Through no deliberate intent, I've been reading the Matt Scudder series backwards. I started with A Long Line of Dead Men (#11) then went on the Even the Wicked (#12) and that's all well and good (I've done the same thing with his Burglar series, having read #'s 4, 5, 6, and 7 in that order), but then I dropped back to Eight Million Ways to Die (#5) because it was the only audiobook my library had.

Now I've come to #2, this book. It's very interesting to see Scudder's life in this way, because I already have insight into his future actions. In the later ones, Matt is a recovering alcoholic, in Eight Million, he begins his treatment after deciding to do something about it. However, in Midst, he doesn't yet seem to be aware that he even has a problem. Although he's never far from his next drink, when someone mentions the word "alcoholic," he rationalizes it away.

The mystery is never the reason to read Lawrence Block (even though I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate that because he works hard to create the mystery), it's the characters. And Scudder is not exception. I don't even remember what the mystery was in Eight Million Ways to Die, but it stand out as my favorite because of the way Block writes about Scudder's struggle with realization.

Matt Scudder is one of the most interesting characters in fiction, but I haven't read all his books because they are invariably dark and I have to be in the mood for them. But read them I will.

A note on the audiobook presentation: Alan Sklar's voice fits this material nicely. This is a wonderful addition to the Chivers Audio presentations of Block's works. The only one I liked more was Block's own reading of Eight Million Ways to Die.

With the 15th Matthew Scudder book due out December 2001 from Lawrence Block, I thought it would be a good time to re-read all of the initial 14, beginning with this, the first in the line. It's interesting to note that unlike many other extended series, Scudder holds true to the initial details set down by the author. He is not yet an admitted alcoholic, but the signs are beginning to show. He is willing to bend the law to suit his own set of moral values, which he has forever continued to do. There is a personal violence in this initial episode which is more self-controlled later on, but it is a progression that is realistic. There are a few unnecessary pages introducing the Elaine character which has nothing what-so-ever to do with this mystery and seems like simple filler to make the book an appropriate length. But, in future books, Elaine becomes a major participant. Could it be that Block already had her future role mapped out for her when he wrote this first book? The mystery isn't that good, I had it somewhat figured out about two-thirds into the story. But the grisly details are vividly described, the dialogue is hard boiled, and there is a feel for the locale that has become a trademark of the Scudder books. If you are Scudder fan, this is a must read. But, on whole, it is a little weak and maybe why Block himself suggests you read another book in the series first -- possible to better whet your appetite for more.

In the mid-1970s, P.I. Matthew Scudder was a lot differnt than the man he would come to be. In his series debut, Scudder has not yet admitted that he has an alcohol problem. Lawrence Block introduces us to the man who quit the NYPD because he just wasn't up to being a cop anymore. Scudder's first case (literary case, anyway) is fairly conventional by the standards of the series. Scudder is hired by the estranged father of a murdered girl not to find the killer, who is already dead, but so the father can begin to understand her life. The story is brief, clocking in at only 186 easy to read pages in trade paperback form. It has little of the narrative complexity that would later serve Block so well. And, you can see the ending coming well before it gets there. Nevertheless, it is still stylish noir with the right mixture of loniliness, cynicism and despair. And as with all Scudder novels, the actual violence is kept to a relative minimum. Overall, not Scudder's best but worth it for fans of the series.

.Matthew Scudder is Lawrence Block's remarkable private investigator. He's a former NYPD detective who left the force after an accident left a child dead in a crossfire. Because he is unlicensed you can't "hire" him. Instead he does you a favor by taking your case and solving the crime. In exchange for the favor the client returns the favor by giving him some cash. Scudder is an alcoholic. Rarely do you find him without a drink in has hand or at one of has favorite watering holes. "Sins of the Fathers" is the first in a series of books about Matthew Scudder. There are about a fourteen others as of this writing. Scudder is hired by a father to look into the murder of his daughter. The assignment is not to solve the crime because the girl's gay roommate has been arrested and was found dead in his cell. He has hung himself and this "proves" he did it. But did he really? We find the daughter is a hooker and was loved like a sister by the alleged killer. So who did it? Makes exciting can't put the book down reading.

"Time to Murder and Create" is the second novel in the Matthew Scudder series. Like many of the earlier Scudder tales, it is relatively short and not a greatly complex story. The plotline is clever; an extortionist gets a premonition of his own murder and hires Scudder in advance to investigate if anything happens to him. The story is well told, and this still being Scudder's drinking period, it is full of plenty of despair and loneliness. One major flaw exists however. One of the people the extortionist is blackmailing is politically connected figure who has sex with underage boys. Scudder's lack of outrage at the man's activity leads to a less than approriate conclusion of the story. If this had been Andrew Vachss' Burke, the pedophile would have gotten his just desserts. Overall, this is a fairly conventional mystery by Block standards. But it does have its moments.

A small-time hood and grass who was an acquaintance of Matt Scudder's during his days as a cop comes calling when he fears for his life. The man, known as 'The Spinner' was stringing along 3 different blackmail victims, but became aware that one of them was trying to kill him. Unfortunately, he doesn't know which one. He wants Scudder to hold onto a package for him that is to be opened in the event of his death, which is all too inevitable.

