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paulataua's review against another edition
4.0
Number 7 in the series and the three years sober Scudder is hired to find a missing girl. As with all the others in the series, it is not big on plot and moves along at the slowest of paces, but the writing is great. I marvel at the way Block captures the feel of the run down areas with their bars, their homeless beggars, and their unwholesome characters. It almost feels like you are experiencing everything first hand. Even the solution of the detective part, which you are never really allowed to put center stage, is more satisfying than earlier books in the series. Not for everyone, but definitely for me.
arthur_pendrgn's review against another edition
2.0
It was okay. Scudder proves particularly kind to Paula's parents. Not a mystery the reader can solve on their own.
billmorrow's review against another edition
3.0
A good story, stories actually, with a loosely woven plot. My only issue was all the filler. Probably over 100 pages of filler.
usbsticky's review against another edition
5.0
The best in a long line of good Lawrence Block's books I've read so far. Block's books can be hit or miss but this one is inspired. Spoilers ahead.
Scudder is an unofficial private eye. A former NYPD detective who does favors for a little money. He works when he wants or needs the money. He's a recovering alcoholic and Block has spent a lot of pages in the last 2 books covering Scudder's journey from a functioning alcoholic to a sometime raving drunk to a teetotaler who attends AA meetings religiously.
The plot of this book is somewhat haphazard and unexpected. As with some crime fiction, there are two stories in this book, only marginally connected but well done.
In crime 1, a distraught family from Muncie, Indiana hires Scudder to look for their 3 month missing daughter (Paula) who came to the big city to pursue her dream of being an actress. She rents a small room, goes to acting classes, auditions, readings and gets a job as a waitress, basically everything that a budding actor does in NY city.
She stops calling her family, stops paying her rent and just disappears. Scudder does all the requisite footwork, painstakingly interviewing everyone who crosses paths with her to get the smallest clue to find out where she might have gone. He interviews people in her apartment, from work, from classes, auditions, etc. All he can figure out is that it's a criminal matter based on the way her clothing (but not her linen) disappeared from her apartment when she left. And it just ends up being a dead end.
Crime 2: Meanwhile he makes a friend at AA. Just a small time one time criminal down on his luck. But this friend Eddie has really stuck to it and hasn't fallen off the wagon. However one day he stopped showing up. Scudder goes to his apartment with the super of the building and finds that Eddie has died in an autoerotic accident. Scudder is shocked but he needs to know if Eddie died sober. So he pushes the coroner (or assistant?) for the autopsy results. Eddie died sober but there is some chloral hydrate (a sedative) in his blood, which makes his death suspicious and not accidental anymore.
Real spoilers below. Do not read below this for sure if you don't want to know the story.
Scudder does some digging (a lot of which is hidden from the readers) and he finds that several residents have also died with chloral hydrate in their blood and figures that the landlord is killing the residents (who have rent controlled apartments) so that their building can be converted into a co-op and make millions.
At the same time, while investigating Eddie's death, he comes across someone who knows Paula but pretends not to. After some digging, he figures that this person is involved in Paula's death. The ending of this story is presented in a reveal that Scudder is not really involved in.
Overall this is a pretty dark, noir and depressing police procedural. But that's exactly the way Block writes it. I like book not for the whodunit, mystery or edge of the seat aspect (of which there is none) but the realism of the characters and the setting. That's the way it is in good books. You like the book for the people in it. Characters that you feel for and want to follow. I'm now reading the next in the series.
Scudder is an unofficial private eye. A former NYPD detective who does favors for a little money. He works when he wants or needs the money. He's a recovering alcoholic and Block has spent a lot of pages in the last 2 books covering Scudder's journey from a functioning alcoholic to a sometime raving drunk to a teetotaler who attends AA meetings religiously.
The plot of this book is somewhat haphazard and unexpected. As with some crime fiction, there are two stories in this book, only marginally connected but well done.
In crime 1, a distraught family from Muncie, Indiana hires Scudder to look for their 3 month missing daughter (Paula) who came to the big city to pursue her dream of being an actress. She rents a small room, goes to acting classes, auditions, readings and gets a job as a waitress, basically everything that a budding actor does in NY city.
She stops calling her family, stops paying her rent and just disappears. Scudder does all the requisite footwork, painstakingly interviewing everyone who crosses paths with her to get the smallest clue to find out where she might have gone. He interviews people in her apartment, from work, from classes, auditions, etc. All he can figure out is that it's a criminal matter based on the way her clothing (but not her linen) disappeared from her apartment when she left. And it just ends up being a dead end.
