When The Sacred Gin Mill Closes Author:Lawrence Block Lawrence Block's wonderful down-and-out ex-cop is at it again. It's the summer of '75. Scudder's back in the streets of New York. Back in the bars, the ginmills, the watering holes, the buckets of blood. Back in the company of his barroom buddies - Billie Keegan and Skip Devoe, Tim Pat Morrissey and Bobby Ruslander, Carolyn "from the Caroline" a... more »nd Tough Tommy Tillary.
And because Matt Scudder does favors for friends (and the bank balance is low, as usual) he finds himself at work for those friends. Skip Devoe's tax records are missing and Scudder has to get them back. Tommy Tillary's wife is dead and Scudder has to clear him. Tim Pat's after-hours joint was robbed and Scudder has to find out who did it. Carolyn just needs a friend - and Scudder's it.
The hard-drinking hero of EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE has his work cut out for him. If the IRS gets its hands on Skip Devoe's real numbers, he'll be behind bars for cooking the books. It's not a job for the police, obviously, any more than it is the inside job that cleaned out the Morrissey brothers' cash box. And Tommy Tillary certainly doesn't want the cops to discover the affair he's been carrying on - not with his wife lying murdered in the bedroom of their Brooklyn home.
With predawn fireworks at Morrissey's heralding the Fourth of July, this powerhouse of a novel literally starts off with a bang, and the action never flags until the last bottle is empty and the last man is dead.« less