Rating: 
Summary: Scudder sees the err of his alcoholic ways...
Review: This is probably the best Matt Scudder book I've read yet. It takes us to a time when Scudder drank but never thought about his habit as something that was gradually controlling his life. He picks up a very interesting case, a particularly greusome murder that slipped through the cracks 9 years earlier and is only now receiving a true investigation. When the beautiful young girl turns out to be anything but an innocent victim, her father (Scudder's client) fires him and refuses to go on cooperating with the investigation. It's too late for Matt, though. He's onto something here, and he knows it. Scudder won't rest until he's solved the case, or at least finished himself off with a case of bourbon.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Hardboiled Fiction
Review: This is the 4th book in the Matt Scudder series and is a very appropriately titled book, with Scudder investigating a stabbing murder that happened 9 years ago. He doesn't particularly look forward to the case but, with nothing better to do, he begins to sift through old ground in between cups of bourbon-laced coffee.The Matt Scudder character is the important feature of this book as we follow his tortured journey around New York City chasing up clues in a long-dead case. He unearths clues and leads as a good detective should, but it's his battle with the bottle that proves the most fascinating story. He finally gets a good hard smack across the chops in this book which may help put him on the road to sobriety, at least, it scares him enough to consider he may need help. This is another fine example of an outstanding modern hardboiled mystery, just part of an outstanding hardboiled series.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not Block's best Scudder novel
Review: While this book did have an entertaining plot, a woman is suspected of being killed by the icepick prowler, but turns out that she wasn't killed by him when he confesses to 7 of the 8 murders he was suspected of. Scudder is thrown into the mix to investigate whether Barbara Ettinger was killed by the Icepick Prowler or a copycat killer. While it is an entertaining and easy read, I felt at times that the quality of writing wasn't nearly as good as 2 of his best scudder novels ever: "Eight Million Ways to Die" and "A Dance at the Slaughterhouse". I just wasn't satisified with the quality of this book, I felt it could have been better. That tends to be the way Block's books are with me, they are either a hit or a miss.
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