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A review by brents
Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block
3.0
Besides watching the film adaptation of A Walk Among The Tombstones a few years ago (which is really good) this was my introduction to Lawrence Block's work and his alcoholic off-the-books PI, Matthew Scudder. As far as first impressions go I would have to say I liked it, but I'm going to need to see more if I decide whether I'm going to be a fan of these books or not.
The premise of this story is that a prostitute comes to Scudder seeking help to be able to leave her pimp. Scudder is surprised at how easy it was to convince the pimp she could leave the life, but then she ends up gruesomely murdered. The pimp named Chance, who is weirdly written as a sympathetic figure and a man of culture in this book, hires Scudder to find her killer because he believes the police will write it off as just another dead prostitute. That kicks off the case.
I had things I liked and definitely things I didn't like about this book so let's run them down. What I liked foremost was the setting and atmosphere. This is the NYC of the early 80s, crime-ridden, dangerous and borderline nihilistic in terms of violence and care for human life. That's where the title of the book comes from. The world of this novel is one in which there are 8 million ways to die just living one's life. The other thing I really liked was the main character Scudder. The story is told from the 1st person POV as are a lot of detective stories, and certainly "alcoholic detective" is a common trope. What is different is that rarely have I seen the battle with alcoholism really woven so seamlessly into the narrative where it's really an important part of the story as it is here. Also, the fact that Scudder works off the books gives the character opportunity to be a little more morally gray and interact with and work for some seedier individuals. Overall the character is quite layered for the detective genre.
What I didn't like is probably the slightly longer list. The pimp character that Scudder was working for was about the least realistic character I've ever seen in fiction, and pretty much flies in the face of what I've ever read or seen of real pimps which are usually exploitive disgusting creatures that are modern day slavers in the sex trade. Also, the case itself started off interesting, but the conclusion was wholly unsatisfying. In my opinion a good detective story should have you following along and attempting to solve the case along with the main character and maybe even giving you enough pieces to do so or at least enough to build some tension over who it might be. Here that is almost non-existent with the conclusion kind of coming out of nowhere. It wasn't really clear over the course of the investigation how Scudder could have put the pieces together. Finally, and maybe this hurt my enjoyment of the book more than I want to admit, the author himself was doing the reading for the audiobook (this is in the audible plus catalog) and it really didn't work. Professional narrators are professionals for a reason. They're really good at performing the work to ad something to it. When it's the author just reading it to you it loses something, and I would just rather be reading it myself.
There are more of these books available as part of Audible Plus so I'll probably try 1 or 2 more at least. I'll try some newer ones with professional narration as well to see if that makes a difference. For right now Matthew Scudder is in the maybe file.
The premise of this story is that a prostitute comes to Scudder seeking help to be able to leave her pimp. Scudder is surprised at how easy it was to convince the pimp she could leave the life, but then she ends up gruesomely murdered. The pimp named Chance, who is weirdly written as a sympathetic figure and a man of culture in this book, hires Scudder to find her killer because he believes the police will write it off as just another dead prostitute. That kicks off the case.
I had things I liked and definitely things I didn't like about this book so let's run them down. What I liked foremost was the setting and atmosphere. This is the NYC of the early 80s, crime-ridden, dangerous and borderline nihilistic in terms of violence and care for human life. That's where the title of the book comes from. The world of this novel is one in which there are 8 million ways to die just living one's life. The other thing I really liked was the main character Scudder. The story is told from the 1st person POV as are a lot of detective stories, and certainly "alcoholic detective" is a common trope. What is different is that rarely have I seen the battle with alcoholism really woven so seamlessly into the narrative where it's really an important part of the story as it is here. Also, the fact that Scudder works off the books gives the character opportunity to be a little more morally gray and interact with and work for some seedier individuals. Overall the character is quite layered for the detective genre.
What I didn't like is probably the slightly longer list. The pimp character that Scudder was working for was about the least realistic character I've ever seen in fiction, and pretty much flies in the face of what I've ever read or seen of real pimps which are usually exploitive disgusting creatures that are modern day slavers in the sex trade. Also, the case itself started off interesting, but the conclusion was wholly unsatisfying. In my opinion a good detective story should have you following along and attempting to solve the case along with the main character and maybe even giving you enough pieces to do so or at least enough to build some tension over who it might be. Here that is almost non-existent with the conclusion kind of coming out of nowhere. It wasn't really clear over the course of the investigation how Scudder could have put the pieces together. Finally, and maybe this hurt my enjoyment of the book more than I want to admit, the author himself was doing the reading for the audiobook (this is in the audible plus catalog) and it really didn't work. Professional narrators are professionals for a reason. They're really good at performing the work to ad something to it. When it's the author just reading it to you it loses something, and I would just rather be reading it myself.
There are more of these books available as part of Audible Plus so I'll probably try 1 or 2 more at least. I'll try some newer ones with professional narration as well to see if that makes a difference. For right now Matthew Scudder is in the maybe file.