{"id":1730,"date":"2016-07-18T14:35:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T21:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:30:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:30:59","slug":"review-when-the-sacred-ginmill-closes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/18\/review-when-the-sacred-ginmill-closes\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: When the Sacred Ginmill Closes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/132111\" style=\"float: left;padding-right: 20px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1408930722m\/132111.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"When the Sacred Ginmill Closes\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/132111\">When the Sacred Ginmill Closes<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/17613\">Lawrence Block<\/a><br \/>\n      My rating: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1702242185\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>      It\u2019s a heck of a thing, reading the last book in a series when the previous book was the last one and there\u2019s still eleven books to go. I mean, it\u2019s a good thing that I know, for a fact, Lawrence Block did not read my review of <em>Eight Million Ways to Die<\/em> and then decide to return to form for <em>When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes<\/em> in response to my complaints.<\/p>\n<p>I understand that <em>Eight Million<\/em> was supposed to be Matthew Scudder\u2019s final act. With <em>Sacred<\/em>, we get to go back to the beginning: Matt the drunk, Matt the guy who does \u201cfavors\u201d for friends, Matt the guy who tithes wages and time alike in whichever random church he comes across when he needs to sit for a spell. <\/p>\n<p>But Block\u2019s approach to the old Matt is in the style of the new Matt, which is to say, <em>Sacred<\/em> is a more nuanced, complicated story than any of the four books leading up to <em>Eight Million<\/em>. It\u2019s a kind of transition novel, in that we get our old familiar Matt to guide us through this new kind of Matthew Scudder mystery.<\/p>\n<p>I say all of this without having read any of the other books in the series yet, so take what I\u2019m saying with a grain of salt. But I fully expect to have a different itch scratched by those books. Which means I\u2019ll miss the old Matt. So it was nice to see him again, one last time.<\/p>\n<p>      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1702242185\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block My rating: 4 of 5 stars It\u2019s a heck of a thing, reading the last book in a series when the previous book was the last one and there\u2019s still eleven books to go. I mean, it\u2019s a good thing that I know, for a fact, Lawrence &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/18\/review-when-the-sacred-ginmill-closes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Review: When the Sacred Ginmill Closes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-rU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1731,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/1731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}