{"id":1775,"date":"2016-09-26T21:05:49","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T04:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1775"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:30:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:30:12","slug":"review-a-long-line-of-dead-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/26\/review-a-long-line-of-dead-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: A Long Line of Dead Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>
\n A Long Line of Dead Men<\/a> by Lawrence Block<\/a>
\n My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Book 12 of 17 in the Matthew Scudder series. But let’s be clear: more like book number 4. I mean, the first three could have been easily re-written with different main characters, since the drunk ex-cop private-eye thing’s basically its own genre. And the next few books were more about Scudder’s alcoholism than anything else. But Out on The Cutting Edge<\/em> brought in some characters that have more or less stuck around, and Matt’s been a recovering alcoholic longer (in terms of pages spent at AA meetings) than he was a drunk. <\/p>\n

That said, Block’s still using these books to bring up ideas that are a little larger than “whodunnit.” Matt gets to compare himself to his clients a little more thoroughly; instead of investigating the months-old murder of a prostitute than no one cares about, he’s looking into the serial execution of a club of good-ol’-boys. Guys who, if not exactly like Matthew himself, are at least close enough to give him just a little sense of mid-life crisis.<\/p>\n

A Scudder-style mid-life crisis that is. Instead of finding a side-piece and buying a flash car, he gives up the side piece and joins a men’s club. One that meets only once a year, for no other reason than to see who’s still alive. A bunch of middle-aged men shaking hands with their older selves. Sort of.<\/p>\n

At any rate, it’s a mystery novel, and Scudder solves the crime, but instead of wrapping things up in hard-boiled fashion like he used to, the ending is kind of meh. I mean, Matt used to shrug at morality, keeping things simple. But in this one, he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. And since it all works out (I guess, I don’t know if it’s going to come back in one of the next five books) I guess that means it’s the writer who’s trying to have it both ways. Not very satisfying for me as a reader, but as an aging man myself, I guess I understand.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Long Line of Dead Men by Lawrence Block My rating: 3 of 5 stars Book 12 of 17 in the Matthew Scudder series. But let’s be clear: more like book number 4. I mean, the first three could have been easily re-written with different main characters, since the drunk ex-cop private-eye thing’s basically its … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: A Long Line of Dead Men”<\/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-1775","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-sD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775","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=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}