Lawrence Block created a tremendous character in Mathew Scudder. Looking forward to reading more of this series. Very enjoyable and entertaining from start to finish!

Second edition of Matthew Scudder's saga, and I'm looking forward to the next.(Oh, who am I kidding? I've already started the next one, but had to stop and do the review for this so I can give it the thought it deserves).Scudder's daily meander between bourbon and coffee is interrupted when Spinner, one of his ex-stoolies, comes to him with a request. Hold on to an envelope; if Spinner dies, open it and take whatever action Scudder thinks is right. If nothing happens to Spinner, no fair eyeballi...

3.5 stars. No dilly dallying here. Scudder gets straight to it, in what feels like a kind of shell game as Scudder seeks to pin the murder of a friend on one of three guilty parties by jumping into the fray and risking himself in order to expose them. I found the ending a bit of a let down. Partly because I figured out most of what was going on pretty early, and partly because it felt like Block kind of pulled the rest of it right out of thin air at the last minute. One thing becomes crystal cle...

3.5*A very entertaining read.

Ahhh, Scudder...I have a bone to pick with you. Why you wanna hurt me so bad? More on that in just a bit, first just a little note on the numbering of these early Scudder books. Feel free to skip this paragraph which cuts right to the nerd in me. I tend to be a tad OCD when I take on any series, and always want to read them in order. Goodreads has this book listed as #2 which turns out to be correct. In the afterword Block explains that Time to Murder and Create is the second Scudder book he wro...

”A bullet ricocheted. Those things happen.Part of the reason I left the force was that those things happen and I did not want to be in a position where I could do wrong things for right reasons. Because I had decided that, while it might be true that the end does not justify the means, neither does the means justify the end.”Matthew Scudder has a lot of reasons to drink, but seeing the face of the little girl his errant bullet killed is a constant reminder of the demise of his heroic vision of h...

There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate;Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea. From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. EliotFor “tea” substitute “bourbon and coffee” Re: Matt Scudder.Matthew Scudder stopped be...

Matthew Scudder, assisted by larger and larger doses of bourbon & coffee, investigates the brutal murder of a blackmailer known as the Spinner. The prime suspects are the Spinner’s three cash cows, including: 1. A former hooker/porn star turned high society wife; 2. A wealthy father of a reckless driving, man-slaughtering ex-drug addict; and 3. A buggery loving, pederast politician running for Governor of New York. As Scudder begins to look into his dead friend’s operation, he finds himself the

Stoolie and blackmailer Spinner Jablon winds up dead and due to a mysterious envelope entrusted to him by Spinner, Matthew Scudder is trying to find out who killed him. Only Spinner was blackmailing three people: a former porn actress, a rich man who covered up his daughter's hit and run accident, and a pedophile who may just be the next governor of New York. Can Scudder find out who killed Jablon before he becomes a victim himself?Wow. I knew I had something with Lawrence Block after I read the...

While I agree with Scudder that murder is worse than most other crimes & that Spinner, for all his faults, at least has never killed anyone & thus deserves better than being dumped in the river with a broken skull, let's be honest here - raping kids is pretty much as horrible & reprehensible as murder. This would've been a four-star book for me, but the fact that Scudder is willing to let Huysendahl off the hook basically because he says he's not into pedophilia all that much anymore does not si...

Matt Scudder has been entrusted with an envelope following the death of blackmailer, Jacob “Spinner” Jablon. The contents of said envelope you ask? Oh, nothing crazy, just evidence that could ruin the lives of three New Yorkers. Basically, Spinner has posthumously asked Scudder to find out who killed him. The only catch is that one of the 3 that Spinner had wrapped around his finger intends to silence Scudder just like they silenced Spinner. It all comes down to if Matt’s mind can work fast enou...

Spinner Jablon is a small-time criminal and hustler that Matt Scudder knows from his days on the police. One day he shows up with money in his pockets and an offer for Matt: Hold onto an envelope to be opened if Spinner gets killed. It seems like easy money and weeks pass until Spinner misses his regular check-in and his body is found in the river.When Matt opens the envelope he finds a note from Spinner, a wad of cash, and blackmail info on three people. Spinner’s note explains that he thought

8/10Another stonking effort in this, my 3rd in the series…stupid audible! The plot synopsis was far more intriguing than the previous novels in the series and so it turned out as this story was my favourite to date. "Spinner" Jablon entrusts Matt to do some investigating should he meet an untimely demise. Low and behold, he's required to look into things a little quicker than Jablon would have liked. Who would have thought that being a serial blackmailer would endanger oneself? There turns out t...

When a criminal "friend" goes belly up in the river with a bump on his head, retired cop Matthew Scudder takes it upon himself to find out whodunnit. In this, the second of the so-far-enjoyable Scudder series, our hero is tasked with figuring out which of three shitty people with a darkened past was the one who did-in his friend. None of the three are likable, hell, even Matt has some unpleasant skeletons in his closest, so why the hell is this such a good read?!I've pondered that quite a bit. I...

Oh Scudder, Scudder, Scudder. Other than learning that you do not, in fact, vote, my literary crush on you knows no bounds. With one-liners like Somebody put money in the jukebox, and Lesley Gore said it was her party and she would cry if she wanted to.andYou don’t want people driving cars at you. It’s unhealthy.I, in fact, find you downright irresistible.Since some pretty kick-ass reviewers have tackled this the second-written of Block's Matthew Scudder stories (see Trudi, Carol, Kemper, and D...

Onto part deux of the adventures of Matthew Scudder former policeman turned into and investigator of the non-legal variety. This one is about a former acquaintance of Scudder in his cop years. The Spinner was a petty crook and a blackmailer. And by the look at his wardrobe he was doing very well. Which was no excuse for anybody to kill him. Which brings us to the letter he left in Scudders possession which contains the information that probably has killed Spinner to gebin with.Scudder now has an...

Two-bit blackmailer “Spinner” Jablon hires Matthew Scudder to find a murderer. The victim? “Spinner” himself. He entrusts Matt with an envelope filled with “dirt” on three blackmail “clients," and, if he dies suddenly, wants Scudder to discover which of the three is responsible. Soon Jablon's body is fished out of the East River with a smashed-up skull, and Scudder decides to act as if he were the inheritor of the blackmail operation, hoping this strategy will compel the murderer to show his han...

This is the second book in Lawrence Block's excellent series featuring Matthew Scudder. It doesn't pack quite the emotional wallop of the first, The Sins of the Fathers, but it's a very good read nonetheless.For those who don't know, Matthew Scudder is an ex cop who lives in New York City and who works as an unlicensed P.I. He left the force under tragic circumstances and has since developed a drinking problem which is here noticeably worse than it was in the first book. His "office" is in a sal...

Lesser Block which means it's still fairly good. Scudder must figure out which of three people being blackmailed killed his acquaintance, who was doing the blackmailing. This is a very quick read (I read it in one afternoon) and the mystery wasn't that hard to solve. Recommended to Block fans.

Has the feel of Robert Altman's The Long GoodbyeMatt Scudder returns to investigate the death of a former acquaintance who has been murdered in the middle of a blackmail scam, the only difficulty is that there are three suspects "on the rope" and all three are equally reprehensible in their own way.Again in this series the story is less about the investigation and more about the life choice of the detective, Scudder is a drunk who stumbles around New York in a manner highly reminiscent of Elliot...