Rating: 
Summary: Kick Ass!
Review: Now, this isn't exactly literature, so I'm not giving this five stars over Dickens or anything, but for hard-boiled, raw, simple prose, Scudder kicks ass, and Block deserves all his accolades.
Rating:
Summary: Matt Scudder does it again. . .
Review: Strong plot, well-drawn characters. Another terrific
installment in the Scudder series.
Rating: 
Summary: Good story, boring book.
Review: This is the first, and only, book I've read by Lawrence Block. I picked it up for a N.Y.-to-L.A. flight. After the reviews here and on the book, I thought it would at the very least be a harmless read that zipped along, but I was disappointed to find out it's a deadly slow and dull affair. Block writes the oddest, most stilted dialogue I've ever read. This novel has no drive whatsoever to it. The cover review speaks of "suspense" that "never lets up." Could have fooled me. (There IS no suspense.) The plot, which is good, is an afterthought. The book is really about AA and dealing with being a former drunk or an addict. This plot about kidnappers/rapists who are snatching up the loved ones of drug dealers is hardly dealt with. Scudder is a lumbering dope who shuffles about without doing much work. For the most part two hackers and a young black kid (who talks like an old white man trying to write slang) do all the work. This business in the book, about getting a number that called a particular phone, seems downright silly today, with Caller ID on every home phone.Block's prose style is that curt, brisk variety you see in a lot of detective books, and while I enjoy it when it's done right, here it comes off as lazy and half-assed. Like he couldn't be bothered. You'll find yourself skipping through the pale talk about alcoholics and God. Not because they aren't subjects for discussion, but because Block cannot craft even one realistic line of dialogue. I would have enjoyed a more detailed look about what is an intriguing idea -- kidnapping from those that can't go to the cops -- but this is clearly a case where an author had an idea and nothing after that.
Rating:
Summary: a headlong ride with no letup
Review: This was the first Scudder novel I tried,and I have since read all of them.The novel is one of the best.In one short passage where Block mentions a body being dumped in Mount Zion cemetery in Queens,he evokes a very sharp ,realistic image-you have to be there on a gray drizzly Sunday afternoon to know just how desolate a place in the city can be.A perfect place to dump a body.Block has a great sense of place as well as a very strong grasp of the details of how crime and the investigation of it play out in the real world.Block portrays evil in a way that makes you realize there is nothing theatrical or entertaining about it.These attributes form the reinforcing rods on which Block pours the concrete to achieve the finished story.Some of his novels are better than others,but none are poorly written.Even the one I liked least was saved by a single scene which was basically the outpourings of a hoodlum's feelings about his brother's death in Vietnam.It was far more powerful than my synopsis makes it sound and it made the book worth reading.
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