mschlat's review against another edition
4.0
This is good but not great Scudder. I really liked that we've moved to the sober part of Scudder's career, and there's some interesting parts where Matthew has to judge the risks to his sobriety when he wants to investigate in bars and whatnot, but the mystery wasn't that fascinating.
justinsdrown's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent Scudder novel. Subtle as always. It has a low emphasis on plot and a higher emphasis on small moments. I think this is one of those series that for me will be a 5 star series with very few 5 star books. The quality is consistent and they seem intentionally minimalist so when the moments happen they feel larger than they are. I think I might have been harsher on the earlier books because I didn't get this right away. I think if I ever reread them the first few would fair better in my mind. Great dialogue in this one. Block is also a bit more giving with the ending in this one. Sometime he hangs you out to dry. Starting with Eight Million Ways to Die the series has really found it's legs.
poachedeggs's review against another edition
3.0
I listened to the audiobook for the first half, and read the rest on my kindle. While I enjoyed listening to the book, it was kind of slow. I liked that I could do it when climbing stairs (during my workout) or right before bed, when my eyes were too tired. But ultimately, reading let me not just immerse myself more quickly into the narrative; it also gave me more room to imagine Scudder's world.
trudilibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
Scudder is three years sober when we run into him again in Book 7, Out on the Cutting Edge. He's faithfully attending meetings, and even leading a few when the mood strikes him. He's also still living in his spare hotel room lodgings and with a lot more time on his hands now that he's quit the bar scene and sipping bourbon coffee by the quart. While the vapor fumes of booze no longer waft from his person, there is yet an elemental quality of loneliness that continues to seep from the pores of our favorite New Yorker.
No wonder then that he should take up the case of a missing young woman at the behest of her distraught parents, and that he should find himself taking a much closer look into the sudden death of fellow AA member Eddie. Eddie is a man who dies with dark secrets on his lips, and Scudder's spidey senses are urging him to uncover those secrets no matter what the cost.
The thing I love most about the Scudder books is that they are such fine pieces of place -- Scudder's New York is just as much a character as Scudder himself. We've hit the late 80's where rents are sky-rocketing in the Big Apple and rent control is a landlord's sworn enemy. I find the details Block is able to pepper his books with always fascinating. He drops them into the story like a pro, as they work seamlessly side-by-side with the unfolding mystery. Like when Scudder interviews an actor who, with bitter amusement, comments on all the young men sick with AIDS:
We're all whirling merrily through the void on a dying planet, and gay people are just doing their usual number, being shamelessly trendy as always. Right out in front on the cutting edge of death.It's a heart-breaking sentiment, and in an instant we are thrown back in time living and breathing the gritty reality of Scudder's city. It's not misty-eyed nostalgia, or even vintage. It's authentic, it's time travel.
This Scudder installment is also noteworthy because it's where we first encounter Mick Ballou, a.k.a The Butcher Boy. Ballou is a giant man with big hands and a bloodstained apron. Rumors abound about his violent prowess, and include toting around a head in a bowling ball bag and beating a man to death with a baseball bat. Despite Ballou's possible homicidal tendencies, he and Scudder hit it off and talk to each other in a way usually reserved only for the confessional or perhaps the man pouring your whiskey. Inexplicably, there is an instant kinship and unbeknownst to either man, Ballou is the key to solving the mystery of not only the missing girl, but Eddie's untimely death. This is a *great* character, and I can't wait to get more of him in the future.
paulataua's review against another edition
4.0
Number 7 in the series and the three years sober Scudder is hired to find a missing girl. As with all the others in the series, it is not big on plot and moves along at the slowest of paces, but the writing is great. I marvel at the way Block captures the feel of the run down areas with their bars, their homeless beggars, and their unwholesome characters. It almost feels like you are experiencing everything first hand. Even the solution of the detective part, which you are never really allowed to put center stage, is more satisfying than earlier books in the series. Not for everyone, but definitely for me.
arthur_pendrgn's review against another edition
2.0
It was okay. Scudder proves particularly kind to Paula's parents. Not a mystery the reader can solve on their own.
billmorrow's review against another edition
3.0
A good story, stories actually, with a loosely woven plot. My only issue was all the filler. Probably over 100 pages of filler.
usbsticky's review against another edition
5.0
The best in a long line of good Lawrence Block's books I've read so far. Block's books can be hit or miss but this one is inspired. Spoilers ahead.
Scudder is an unofficial private eye. A former NYPD detective who does favors for a little money. He works when he wants or needs the money. He's a recovering alcoholic and Block has spent a lot of pages in the last 2 books covering Scudder's journey from a functioning alcoholic to a sometime raving drunk to a teetotaler who attends AA meetings religiously.
The plot of this book is somewhat haphazard and unexpected. As with some crime fiction, there are two stories in this book, only marginally connected but well done.
