The best Scudder. How can a book be so heartbreaking and so much fun at the same time?

I'm very happy for this novel's existence. Apparently, Block had originally planned on ending Scudder's adventures after finishing up Eight Million Ways to Die. However, after writing what was originally intended to be a short story, Block expanded it to what we now know as When the Sacred Ginmill Closes.Taking place sometime between novels 1 and 5; Scudder is still heavily boozing it up. If I didn't know that this was a "flashback" novel, I would have been completely shocked that Scudder fell o...

Ex detective and heavy drinker Matt Scudder sets about solving three seemingly unrelated cases in a less than conventional way. I don’t remember what got me to start reading this. I spent the first forty of fifty pages trying to work out what was happening, the next hundred trying to work out where it was all going, and just as I was at the point of wondering whether or not to give up, it came together. A powerful and unforgettable novel that transcends the detective genre. Try it and you will p...

This is a fine entry in the Matt Scudder series, but fans of conventional mystery novels may be somewhat disappointed, for it involves not one particular case, but three: the armed robbery of an after-hours joint, the extortion of a tavern for the return of its cooked books, and the murder of the wife of a patron of one of Matt's usual haunts. Scudder does eventually connect two cases and solve them, and he sort of solves the other case too, but there is a lot of conversation not germane to the

This was a great read, but not so much for the plot threads involving Scudder's three cases. Though certainly interesting, as they touch on his personal life in one way or another, none generate much suspense. Rather, what's compelling is the deep look at Scudder's social life. A testimony to how utterly it was dominated by his heavy drinking. The story is narrated as if in retrospect, many years after the events occurred, giving Scudder an opportunity to reflect on his old life, which he seemin...

This is among the best of Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series, which is saying quite a lot. Set in the mid-1970s, it finds Scudder divorced, working as an unlicensed P.I. in New York City and essentially living in the bars that dot the neighborhood around his small hotel room.The book opens with the brazen robbery of an after-hours saloon that happens to be owned by some scary Irish brothers that no smart person would ever think to screw around with. Matt is present at the time of the robber...

Whilst reading about Jack Taylor fighting the good fight to stay on the wagon in Ken Bruen's Priest recently I figured it was probably inspired by Lawrence Block and Matt Scudder; the last time we met Matt was ready to turn his life around one meeting at a time, so in I jumped to this sixth in the series of books about alcoholic former cop turned professional favours for friends provider Matt Scudder.Turns out this wasn't the moment I was looking for, When The Sacred Ginmill throws everything yo...

First of all, Carol knows what she's talking about. This is another great installment in the Scudder series and I really wavered over whether to give it five stars or not. It's a flashback novel, back to Scudder's hard drinking, bar crawling days of wee morning hours and head splitting hangovers. This is Scudder in all his glorious dysfunction, surrounded by the other barflies that make up his small cadre of "friends". It's 1970's New York, where Irish bars have Republican Army connections. Beca...

Matthew Scudder is working to help friends with problems involving blackmail, robbery and murder. The events in this story took place back when Scudder was a heavy drinker. It seems pretty grim to spend all day maintaining an alcohol numb, but he and his friends do just that. Scudder gave up being a policeman, but figuring out whodunnit was the only bright spot for him in this whole book. Block writes these books from Scudder's point-of-view. He is a very sad guy with no self-pity....so I cried

Oh Scudder novels, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:1) Period New York. This time it's a walk down memory lane to 1975. While Scudder remembers more about the sports scene than national politics, he also recalls that it was a big year for Black Russians and tequila sunrises. It's also a time of Irish dominance in Hell's Kitchen (anecdotal origin quote: "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen"), a small rough, industrial down-and-out section of New York. Irish toughs with connecti...

Skip Devoe and Tommy Tillary. Theirs are the faces I see when I think of the summer of '75. Between them, they were the season. Were they friends of mine? They were, but with a qualification. They were saloon friends. I rarely saw them- or anyone else, in those days- other than in a room where strangers gathered to drink liquor. I don't know why I underestimate Lawrence Block. After the joyride that was reading Eight Million Ways to Die, I thought that surely Matthew Scudder's next ad

An after hours bar is robbed by two masked men. A bar buddy's wife is murdered and he's the prime suspect. The clean set of books from another friend's bar is stolen. What, if anything, do Matthew Scudder's three cases have to do with one another?After Eight Million Ways to Die, I wasn't that impressed with this one in the first few chapters but it really picked up. It takes place while Scudder is still drinking, back in 1975. Once again, Block had me guessing right up until the end. It never ce...

This is the latest installment in my journey into Lawrence Block's stunning Matthew Scudder crime series. This one comes on the heels of the showstopping Eight Million Ways to Die, and I was wondering if it was possible for this book to be as good. I was pleased to see that it comes pretty damn close! Block keeps it fresh by showing us a different side of Scudder, flashing back to events from Matt's past that occurred even before the first novel. Here, Matt tells the story of when he and his har...

WOW, WOW, and WOW Lawrence Block circa 1986WOW, WOW, and WOW AGAIN!Scudder is not a social drinker but a confirmed alcoholic. In Eight Million Ways to Die, the novel published previous to When the Sacred Ginmill Closes he's attending AA after being told numerous times in the hospital that if he doesn't quit he will die. So what does a normal person do, he/she quits. Which is what Scudder did although he did have a few relapses along the way. In this book, published in 1986, Scudder is drinkin...

A few years ago it became somewhat fashionable for like a month or two to talk about how Stephen King deserved to win literary awards. Because I'm lazy I'm not going to look it up, but I think he was even given some kind of lifetime achievement award from the folks who provide us with the National Book Award. It was around the same time that McSweeney's and Michael Chabon were flaunting their genre fiction cred and releasing the pretty much unreadble anthology of adventure stories. It's been lon...

I absolutely LOVED this! I thought the last book I read in the series was excellent and yet some how this one feels like it surpassed it!When the Sacred Ginmill Closes is a line from a song by Dave Van Ronk, an old folkie from the 60s Village era. It's a slice of desperation and so is this awesome book!Our sort-of hero ex-cop turned kinda detective Matt Scudder has his plate full in this one, running around New York City for his friends and acquaintances trying to solve robberies and murders for...

The sixth Matthew Scudder novel, “When The Sacred Ginmill Closes,” is a tightly written journey into the gritty realism of bars and after hours clubs of New York City. Scudder, here, is practically drowning in booze and even notes at one point that, when he sets out for home, he ends up in a bar. Most days, he doesn’t even know how he got home. Much of the action in this book takes place in a couple of nearby bars and, if it is not taking place in the bars, it is taking place with the guys Scudd...

And so we’ve had another nightOf poetry and posesAnd each man knows he’ll be aloneWhen the sacred ginmill closes—Dave VanRonkI’ve exclusively been listening to all the (free) available audio versions of Block’s Matt Scudder mysteries, and am up to #14, but am a completist, and this one is not available through my app on audio, so I had to get the hardcover of this in part because it is by reputation one of the top three of the series, and then it has the best title, referring to the closing of a...

I wish you could add sound effects to books because it would have been cool if the flashback noise from Lost would have played when I started reading this.According to Lawrence Block lore, he originally planned to end the Scudder series with the last book, Eight Million Ways to Die, and it certainly would have made a good stopping point. But Block owed a Scudder story so he wrote a short version of this that he liked it so much he expanded it to a book. Then he liked the book so much he decided