Block’s most intriguing hero may be the deeply flawed and deeply moral ex-policeman, recovering alcoholic, and unlicensed private investigator Matthew Scudder. Scudder has walked New York’s mean streets for almost thirty years and in that time a lot of change has come both to this dark hero and to the city he calls home. But he’s still the complex detective who caused The Wall Street Journal to say, “Block has done something new and remarkable with the private-eye novel” and Jonathan Kellerman to exclaim, “The Matthew Scudder novels are among the finest detective books penned in this century.”

Read on, and enter Scudder’s world ...

The Sins of the Fathers

The hooker was young, pretty ... and dead, butchered in a Greenwich Village apartment. The murderer, a minister’s son, has already been caught and become a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed as far as the NYPD is concerned. But the victim’s father wants it reopened—he wants to understand how his bright little girl went wrong and what led to her gruesome death. That’s where Matthew Scudder comes in. He’s not really a detective, not licensed, but he’ll look into problems as a favor to a friend, and sometimes the friends compensate him. A hard drinker and a melancholy man, the former cop believes in doing an in-depth investigation when he’s paid for it, but he doesn’t see any hope here—the case is closed, and he’s not going to learn anything about the victim that won’t break her father’s heart.

But the open-and-shut case turns out to be more complicated than anyone bargained for. The assignment carries an unmistakable stench of sleaze and perversion, and it lures Scudder into a sordid world of phony religion and murderous lust, where children must die for their parents’ most secret, unspeakable sins.

Time to Murder and Create

Small-time stoolie Jake “The Spinner” Jablon made a lot of new enemies when he switched careers from informer to blackmailer. And the more “clients,” he figured, the more money—and the more people eager to see him dead. So he’s greedy but scared, and he turns to his old acquaintance Matthew Scudder, who used to pay him for information back in Scudder’s days as a cop. Scudder’s his insurance policy—if anything happens to “The Spinner,” Scudder can check up on the people who wanted him dead.

No one is too surprised when the pigeon is found floating in the East River with his skull bashed in. Blackmail’s a dangerous business. What’s worse, no one cares—except Matthew Scudder. The unofficial private eye is no conscientious avenging angel. But he’s willing to risk his own life and limb to confront Spinner’s most murderously aggressive marks. A job’s a job, after all, and Scudder’s been paid to find a killer—by the victim ... in advance.

In the Midst of Death