{"id":1741,"date":"2016-07-28T09:03:19","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T16:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1741"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:30:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:30:59","slug":"review-out-on-the-cutting-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/28\/review-out-on-the-cutting-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Out on the Cutting Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/39508\" style=\"float: left;padding-right: 20px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1348695157m\/39508.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Out on the Cutting Edge\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/39508\">Out on the Cutting Edge<\/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\/1711714924\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>      Matthew Scudder used to be addicted to alcohol, but now he\u2019s sober. Lawrence Block, however, is still addicted to killing young women, waiting for a several months, and then sending Scudder on a cold trail to find them. I don\u2019t have a problem with this. (I mean, in terms of reading mysteries, I\u2019m not advocating of murder in general, obviously.)<\/p>\n<p>Here we are in the 7th Scudder novel, and we\u2019re sort of returning to form. The first 4 novels had a Scudder who investigates, frequents bars, feels a kind of malaise. Then Block shook things up and gave us a look-see at Matt struggling with his alcoholism. And now, in <em>Out on the Cutting Edge<\/em>, instead of frequenting bars, Scudder frequents AA meetings. A decent author would probably be able to rewrite the earlier novels so that the bar visits were all AA visits too: and Block is a very decent author.<\/p>\n<p>Which is what I mean when I say we\u2019re returning to form. Existential Angst gave way to Struggling With the Human Condition and now, thankfully, we\u2019re back to Angst. Not quite as Existential, but verging on the Absurd (not the \u201csilly\u201d absurd, but the \u201cthere\u2019s no explaining things so why bother\u201d absurd). Block achieves <em>this<\/em> by giving us a two-fer in <em>Cutting Edge<\/em>: two mysteries instead of one.<\/p>\n<p>And the cynic in me wants to holler \u201cbut Deus Ex Machina!\u201d at how those mysteries end up solving one another, and the handy little \u201cI\u2019m done writing so here\u2019s the end\u201d bow that Block puts on it at the end of the book. But I\u2019m just glad we\u2019re back to the good old Scudder novel, less than 200 pages, not too demanding on the morality front. <\/p>\n<p>      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1711714924\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Out on the Cutting Edge by Lawrence Block My rating: 4 of 5 stars Matthew Scudder used to be addicted to alcohol, but now he\u2019s sober. Lawrence Block, however, is still addicted to killing young women, waiting for a several months, and then sending Scudder on a cold trail to find them. I don\u2019t have &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/28\/review-out-on-the-cutting-edge\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Review: Out on the Cutting Edge&#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-1741","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-s5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741","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=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1742,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions\/1742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}