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Quote of the Moment:
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Temptation does not deliver most of us into evil, because temptation is a constant, and evil is a sometime thing with most of us.
— John D. MacDonald |
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Book Review: Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block
Posted on Sunday 12 June @ 10:59:54
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Every month (or thereabout) HGLEE.COM will review a book or film. Each work will have a brief review and a quick link to Amazon, should you decide to pick up a copy for yourself. This week's selection: Lawrence Block's Sins of the Fathers.
Inheriting the mantle from Dashiell Hammett and John D. MacDonaldIf you're a fan of realistic, hard-boiled detective fiction, you've found a hew hero in Matthew Scudder. Scudder's character has all of the grit of Sam Spade, all of the finesse and cunning of Travis McGee, and all of the street smarts of Harry Bosch.
Block is perhaps the finest living writer of the series character in the mystery genre. His gift for dialog, characters, and credible plot lines are simply astounding. Block is really quite a discovery for those who appreciate a well crafted tale and read mysteries to steep themselves in a world where justice is always the ultimate outcome—regardless of the form it sometimes takes.
This title introduces the series character of Matthew Scudder. A former New York city police officer, Scudder has retired to a life of unlicensed private detection, where he will solve crimes as favors to newfound friends who return the favors with "gifts" of their choosing. Block's attention for detail grows with each passing episode in this series, and we watch Scudder as he develops as a detective, wrestles with chronic alcoholism, interacts with the underbelly of The Big Apple, and takes decisive—and sometimes questionable—action in the pursuit of the "solve."
This particular episode has Scudder hired by a father, who has recently lost his estranged daughter to a brutal murder. The likely suspect is incarcerated, but the father's quest is to learn *why* she was killed...not by whom. Scudder tackles the unusual assignment by means of a plodding determination and relentless pursuit of facts that reveals a credible story that invokes that most enjoyable of reading companions—the reader's own imagination.
The Sins of the Fathers relies on few conventions in the genre outside of the bare minimum. It's as if Block, distrusting the currency, has coined his own, and Scudder represents one of the most wonderful discoveries for the avid mysery reader: a series character of pure gold. This first book is bound to sink the hook in deep, and that's a sweet trap for any reader to trigger. I unconditionally recommend Lawrence Block's Scudder series to anyone interested in mysteries or detective fiction. This is first-rate fiction, drafted by someone with a real genius for the written word.
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