Naturally enough, Scudder accepts and then honours his agreement to find out who the murderer is. In order to flush out The Spinner's murderer, Matt decides to confront each of the people being blackmailed with the news that they're still not off the hook in the hope that one of them will blink. The obvious downside to this plan is that he would be making himself a target which, if you forget about the subsequent 13 Matt Scudder books for a moment, makes for some very tense and exciting reading.

This is quite a fast-paced mystery that gives us multiple suspects to choose from with the wrong choice possibly proving fatal. Scudder is still an introspective soul who seems to view the world and his place in it with bemusement. Lawrence Block doesn't waste a word in his narrative which serves to move things along nicely.

It's another compelling entry in a series that I think fans of hardboiled crime books would love.

The second in this series of 14 mysteries, soon to be 15, finds our unlikely hero Matthew Scudder further along on his trek to alcoholism, mixed up in unsavory mahem, and trying to get by day to day. It's an interesting case: A blackmailer posthumously hires Matt to determine which of his three pidgeons killed him. So the quasi-detective sets himself up as the blackmailer's replacement to entice the murderer to strike at him so he can solve the case. Matthew, because his mind is becoming benumbed by booze or maybe he just isn't a very good detective, bumbles this case every step of the way, and comes to a less than satisfactory conclusion -- the type of ending only Block has the nerve to create. It's book noir at a higher level. The dialogue is terrific and true, the settings in Manhattan are recorded with exactness, it's a fine tale that kept me reading well into the night. One aspect I especially appreciated, Block didn't seem to feel he needed gratuitous foul language in this second in the series as he did in the first. The book is a great example of why the series is so popular.

Dang near every story ran the same course, which was, the "client" turns out to be the "killer". Every single
story was predictable. I found none of them to be original or special.

Mr. Block, along the line of Elmore Leonard, has a gift for dialoge but his stories are dull and repetitious.

And the book itself was so bloody heavy it was a pain to comfortably read.

I discovered Lawrence Block when he was writing a monthly column for "Writer's Digest" magazine back in the late 70's. His contribution was always the highlight of each issue, so I began reading his novels and short stories. Now almost all of his shorter pieces, over a 40-year career, are in this volume...885 pages worth. For the price, you can't get another book that will give you as much enjoyment as this one, and teach you about well-crafted writing to boot. All his tales have a twist, and he wastes no words. Block is as good in his own way as Dick Francis and Robert B. Parker are in theirs. I had read many of these older stories in the 80's, but forgot the details until encountering them again in this volume. He'll occasionally make you laugh, more often give you a shiver, but always, his people resonate, even the darkest characters. If you know Block's work from his mystery/detective/humor series, you already know that you want to own this. If you haven't started the LB habit yet, this is "Enough Rope" to tie you up in him for years.

Fans of Block's series characters will find plenty to enjoy here, including nine Matt Scudder stories, three featuring burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, and five with hit man Keller. They have all appeared elsewhere at one time or another, but unless you're a Block completist, you're unlikely to have seen several of them before. Even if you have read some of them, this book is still an invaluable addition to your collection, as it includes all of the stories and presents them in chronological order, something impossible to find prior to this.

Perhaps the best thing about "Enough Rope," though, is the inclusion of a dozen new works, most of them fairly lengthy for short stories, all of them superbly crafted and delightful little reads. A few in particular, like "Almost Perfect" (about a murderous baseball game) and "Points" (about a father and son) stand out for their quality and inventiveness. Even after half a decade of writing short fiction, Block is still trying, and succeeding at, new things. (For historical value, if nothing else, the author's first published story is included as well.)

"Enough Rope" is a hefty book, containing eighty-three stories that run almost 900 pages. That represents virtually every published story by this prolific writer. It is a testimony to the popularity of Block and the quality of his writing that his publisher would take such a gamble and produce such a large, handsome volume. "Enough Rope" is a real treat.

Reviewed by David Montgomery, MysteryInkOnline.com

Save your money and purchase the REAL stories 'outlined' in this cheap book put together to ride the wave of The Perfect Storm. The collection of stories is nothing more than a collection of extended abstracts of the real stories. Many of the 'abstracts' are taken out of context and the reader does not get an accurate picture of what and why the nautical situation developed or how it concluded. Pass on this one.

This book is in a series put out by Adrenaline books and each book contains certain selections chosen by the editor. The selections are either excerpts from books, excerpts from diaries and journals, short stories, or an occasional essay. I look at how good the writing is, and how good the stories are.

There are 16 selections in this book. Half of them range from good to great, and the other eight are fairly poor. The writing is okay throughout, with some being more exceptional than others, but it's the stories that differ the most in quality. Six of them, whether written well or not, have virtually no story whatsoever or are very poor. As it turns out, the best stories in this book are also some of the better written. This is where the book's strength shows up. The selections introduce you to stories and books you may have never read and after reading some of the good selections, it makes you want to go read the books they were taken from. So I would mostly recommend this book to people who have not read much or any sea stories. It introduces you to a wide variety of sea literature. But otherwise I would only lightly recommend it by saying that everyone would find some selections that they really like.