In crime 1, a distraught family from Muncie, Indiana hires Scudder to look for their 3 month missing daughter (Paula) who came to the big city to pursue her dream of being an actress. She rents a small room, goes to acting classes, auditions, readings and gets a job as a waitress, basically everything that a budding actor does in NY city.
She stops calling her family, stops paying her rent and just disappears. Scudder does all the requisite footwork, painstakingly interviewing everyone who crosses paths with her to get the smallest clue to find out where she might have gone. He interviews people in her apartment, from work, from classes, auditions, etc. All he can figure out is that it's a criminal matter based on the way her clothing (but not her linen) disappeared from her apartment when she left. And it just ends up being a dead end.
Crime 2: Meanwhile he makes a friend at AA. Just a small time one time criminal down on his luck. But this friend Eddie has really stuck to it and hasn't fallen off the wagon. However one day he stopped showing up. Scudder goes to his apartment with the super of the building and finds that Eddie has died in an autoerotic accident. Scudder is shocked but he needs to know if Eddie died sober. So he pushes the coroner (or assistant?) for the autopsy results. Eddie died sober but there is some chloral hydrate (a sedative) in his blood, which makes his death suspicious and not accidental anymore.
Real spoilers below. Do not read below this for sure if you don't want to know the story.
Scudder does some digging (a lot of which is hidden from the readers) and he finds that several residents have also died with chloral hydrate in their blood and figures that the landlord is killing the residents (who have rent controlled apartments) so that their building can be converted into a co-op and make millions.
At the same time, while investigating Eddie's death, he comes across someone who knows Paula but pretends not to. After some digging, he figures that this person is involved in Paula's death. The ending of this story is presented in a reveal that Scudder is not really involved in.
Overall this is a pretty dark, noir and depressing police procedural. But that's exactly the way Block writes it. I like book not for the whodunit, mystery or edge of the seat aspect (of which there is none) but the realism of the characters and the setting. That's the way it is in good books. You like the book for the people in it. Characters that you feel for and want to follow. I'm now reading the next in the series.
Scudder is an unofficial private eye. A former NYPD detective who does favors for a little money. He works when he wants or needs the money. He's a recovering alcoholic and Block has spent a lot of pages in the last 2 books covering Scudder's journey from a functioning alcoholic to a sometime raving drunk to a teetotaler who attends AA meetings religiously.
The plot of this book is somewhat haphazard and unexpected. As with some crime fiction, there are two stories in this book, only marginally connected but well done.
In crime 1, a distraught family from Muncie, Indiana hires Scudder to look for their 3 month missing daughter (Paula) who came to the big city to pursue her dream of being an actress. She rents a small room, goes to acting classes, auditions, readings and gets a job as a waitress, basically everything that a budding actor does in NY city.
She stops calling her family, stops paying her rent and just disappears. Scudder does all the requisite footwork, painstakingly interviewing everyone who crosses paths with her to get the smallest clue to find out where she might have gone. He interviews people in her apartment, from work, from classes, auditions, etc. All he can figure out is that it's a criminal matter based on the way her clothing (but not her linen) disappeared from her apartment when she left. And it just ends up being a dead end.
Crime 2: Meanwhile he makes a friend at AA. Just a small time one time criminal down on his luck. But this friend Eddie has really stuck to it and hasn't fallen off the wagon. However one day he stopped showing up. Scudder goes to his apartment with the super of the building and finds that Eddie has died in an autoerotic accident. Scudder is shocked but he needs to know if Eddie died sober. So he pushes the coroner (or assistant?) for the autopsy results. Eddie died sober but there is some chloral hydrate (a sedative) in his blood, which makes his death suspicious and not accidental anymore.
Real spoilers below. Do not read below this for sure if you don't want to know the story.
Scudder does some digging (a lot of which is hidden from the readers) and he finds that several residents have also died with chloral hydrate in their blood and figures that the landlord is killing the residents (who have rent controlled apartments) so that their building can be converted into a co-op and make millions.
At the same time, while investigating Eddie's death, he comes across someone who knows Paula but pretends not to. After some digging, he figures that this person is involved in Paula's death. The ending of this story is presented in a reveal that Scudder is not really involved in.
Overall this is a pretty dark, noir and depressing police procedural. But that's exactly the way Block writes it. I like book not for the whodunit, mystery or edge of the seat aspect (of which there is none) but the realism of the characters and the setting. That's the way it is in good books. You like the book for the people in it. Characters that you feel for and want to follow. I'm now reading the next in the series.
gracenow's review against another edition
3.0
Third time reading it, last time was almost 20 years ago. For me, this time, it was a lot of boring stuff with a slam bang ending that came out of nowhere. He meets Mick Ballou, the butcher, in this one.