First published by Random House, 1973 

The connecting thread Elkin saw between the three novellas in Searches and Seizures was their protagonists being bachelors grappling in some way with mortality (the British edition was titled Eligible Men). Elkin sequenced the novellas intentionally, in a different order than he wrote them, to provide some similarities and logical developments between them. The book was a National Book Award finalist, his second in a row. “The Bailbondsman” was adapted into an unsuccessful and unsatisfactory film version, “Alex & the Gypsy,” released in 1976 and starring Jack Lemon in the title role.