Hope To Die (Matt Scudder Mystery) (Hardcover)

The whole series has developed the Crime genre in this beautiful and rewarding way. Yes, you get the gore and the action expected of the subject matter: you also get a human context, though - so that oft-claimed justification for violent material is actually appropriate in Block's writing. And it makes the "thrills" what they should be: disturbing, uncomfortable and thought-provoking.

This time, Matt interacts as ever with extremely well-realised characters - the "regular" cast of associates, this complex and delicate case's witnesses and suspects, and so on - applying his questioning and listening skills, his acuity about human nature, gradually to root out the truths behind what happened and why. He travels the locations (usually the city, usually on foot or by public transport) and pays deep attention. Block's fluent, incisive, witty turn of phrase similarly commands our attention, so that we get the whole story and usually learn something (ultimately about ourselves) in the process. It's quite riveting to experience. For one taste, have a read of the little sequence early on when Matt and TJ meet the murdered parents' niece in a Coffee Shop and Matt coaxes out of her the reasons for her suspicions about the involvement of the daughter (her cousin) who discovered the brutalised bodies. Brilliant!

We certainly get all the thrills we expect of the classic Thriller, but we get so much more from our time with Matt Scudder; in fact we get moral challenge and insight on a level at which any literature aspiring to the label "Great" should aim. Not just Who Done It, then; but Why They Did It and Why We Should Care, too. That's why the "digressions" and reflections on his personal life, his age, his changing physical capacity, his relationships and the rest are so essential.

Even if you take them as a kind of background "serial," or even (perish the thought) as the ongoing "soap" playing under the separate adventures, they are entertaining, engaging and full of richly-drawn and varied characters (his partner Elaine, ex-Hooker now a Woman of Culture and Property; TJ, the savvy street-kid still "street" but entrusted with a kind of "management" role for Matt's operations; the awesome butcher/barkeeper Mick Ballou). But this opulent cast further supplies the Scudder Mysteries with an unrivalled depth and originality of a "life" for Matt that makes his dealings with the darkest side of human nature that much more authentic and meaningful than lesser works in the same genre.

You can't fail, at the very least, to be excited and entertained by such another well-constructed Crime Thriller so beautifully written. I hope, though, that you'll join Scudder in this thought-provoking little community Block has created over the entire series. You will find your intelligence very well complimented.