Clint Willis has created a fascinating series of books with Epic, Climb, High, Wild, Ice, Rough Water, and The War. Each of these volumes presents the best literature about their respective subjects in a powerful cohesive manner. These books are a quick read, but intricate and spellbinding. I have given many of them to friends and family as gifts.

However monumental the book maybe, if it bores the reader to death, the ideas contained in it just never get conveyed. This is one of the most boring books I have ever read (and I can tell you I'm also a frequent reader books laden with heavy and long-winded mathematical/philosophical concepts). I fail to see why Sklar would prefer to drain every bit of fun out of the book and make it dry like a brittle, dessicated autumn leaf - or perhaps he is just not funny. Plus, it doesn't make a book more important by sounding important - he could have shed half of the weight of the book by being more concise and direct to the reader rather than being circular and mysterious. There are few keynotes concepts in the book but they are buried under layers of fat, and I'm sure it's not a reader's responsibility to have to painstakingly dig out the truths in a book. For a better read, opt for "the Philosophy of Space & Time" by Hans Reichenbach, translated by his wife Maria Reichenbach.

This book has won philosophical awards, and with good reason- it is a valuable resource for anyone looking to learn about the philosophical issues surrounding space and time. In fact, this is the book that is usually read for classes on the topic. A few of the central topics he discusses are the philosophy of geometry, the reality of space-time, and the arrow of time. Some of these topics do not recieve the coverage a lone book on them would achieve, but this is only to be expected, and Sklar tells the reader this in the introduction.

Sklar's writing is lucid, and he weaves the various topics together very nicely. The style is a little dry, but that is probably as it should be- the book is a serious philosophical work. While the book was not written for the lay reader, there is nothing inherent in the nature of the material that would prevent someone unschooled in philosophy from taking it up.

This is the first of Block's books featuring Evan Tanner that I have read, probably because I hadn't discovered Block twenty-five years ago. Tanner is a very unusual protagonist although some of Block's other characters make strange heroes. Tanner has been frozen for twenty-five years when this story begins. He comes round in a hospital bed looking and feeling the same as he did when he was frozen by a foreign agent. So at sixty-three he has to catch up on a lot of history including the impeachment of Richard Nixon and the presidential terms of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush senior, and Clinton. Evan spends some time catching up on the missed years, fortunately his adopted daughter Minna has kept his apartment and the only difference in it are due to new technology such as Video and DVD players, and a personal computer. It is some months later that Tanner receives a call from his former boss and an assignment is offered to, and accepted by, him. And a new adventure begins.

The return of Lawrence Block's Evan Tanner, sleepless free-lance adventurer and defender of lost causes, is a welcome sight for fans of Block's more light hearted novels. Block's first challenge is to transport his Korean war veteran into the 90's after a hiatus of some twenty-five years. Rather than ignore the passage of time, Block maintains series continuity by an amusing contrivance. Not to spoil the fun, suffice it to say that the title suggests the reason for Tanner's absence all these years. Re-ensconced in his Manhattan apartment with his now fully grown ward, Minna, it isn't long before Tanner sets out on a new globe trotting adventure, this time to destabilize the illegitimate SLORC regime in Burma. Of course, nothing goes even remotely as planned, and as soon as Tanner sets foot in Rangoon he finds himself immersed in a cacaphony of intrigues. Along the way, he is chased, framed for murder and drug smuggling, arrested, allowed (?) to escape and abetted by an alcoholic young woman as they make their way on foot across the Burmese interior disguised as Buddist monks. Though a fan of Block's work for many years, I think his better known Matt Scudder series lost most of its quirky edge as its lead character sobered up and settled down over the years. (In fairness, a new, supposedly "dark" Scudder novel is due to be released this autumn. We'll see.) But all of Block's ligher works, both the Tanner books and the popular Bernie Rhodenbarr (Burglar) mysteries, continue to hit the mark. Like the previous Tanner novels (soon to be republished), Tanner On Ice is a romp. It requires a robust suspension of disbelief, but readers who enjoy the caper sub-genre will be well rewarded.

Evan Tanner is back. "Tanner on Ice: is Lawrence Block's first Evan Tanner novel in twenty-five years. (There are seven others, all out of print.) Tanner is the spy who never sleeps. He was placed in cold storage, hence Tanner on ice; a quarter of a century before this latest adventure takes place. Tanner's reentry into the 1990s finds him catching up with all things modern such as computers, the Internet and E-Mail. He does some quick research to catch up on world events he has missed. Tanner goes to Burma and stirs up the county's regime. Here he meets a beautiful Russian/French/Vietnamese woman who travels with him. The story is an interesting quick read but the characters are not as sold as we meet in the Matt Scudder series or Block's books about Bernie Rhodenbarr. I enjoyed it and will search out the other books in the series.