"Right up there with Mr. Block's best....A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF keeps us guessing."--Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal<br><br>Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer. When Scudder's childhood friend Jack Ellery is murdered, presumably while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder reluctantly begins his own investigation, with just one lead: Ellery's Alcoholics Anonymous list of people he wronged. One of them may be a killer, but that's not necessarily Scudder's greatest danger. Immersing himself in Ellery's world may lead him right back to the bar stool.<br><br>In a novel widely celebrated by critics and readers, Lawrence Block circle back to how it all began, reestablishing the Matthew Scudder series as one of the pinnacles of American detective fiction.
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Matthew Scudder returns
Is there a better writer of dialog than Lawrence Block? No, I didn't think so. And in his latest Matthew Scudder novel, "A Drop of the Hard Stuff", Block returns after a long absence with a new, dynamite Matt Scudder mystery. Lawrence Block appears to have experienced a "dry" period in his writing. Aside from a memoir called "Step-by-Step", a Keller short story for Kindle, and some reprints of his earlier Hard Case series, we Block-fans haven't heard much from him. And I, for one, have missed him. His book, "A Long Line of Dead Men", published in the early 1990's is, to me, the best detective/mystery book I've read. "Dead Men" was also in the Matt Scudder series. Matt Scudder is a recovering alcoholic, former policeman for the NYPD, and now a non-licensed private investigator. He has a lady-friend with whom he has an uncertain relationship, and through his under-the-table investigating business, makes a living. The theme throughout the Matt Scudder series is alcoholism. In some books it's more obvious than in others, and in this one, his latest, the plot revolves around AA, the Step program, and the detritus that fall out as people go through their day-at-a-time lives. Matt is asked to "look into" the murder of a man he knew as a child who had taken a different path as an adult than Matt. Scudder became a policeman, while Jack Ellery became a petty criminal. But both became alcoholics, and as the book opens in the early 1980's, they meet up at an AA meeting. (Actually, the book opens and ends with Scudder relating the story to his friend Mick Ballou in today's New York City). Ellery has been sober for about three years - Scudder at that point was reaching his one year's sober point - and he's fulfilling the Step program of seeking out people he has hurt in their alcoholic past and to make amends for the pain he's caused. After making a list and giving it to his sponsor, Ellery is found dead, shot twice in the head. His sponsor, Greg Stillman, hires Scudder to try...
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