Fri 24 Feb 2017
A 1001 Midnights Review: LAWRENCE BLOCK – Eight Million Ways to Die.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[7] Comments
by Marcia Muller
LAWRENCE BLOCK – Eight Million Ways to Die. Arbor House, hardcover, 1982. Paperback reprints include: Jove, 1983; Avon, 1991. Film:, 1985, with Jeff Bridges as Matt Scudder (also partly based on A Stab in the Dark).
Ex-New York policeman Matthew Scudder is not a formally licensed private investigator; he says you could call what he does “hustling for a buck…. I do favors for friends.” As this novel opens, he is about to take on a favor for a friend of a friend, Kim Dakkinen, a call girl who wants to get out of the business. Kim is afraid to tell her pimp she is leaving, and Scudder’s job is to act as go-between.
The job goes altogether too easily. The pimp is an unusual man named Chance, with a secret hideaway in Brooklyn (to which he has admitted no one, although he later takes Scudder there) and an easygoing manner that convinces Scudder he will let Kim go. When she is brutally murdered, Scudder, an alcoholic who has been attending AA for less than two weeks, begins to drink, suffers a blackout, and wakes up in the hospital.
After his release, he is contacted by Chance, who insists he did not kill Kim — or have her killed — and asks that Scudder find out who did. Scudder’s quest takes him into the apartments of call girls and through the bars of Manhattan and Harlem. He periodically stops in at AA meetings- just listening, refusing to speak when his turn comes.
Teetering on the edge of drunkenness, he crosses and recrosses the city in which there are 8 million ways to die — many of them cataloged from Scudder’s obsessive reading of the newspapers — in search of a killer with a motive that is almost impossible to discern.
This novel was nominated for a Mystery Writers of America Edgar and won the Private Eye Writer sof America Shamus Award for Best Hardcover Private Eye Novel of 1982. It is grim and powerful and, along with the other Scudder novels — In the Midst of Death (1976), Sins of the Fathers (1977), Time to Murder and Create (1977), and A Stab in the Dark (1981) — contains some of Block’s finest writing to date.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
February 24th, 2017 at 3:48 am
I remember starting to watch this movie once, probably on HBO or Cinemax, and turning it off after 15 or 20 minutes. Was I too quick on the off button?
February 24th, 2017 at 5:18 am
The movie isn’t in the same league as the book. The setting has been moved to L.A., which invalidates the title for one thing. And N.Y.C. is such key part of the Scudder books.
Jeff Bridges is good but he’s not my–or Block’s–Matthew Scudder.
February 24th, 2017 at 10:48 am
The movie barely even resembles the book, and that’s hardly unusual when it comes to mystery adaptations. There are important scenes in the movie (what little of it I’ve been able to get through) that have no existence in the novel whatsoever.
They take the basic premise and run with it–mainly in the wrong direction. And the same thing has happened with other Scudder adaptations, including the latest one, which is set in New York.
Bridges could have worked, but he was probably too young when they did that one. The main problem is that they’re taking the fifth book in a series, and turning it into a standalone story that will resolve all the protagonist’s issues. This never happens to Mike Hammer or Philip Marlowe.
Scudder may not be a drunk anymore after this one, but he’ll always have issues.
February 24th, 2017 at 1:45 pm
A good summing up between you and Rick, Chris. Thanks! What you say seems to be the general consensus among other critics as well. I’ve also read that the director, Hal Ashby, lost control of the film in the editing stages, never a good sign.
February 24th, 2017 at 2:58 pm
Been afraid to read Scudder since I gave up getting drunk. You just might have nudged me off the wagon, Marcia.
February 24th, 2017 at 3:28 pm
Matt, If you do decide to read the Scudder books, I’d suggest that you read them in order, if you can. It’s a long personal journey he goes through during the course of the series, best followed if you go through it with him. If you were to read only one, I’m open to suggestions from others as to which one it might be, but 8 MILLION wouldn’t be a bad choice.
The Sins of the Fathers (1976)
Time To Murder And Create (1977; written second but published third)
In The Midst Of Death (1976; written third but published second)
A Stab in the Dark (1981)
Eight Million Ways to Die (1982)
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1986)
Out on the Cutting Edge (1989)
A Ticket to the Boneyard (1990)
A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1991)
A Walk Among the Tombstones (1992)
The Devil Knows You’re Dead (1993)
A Long Line of Dead Men (1994)
Even the Wicked (1997)
Everybody Dies (1998)
Hope To Die (2001).
All the Flowers are Dying (2005)
A Drop of the Hard Stuff (2011)
February 24th, 2017 at 7:42 pm
The movie works better for readers who haven’t read the book or read about Scudder. Bridges is good, but not Scudder. Liam Neeson is much closer.