Crime 2: Meanwhile he makes a friend at AA. Just a small time one time criminal down on his luck. But this friend Eddie has really stuck to it and hasn't fallen off the wagon. However one day he stopped showing up. Scudder goes to his apartment with the super of the building and finds that Eddie has died in an autoerotic accident. Scudder is shocked but he needs to know if Eddie died sober. So he pushes the coroner (or assistant?) for the autopsy results. Eddie died sober but there is some chloral hydrate (a sedative) in his blood, which makes his death suspicious and not accidental anymore.
Real spoilers below. Do not read below this for sure if you don't want to know the story.
Scudder does some digging (a lot of which is hidden from the readers) and he finds that several residents have also died with chloral hydrate in their blood and figures that the landlord is killing the residents (who have rent controlled apartments) so that their building can be converted into a co-op and make millions.
At the same time, while investigating Eddie's death, he comes across someone who knows Paula but pretends not to. After some digging, he figures that this person is involved in Paula's death. The ending of this story is presented in a reveal that Scudder is not really involved in.
Overall this is a pretty dark, noir and depressing police procedural. But that's exactly the way Block writes it. I like book not for the whodunit, mystery or edge of the seat aspect (of which there is none) but the realism of the characters and the setting. That's the way it is in good books. You like the book for the people in it. Characters that you feel for and want to follow. I'm now reading the next in the series.
gracenow's review against another edition
3.0
Third time reading it, last time was almost 20 years ago. For me, this time, it was a lot of boring stuff with a slam bang ending that came out of nowhere. He meets Mick Ballou, the butcher, in this one.
jakewritesbooks's review against another edition
4.0
Although there is a mystery at the heart of the novel, eventually growing to encompass two mysteries, this feels like more of a hangout tale. Apparently, Lawrence Block never meant for his star character Matthew Scudder to go beyond four or five books but after writing a flashback tale in When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, he decided to expand the series to Scudder’s life post-alcohol.
Out on the Cutting Edge, book seven in the series, is the first of those efforts and it feels like Block is trying to get a sense of what he should do with Matt. In the previous six, he had no problems filling the pages with tales of Matt’s alcoholic exploits in between doing what he needed to do to solve cases. Now he’s trying to help Matt move on and figure out how he as an author moves with him.
The good thing is: Block is a talented writer. He is able to pull off this transition. Because while the two mysteries are interesting, they function as a heat check for where Matthew Scudder’s life is in this particular moment. I got the sense that Matt’s struggle is very real. He’s not perfect in how he manages his alcoholism, nor is he looking for pity or flagellation. He’s doing what alcoholics are supposed to do: take it one day at a time. Some days are better than others. But he’s stayed off the booze long enough to not have any bad days related to that.
I don’t know if this is the best book in the series but it’s the one that I enjoyed the most. Without the alcohol to keep the reader at a distance, Block needed to find other ways to build trust and connectivity and he does that well here. I’m encouraged to read the rest.
Out on the Cutting Edge, book seven in the series, is the first of those efforts and it feels like Block is trying to get a sense of what he should do with Matt. In the previous six, he had no problems filling the pages with tales of Matt’s alcoholic exploits in between doing what he needed to do to solve cases. Now he’s trying to help Matt move on and figure out how he as an author moves with him.
The good thing is: Block is a talented writer. He is able to pull off this transition. Because while the two mysteries are interesting, they function as a heat check for where Matthew Scudder’s life is in this particular moment. I got the sense that Matt’s struggle is very real. He’s not perfect in how he manages his alcoholism, nor is he looking for pity or flagellation. He’s doing what alcoholics are supposed to do: take it one day at a time. Some days are better than others. But he’s stayed off the booze long enough to not have any bad days related to that.
I don’t know if this is the best book in the series but it’s the one that I enjoyed the most. Without the alcohol to keep the reader at a distance, Block needed to find other ways to build trust and connectivity and he does that well here. I’m encouraged to read the rest.
lobo1tomia's review against another edition
http://olvasonaplo.net/olvasonaplo/2009/04/15/lawrence_block_a_penge_elen/
psteve's review against another edition
4.0
Matthew Scudder, in AA, is approached by the father of a young woman who has moved to New York and after a few months disappeared. Though without much hope, Scudder goes looking around Hell's Kitchen for her, and at the same time an AA friend of his dies after confessing he has some secrets (Step 5), and Scudder becomes involved with the landlord who managed the building the friend lived in. Block paints a vivid picture of the area in 1989 (it's changed a bunch since) and those who live there, and the way the stories resolve makes for gripping reading. Block, to me, always surprises with the quality of his writing.