Nine long years have passed since the killer last struck. Nine years since eighthelpless young women were hideously slaughteredby an ice-pick wielding maniac. Now hard-drinking ex-cop and unlicensed investigator Matt Scudder has been hiredto bring the murderer to justice at last. Relentlessly Scudder follows an aging trail of blood towards a psychopath either long gone, long dead or very patiently awaiting the chance to kill again.
These early Matthew Scudder books, written in the late 70s and early 80s, feel like a window into another world. Scudder isn’t so much a private investigator as he is "a guy who does favors and sometimes takes some money in exchange for them". He solves his mysteries without the aid of computers and databases and cell phones — his tools of the trade are footwork, conversation, and public libraries. He spends a lot of time knocking on doors and dropping dimes(!) into pay phones. Unfortunately, he also spends a lot of time in the bottle, a trait that follows him through the series. In this book, a man has been arrested for a series of murders several years earlier. The problem is, he couldn’t have killed the final victim. That victim’s father is looking for answers, and Scudder is going to try to find them. I enjoy these books because they’re short, gritty, and to the point.
