LAWRENCE BLOCK – Out on the Cutting Edge. William Morrow, hardcover, October 1989. Avon, paperback, October 1990.

   Alcoholic ex-cop and unlicensed private detective Matt Scudder is hired by an Indiana businessman, Warren Hoeldtke, to look for his daughter Paula who came to New York trying to break into show business but hasn’t contacted her family for the past several months.

   Meanwhile, Matt has become friendly with a small time ex-con named Eddie Dunphy, who has been attending A.A. meetings for the past seven months and is mulling over asking Matt to be his “confessor” in Step 5 of the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

   Eddie claims to have something pretty heavy on his mind and when he doesn’t show up at meetings for a few days Matt manages to get into his apartment and discovers Eddie’s body. Eddie, apparently, had strangled himself while experimenting in kinky sex. Matt, naturally, thinks there is something fishy about the death.

   While I fully expected the two cases to connect up, I was somewhat surprised that they did only tangentially. (While looking into one case Matt discovers what happened in the other.) The characterization is excellent: Eddie; the woman who manages Eddie’s building, Willa Rossiter, with whom Scudder begins a sexual relationship; and a West side hood named Mickey Ballou.

   My main quibble with the book is the hurried ending. Having discovered what happened to Paula, Matt does a few hours of telephoning and record checking and suddenly knows who killed Eddie and why.