A Drop of the Hard Stuff

Lawrence Block has written 17 Matthew Scudder novels; I think I've read about half a dozen. Like many detective series, they start to become a kind of comfort food of reading--not a lot happens, but if you enjoy company with the characters, you sort of drift along as the minimal plot unfolds, and feel a certain sense of ease.

A Drop of the Hard Stuff is the latest Scudder novel, but since Block has allowed Scudder to age, he's gone back in the past and made this a story from Scudder's past. It's sometime in the early '80s, and Scudder, a former cop and unlicensed private detective, is approaching his first year of sobriety. At an AA meeting, he runs into an old childhood friend, who went into a life of crime. The friend has been doing his Eighth Step--making amends--which requires him to track down all he has hurt and apologize and offer restitution. But this gets him killed--two bullets; one in the head, and one in the mouth.

His friend's sponsor hires him to look into the death, but when the sponsor turns up dead, in what looks like a suicide, Scudder can't let go, and through dogged use of shoe leather and friends in the police department, he parses who the killer is, but justice sometimes is a tricky thing.

The Scudder novels are known for their precision about AA, and the daily struggle to maintain sobriety. Block has Scudder narrate the books with a perhaps overly detailed listing of his day's events, such as where he eats and what subways or buses he takes, but mostly it has to do with his AA meetings--where and when. It becomes clear that being a member of AA requires attending at least one meeting a day, sometimes two, and Scudder is often on the phone with his sponsor, the sagacious Jim Faber.

Scudder is a certain type of detective--the loner. He lives in a hotel room and, in this novel, has a half-hearted affair with a woman whom he only sees on Saturday nights. He's not as antisocial as Andrew Vachss' Burke, but he's a close second. He refers to his former life in Syosset with a wife and sons as if it were ancient history, and attends meetings, sometimes tuned in to the speaker, sometimes not, but always taking comfort in the community.


A few of Scudder's regulars appear. Mick Ballou, the cleaver-wielding butcher's son and crime boss (and, oddly, Scudder's friend), is the listener of Scudder's reminiscence. Joe Durkin, the cop, and Danny Boy, the albino who knows everybody, also make appearances. I have a feeling Block also set this novel in the past is so he could dispense with the ease of today's investigation tools such as cell phones and the Internet--Block is the kind of writer who likes his characters to use the phone book and phone booths.

This book is not action packed. There are a handful of murders, but all happen off-page, and when Scudder is threatened by the killer, it's in the form of booze--the killer leaves a bottle of Maker's Mark on his desk, and soaks his mattress with it.

This probably isn't the ideal novel to start with for Scudder--that would probably be When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, but for those familiar with him and his particular style (he has terse, uncomplicated observances like, "You don't die all at once. Not anymore. These days you die a little at a time") it's a pleasant trip down memory lane.