Strange Embrace is a 1962 novel by Lawrence Block, originally published under a pseudonym, Ben Christopher. Block explains that it was published by Beacon and Beacon was a particularly chessy publishing house of softcore stuff so no one put their real names on Beacon books at that time.It was originally intended as a tie-in to a tv series, Johnny Midnight, starring Edmund O’Brien as a theatrical producer with a wisecracking Japanese butler, Ito. The series ran for a full season of 39 episodes, but was then not renewed. With the name of the title character changed to Johnny Lane, the book was off and running. Although it is packaged by Hard Case Crime with 69 Barrow Street, Strange Embrace is the better of the two novels and the more complete novel. What the two works have in common is a connection to the East Village of Manhattan in 1962 where the hippies, beatniks, and other purveyors of alternative lifestyles gathered and engaged in drugs, orgies, and other behavior, sometimes violence like murder, at least in novels portraying the alternative generation. But, the connection between the two novels doesn’t go much further than that. Unlike 69 Barrow Street, Strange Embrace is a solid pulp whodunit mystery novel that is focused more so on the mystery of who is doing the killings than on the East Village itself. ( )