A Dance at the Slaughterhouse: An Edgar Award Winner - Softcover

Block, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380713748 ISBN 13: 9780380713745

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1992

Synopsis

Ex-cop Matt Scudder is hired to prove that a wealthy socialite arranged for the murder of his pregnant wife--a job that will take him deep into the bowels of New York's porn underground. Reissue.

About this title

Review:

Matt Scudder, the recovering alcoholic private eye from The Devil Knows You're Dead and A Ticket to the Boneyard, embarks on another descent into the nightmarish quarters of New York, this time to investigate the sex-for-sale industry. Hired by the brother of an heiress to investigate her rape and murder, Scudder tails her husband to a boxing match and notices another man whom he saw on video a few months earlier on a different case involving a snuff film. As Scudder calls on old friends for assistance and tours New York's dark physical and social landscapes, Block masterfully builds the pressure that leads Scudder to the violent resolution in this winner of the 1992 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.

From the Back Cover:

There is no accolade or major mystery award that has not already been bestowed upon LAWRENCE BLOCK. His acclaimed crime novels are as intelligent, provocative, and emotionally complex as they are nerve-tighteningly intense. And perhaps the most respected of his myriad works are the Matthew Scudder books -- masterworks of suspenseful invention featuring a remarkable protagonist rich in conscience and character, with all the flaws that his humanity entails. This is the detective novel as high art.

In Matt Scudder's mind, money, power, and position elevate nobody above morality and the law. Now the ex-cop and unlicensed p.i. has been hired to prove that socialite Richard Thurman orchestrated the brutal murder of his beautiful, pregnant wife. During Scudder's hard drinking years, he left a piece of his soul on every seedy corner of the Big Apple. But this case is more depraved and more potentially devastating than anything he experienced while floundering in the urban depths. Because this investigation is leading Scudder on a frightening grand tour of New York's sex-for-sale underworld -- where an innocent young life is simply a commodity to be bought and perverted...and then destroyed.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0380713748
• ISBN 13: 9780380713745
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 384