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A review by daezarkian
A Ticket to the Boneyard by Lawrence Block
4.0
Many years ago, retired Detective turned (sort of) private investigator Matt Scudder put a dangerous man behind bars. Now he's back...and he's going to make every woman in Matt's life pay...
While light on the mystery elements, "A Ticket to the Boneyard" is one of Block's finer character studies of his ex-alcoholic protaganist. Nearly every scenes radiates Matt's scars and regrets, compounded by his belief that a past attempt to do some good might have created a true monster.
This was at times a difficult book to get through. While Block doesn't linger on the details, some of the violence against women even implied in "A Ticket to the Boneyard" is gut-wrenching, and the book has a somehow even more somber tone than "A Dance At the Slaughterhouse" and "A Walk Among the Tombstones". This is the darkest Scudder-mystery I've read yet.
So while not necessarily for the faint of heart, Block's amazing character-building skills make this a terrific read. I've come to know Matt Scudder well over the adventures of his I've read, and I look forward to meeting him again (even if I'll be wary of the darkness that inevitably comes in his wake).
While light on the mystery elements, "A Ticket to the Boneyard" is one of Block's finer character studies of his ex-alcoholic protaganist. Nearly every scenes radiates Matt's scars and regrets, compounded by his belief that a past attempt to do some good might have created a true monster.
This was at times a difficult book to get through. While Block doesn't linger on the details, some of the violence against women even implied in "A Ticket to the Boneyard" is gut-wrenching, and the book has a somehow even more somber tone than "A Dance At the Slaughterhouse" and "A Walk Among the Tombstones". This is the darkest Scudder-mystery I've read yet.
So while not necessarily for the faint of heart, Block's amazing character-building skills make this a terrific read. I've come to know Matt Scudder well over the adventures of his I've read, and I look forward to meeting him again (even if I'll be wary of the darkness that inevitably comes in his wake).