Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Was reading this and thinking I would say something about “A pimp with a heart of gold.” But then Block beat me to it, right there on page 259. Oh well. Guess I’ll have to find some other way to be glib. Like how this book’s twice as long as any one of the previous Matthew Scudder novels. How you like that for a review?
All things considered, Eight Million Ways to Die follows the same formula: someone is murdered, the police are looking in the wrong place if they’re looking at all, and Scudder is hired, agreeing to the job against his better judgement. There’s prostitutes, and a booze, and coffee, and those dirty New York City streets.
However, layered on top of that, is one man’s struggle with his addiction. And this is why the book is twice as long as it needed to be. I say “needed” because the alcoholism and the murder mystery don’t really intertwine in any way. Oh, there’s a little bit of overlap, but nothing to get too caught up in. This is, sort of, two different books.
Which is not to say that they are two different books that stand alone. After all, the formula has Matt Scudder walking around, talking to people, drinking, following leads, drinking, jumping to some conclusion that the reader doesn’t have enough information to figure himself, and drinking. Except this time, instead of drinking, Scudder tries not to drink– and apparently that takes way more words to describe.
Who knows, maybe Block got paid by the word this time. The guy wins awards, so obviously it’s appreciated, switching from existential-angst to AA-angst. Upping the ante, as it were. I’m not complaining, but I’m not saying I love it, either. I never thought the drinking was all that much of a problem in the previous Scudder novels. There didn’t seem to be any consequences– so why fix what ain’t broken?