Fri 12 Aug 2016
Archived Review: LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Sins of the Fathers.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Sins of the Fathers. Dell 7991, paperback original, 1976.
This is the first book appearance of Matt Scudder. ex-cop and unlicensed New York City private operative, and the title, saying as it does something about the private detective business in particular, fits perfectly.
Dead is a Greenwich Village prostitute, and also dead is the accused, her roommate, the homosexual son of a Brooklyn minister. Since he hanged himself in his cell, the police have closed the case, but the girl’s father hires Scudder in a last attempt to learn to know more about the daughter he lost some time before.
Scudder’s world is authentically rough and crude, not Miss Marple’s corner of the universe at all, but surprisingly Scudder manages the same sensitivity to his fellow world inhabitants, belying the unnecessarily crass blurb on the back cover.
Rating: B.
August 12th, 2016 at 5:48 pm
Almost forty years later? I have no idea.
August 12th, 2016 at 8:44 pm
I would not have believed when I read this one that Scudder would be the one Block series I tired of and avoided. At some point he just lost me, and I’ve never been able to put my finger on it.
August 13th, 2016 at 5:48 am
I read the first three [paperback original] Scudders in January of 1977, and continued through book seven, but like David this is the one Block series I’ve given up on, despite a lot of high praise.
As always, however, Block does an excellent job with the New York he knows so well, including parts of Brooklyn not often seen in mystery fiction (at least not 40 years ago).