Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 4/28/2023 + 1194 more book reviews

Another good one in the Matt Scudder series. I have been reading these in no particular order for the past decade or so and always enjoy them. This is the seventh book in the series and Matt is struggling to stay sober by attending AA meetings religiously.
Scudder is an ex New York cop who quit the force after he accidentally killed a young girl during a shootout. He works as an unlicensed PI and has struggled to stay sober. In this novel, he agrees to look into the disappearance of a young woman from Indiana who came to New York to pursue an acting career. But her parents are concerned when she doesn't return her calls and seems to have vanished. Matt does what he can to try to track her down but is not too optimistic about the outcome.

Meanwhile, he befriends a fellow AA member who is trying to stay sober. Then the friend shows up dead in his apartment with a rope around his neck. It looks like accidental auto erotic asphyxiation in that he was found naked and close to some S&M magazines. Or was he really murdered? Matt gets close to the man's landlady (real close) as he tries to get to the bottom of his death. Along the way he also befriends a mobster and bar owner named Mick Ballou who also becomes a supporting character in future novels in the series.

This was kind of an in between novel in the series. It's written at a slow pace as Matt attends AA meetings, has an affair with the lady landlord, and puzzles out the solutions to the death of his friend and the disappearance of the young woman from Indiana. Block really draws the reader into Matt's world within the down and outs of NYC. I still have a few of the series left to read and hopefully I'll get to them soon.

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