The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

Forty-five years ago, master craftsman Lawrence Block kicked off his long-running series of novels featuring Matthew Scudder with The Sins of the Fathers.

The compact book starts with hard drinking, former cop turned unlicensed investigator, Scudder in a bar and meeting with the father of a murder victim.

A young woman was slashed to death in her Greenwich Village apartment. The man she lived with was found moments later out on the street, covered in blood and shouting obscenities. The guy was arrested and taken to the city detention center called the Tombs where he committed suicide. Case closed, as far as the police were concerned.

But the father, who had lost touch with the girl when she dropped out of college, pays Scudder to find out what his daughter’s life had been like in the past few years. The newspapers called her a prostitute.

Scudder learns the girl had been a prostitute, the man she lived with could not have killed her and the case was not resolved.

Block’s prose is tight and his dialogue natural. This lean book provides readers with everything they need to know about the girl, the father, the suspects, and about Scudder, including why he quit the force.

The Sins of the Fathers, with its blunt descriptions of sex and death is still hot read today.

There are 11 novels in the Scudder series, which you can see at Lawrence Block’s website. Over the years, I’ve read a bunch of them, but not in order. Now, I plan to work my way through the books.

FFB: Eight Million Ways To Die by Lawrence Block

Eight Million Ways To Die is the fifth novel in Lawrence Block’s mystery-crime series featuring alcoholic ex-cop, Matthew Scudder, and it is a terrific read.

In this book, Scudder is approached by a call girl who wants out of the life but is afraid to confront her pimp. She pays Scudder to break the news to the pimp and to see that he lets her go.

Surprisingly, the pimp agrees with little argument. But a couple days later, Scudder reads in the newspaper of the gruesome murder of the prostitute.

The cops have too many crime reports to handle and cannot devote much time or effort to the call girl’s murder. Strangely, the pimp wants the murder solved, and he pays Scudder to investigate. The pimp says his reputation is on the line and his other girls don’t feel safe. Scudder wonders if the pimp is using him to take the heat off himself as the obvious prime suspect. This is just one of many paths Scudder must go down as more angles to the murder are uncovered.

Block is one of the few novelists who can weave a complicated mystery together with a personal story – Matthew Scudder’s rocky road to recovery. The side trips to bars and AA meetings is never distracting or dull – just the opposite. Scudder’s dual struggle to solve the mystery and fight his urge to drink create a good deal of tension in this book.

Published in 1982, Eight Million Ways To Die takes place in New York City when the Big Apple was in the economic dumps, and Matthew Scudder has to navigating those mean streets. It is also a time before laptops and cell phones, and a reminder of what now seems like the distant past when Scudder has to look for a phone booth to make a call.

Eight Million Ways To Die is a well constructed mystery with plenty of clues for readers to play detective along with Scudder. But, perhaps due to the age of the book, I was on the right track to the killer earlier than I expected. Still, there are enough twists and turns to keep those pages turning.

Some friends have reviewed this book with slightly different takes on it. Col, at Col’s Criminal Library, wrote here, and Sergio at Tipping My Fedora, reviewed the book and the movie here.

(For more posts on books, head over to Todd Mason’s site.)