pegg. See 'em or skip 'em?

Extra E for excellence?

Rock Star Games assembled a free e-book of short stories called L.A. NOIRE to go with the recently released video game of the same name. Lawrence Block, Joyce Carol Oates and Francine Prose came out to play, says Galleycat. This will be the first video-game adaptation I've ever read (if it is that, or just along similar themes).

(But still... noire?)

Not a pedestrian life

Lawrence Block, mystery author and accurate prostitute locator, is also a marathon racewalker, depression survivor and memoirist, according to USA Today:

Fifteen years ago [Block] abandoned another memoir, fearing it would be presumptuous or premature, before what he calls "the Age of Relentless Reminiscence, wherein graduate students earn MFA degrees by writing down their life stories, some of them even factual."

But if he's old "to be getting into the memoir game," he figured, "I'd better do it while my memory was still intact."

But wait, there's more! He also co-wrote the screenplay of the last Wong Kar-Wai film "My Blueberry Nights" and likes to travel whimsically:

Block, a native of Buffalo, and his second wife, Lynne (married for 26 years), are partners in an intermittent "Buffalo hunt," visiting 84 places with the word Buffalo in them. It's "an essentially purposeless odyssey," he says.

It may have been a mirage, but I'm pretty sure it was a...

About a month ago on vacation I read Lawrence Block's A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, a detective novel in which a P.I. investigates the death of an attractive young woman and finds she may be just the latest in a series of grisly killings. The book is set in New York City, and while most of its locales were remote enough from me that I didn't actually feel any fear, there was one -- a stretch of Park Avenue South which a near-victim describes as the place where she was plying her trade as a sex worker when she was abducted.

As it happens, I do some business at a widget factory* nearby and can occasionally be found making widgets late into the night.** I always thought of the neighborhood as pretty good -- its branch gym is freaking spectacular compared to mine -- so it surprised me that this kind of trade would be going on there, even late at night.

A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES was published in 1992 so I took its gritty details to be a remnant of the pre-Giuliani era, a time in which I never lived in New York but keep hearing about as either the best or the worst of times. Besides, the only people I usually saw out after a day of industrious widgetry were workers from the 28th Street Duane Reade taking smoke breaks and clumps of tourists who had taken a wrong turn from Union Square... until early this morning.

I would like to give Ms. 3:15AM the benefit of the doubt -- after all, I was out there too, albeit dressed more like the hipster grifter*** than in shorts and fishnets -- but what struck me as odd was that she didn't seem to be going anywhere. There's pleasant loitering, such as I was doing earlier that afternoon on Amsterdam Avenue in the sunshine, and then there's a deserted street just begging to be crossed. She lit up a cigarette and sank down to the sidewalk looking more bored than anything, while I was so tired I found myself putting the word "cab" into this little ditty (0:57 if you're in a rush). Cabs were scarce that night, so I could overlook her pacing east from Park and back again, but when I finally found one she didn't even attempt to beat me to it.

It was a glimpse into a different New York -- or a sign that I really should try getting more sleep.

*much more colorful than the truth
**behind two levels of security, Mom
***if you haven't heard of this story yet, perhaps don't read New York-centric media, you are simply missing out. As a correspondent put it, "Never, ever start a relationship with a tattoo as stupid as 'I love beards.'"