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Matt
Scudder - Unlicensed Private Investigator,
New York City
"Hope to Die""He has his key out, and slips it into the lock. Inside, the two men hear the key in the lock. The seated man gets to his feet, the pacer moves toward the door. Byrne Hollander turns the key, pushes the door open, lets his wife enter first, follows her inside. Then they catch sight of the two men, but it's too late." His thoughts are not satisfied when the police find the killers, the loot unsold, in an apartment. One is murdered by his partner, the other dead by his own hand. 62-year old Scudder thinks it's too pat, but doesn't get involved until his assistant, TJ introduces him to Lia. Lia thinks that her cousin Kristen, the Hollander's 23-year-old daughter, is the mastermind behind the murders. Kristen had just recently taken up residence in her parent's home, needing a place to live after a bad break-up. It doesn't take long for him to be convinced that she's innocent, and he becomes worried that she may be the next target. Most murder mysteries start off, well, with a murder. As does this one...but Block chooses a clever, if not poignant, way of telling us about the events. Since the story is narrated in the first person, he can not claim any real first hand knowledge of the events. So, he starts off telling us that the couple may have met at the fountain before coming upstairs, or that he may have gone and picked her up, but in either case they got there in time for drinks. Scudder knows that, because he thinks he might have seen them...then he goes through the evening, up until the murders, explaining that this is what he thinks happened. He knows the details, how the husband was shot, how Susan was assaulted before her throat was slashed...and he ends the scene beautifully. The gentleness of the end image, and the innate mercy and charity that that those who strive to be decent had left me all teary eyed, and I'd only been reading for a handful of minutes. The hunt for the third, unknown entity is what takes up the rest of the story. Matt, who's been a detective for many years, even if he only does it in his spare time now, has a keen understanding of how investigations work, and slowly, but surely tracks down the killer. He makes some pretty awesome leaps in logic to get there, but they are entirely believable. The killer is inventive, terribly blood thirsty, and just a tad insane. In a couple of scenes he does things that require such guts to pull off, it really creeps you out when he is successful. |
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Block's prose has a wonderful flow to it. Matt, as he tells the story, has a voice that is sensible and wise, and sometimes he paints very beautiful images. Even when they are slightly horrific, there is a crystal-cut quality to them, and it makes this mystery an especially pleasurable read. (Reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer 12-22-02)
Read a chapter excerpt from Hope to Die at MostlyFiction.com
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Selected Bibliography (with links to Amazon.com):
Keller Series: Bernie Rhodenbarr Mysteries
Evan Tanner Mysteries
Writing as Paul Kavanagh
Movies from Books:
(back to top) Book Marks:
(back to top) About the Author:
His novels range from the urban noir of Matthew Scudder to the urbane
effervescence of Bernie Rhodenbarr, while other characters include the
globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner and the introspective assassin Keller
(Hit List). He has published articles and short fiction in American
Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, GQ, and The New
York Times, and has published several collections of short fiction
in book form, the most recent being his Collected Mystery Stories.
Larry is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America. He has won the
Edgar and Shamus awards four times and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award
twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe award. In France, he has been proclaimed
a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice been awarded the Societe 813
trophy. He has been a guest of honor at Bouchercon and at book fairs and
mystery festivals in France, Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Spain,
and, as if that were not enough, was presented with the key to the city
of Muncie, Indiana. He is a past president of the Private Eye Writers
of America and the Mystery Writers of America. |
©1998-2003 MostlyFiction.com |
from
34 reviews
Lawrence
Block was born in Buffalo, New York in 1938. He attended Antioch College
in Ohio then went to work in the mailroom of a New York publisher. His
first story was published in 1957 and since has written more than thirty
novels and countless stories and articles, not just under his own name
but also as Paul Kavanagh. Indeed Lawrence Block has had several pseudonyms
having learned his writer's art crafting erotic literature as Andrew Shaw,
Sheldon Lord and Jill Emerson.
