David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "lawrence-block"
The Night and the Music
I first read Lawrence Block when I picked up an anthology of mystery short stories, NEW MYSTERY, Jerome Charyn's International Association of Crime Writers anthology.
It included one of the stories in this anthology, “The Merciful Angel of Death.” This is one of my favorite stories from this collection of Block's work. Matt Scudder is investigating the possibility of a serial killer who's murdering AIDS patients at Caritas. But it's not that simple. He watches as she helps a patient die without touching him, not that she didn't occasionally give one of them a shove. This story is not the traditional mystery story, usually a rehashed version of an “Ironside” episode from the 20th century. It was topical and philosophical, and it made you think.
My other favorite from this collection is “Let's Get Lost”. Matt is still a cop, married to his first wife, living on Long Island, still drinking, but he's having an affair with a high-priced hooker named Elaine. A man had a heart attack and died while in her bed, and Matt handled the situation for her. Now he had the reputation of a fixer, someone who takes care of problematic situations. In this case it's a weekly poker game, and one of the players winds up dead. The other four players say he answered the door in the middle of a hand and someone stabbed him. Matt smells a rat right away. He tells them the police will never believe that, and he sets up an alternative scenario. What he's really done is sniff out evidence that the players' version isn't what really happened, and the reader sees what a great detective Scudder really is.
If you're looking for a new detective series that makes you think a bit, you might try THE SINS OF THE FATHERS or WHEN THE SACRED GIN MILL CLOSES. There are about ten full-length novels and they're all better than the usual tripe, that is unless you're bothered by a detective without a license who walks all around New York City, attending AA meetings while showing you the city and working a case.
It included one of the stories in this anthology, “The Merciful Angel of Death.” This is one of my favorite stories from this collection of Block's work. Matt Scudder is investigating the possibility of a serial killer who's murdering AIDS patients at Caritas. But it's not that simple. He watches as she helps a patient die without touching him, not that she didn't occasionally give one of them a shove. This story is not the traditional mystery story, usually a rehashed version of an “Ironside” episode from the 20th century. It was topical and philosophical, and it made you think.
My other favorite from this collection is “Let's Get Lost”. Matt is still a cop, married to his first wife, living on Long Island, still drinking, but he's having an affair with a high-priced hooker named Elaine. A man had a heart attack and died while in her bed, and Matt handled the situation for her. Now he had the reputation of a fixer, someone who takes care of problematic situations. In this case it's a weekly poker game, and one of the players winds up dead. The other four players say he answered the door in the middle of a hand and someone stabbed him. Matt smells a rat right away. He tells them the police will never believe that, and he sets up an alternative scenario. What he's really done is sniff out evidence that the players' version isn't what really happened, and the reader sees what a great detective Scudder really is.
If you're looking for a new detective series that makes you think a bit, you might try THE SINS OF THE FATHERS or WHEN THE SACRED GIN MILL CLOSES. There are about ten full-length novels and they're all better than the usual tripe, that is unless you're bothered by a detective without a license who walks all around New York City, attending AA meetings while showing you the city and working a case.
