Scudder returns in 'A Drop of the Hard Stuff'
Matthew Scudder, an aging private detective and recovering alcoholic, is sitting in a Hell's Kitchen saloon with his old pal Mick Ballou, a retired mobster who once carried the head of his victims in a bowling-ball bag. As they chat, the subject of “High-Low” Jack Ellery comes up.
The name transports Scudder (and the reader) back to the 1980s, before much of Manhattan was gentrified, to a time when the crime rate soared and sin seemed to lurk around every corner.
Scudder, the hero of 16 previous Block novels, had gone to grammar school with Ellery, but he rarely saw him afterward — just once in a police lineup and another time when they ran into each other at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
But shortly after that, Ellery was murdered. The cops had better things to do than investigate the death of a lowlife, so Ellery's AA sponsor asked Scudder to look into it.
Ellery had been on the ninth step of the 12-step AA program, the one that required him to make amends to those he had harmed. That may have led him to dredge up an old crime that others wanted to keep buried. Perhaps, Scudder figured, it's why he was killed.
Like most Scudder novels, the tale is a dark one. This time the plot unfolds slowly at first, but then the pace picks up, leading to a tense and satisfying conclusion.
Block, named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, has written more than 60 crime novels including series featuring a good-hearted burglar named Bernie Rhodenbarr, a quirky detective named Evan Tanner and a hit-man named Keller. But Scudder, introduced in “The Sins of the Fathers” (1976) and the main character in Block's best novel, “When the Sacred Ginmill Closes” (1986), is his finest creation.
We hadn't heard anything from Scudder since “All the Flowers Are Dying” (2005), which Block once called the final book in the series. Longtime fans of this classic private eye will be glad Block changed his mind.
<b>“A Drop of the Hard Stuff”</b>
By Lawrence Block
Little, Brown and Co., 336 pages, $25.99, <a href="http://www.lawrenceblock.com/index_flash.htm" target="_blank">lawrenceblock.com/index_flash.htm</a>