Time to Murder and Create (Matthew Scudder)

Ex-cop Matt Scudder is hired to find the person or persons who killed Jake "The Spinner" Jablon, a petty thief and blackmailer whose death means nothing to everyone but Scudder

This is the third of Block's superb Matt Scudder series to appear (it was first issued by Dell in paperback back in 1977), and its return now in hardcover from Dark Harvest (which did the first, Sins of the Fathers , last year) is great news for admirers. The story is swift, complicated and elegant, and Kellerman gets it right when he says that the Scudder novels "are the best New York crime novels ever written." In this one Scudder, still in his drinking days, is paid by "Spinner" Jablon, a small-time hood, to hold an envelope for him, with instructions to open it only when he dies, and then do what's necessary. What's necessary turns out to be determining which of Jablon's three eminent blackmail victims did the little man in. One is a wealthy businessman who's been covering up for his teenage daughter, whose car killed a child; there's a society wife with a past in porn movies and prostitution; another is a candidate for governor with a taste for hurting small boys in sadistic sex. How Scudder finds out who had Jablon killed, and the sometimes tragic consequences of his investigation, provide the meat of this outstanding thriller, which moves effortlessly through sleazy bars, skyscraper suites and luxury hotels. The dialogue is, as always, dead on and rivetingly entertaining, and the atmosphere--Kellerman has it right again--is "wonderfully morose." Not to be missed.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Second of the publisher's hardcover reprints of the early Matt Scudder novels. In The Sins of the Fathers (1992/1976), Stephen King waxed on about the alcoholic p.i.'s cases; this one comes with an equally flattering introduction by Jonathan Kellerman, though the story's not as good--a relatively pat, if pungently saturnine, tale of blackmail and murder. As with many reprints of aged paperbacks (e.g., Bill Pronzini's Carmody's Run, p. 554), period-piece value outweighs the literary here. This Scudder is very 70's; boozing his days and nights away; casually bribing cops for the price of a ``hat'' ($25); willing--thanks to his (and the era's) ignorance about child molestation--to let a pederast go free. The case itself has a classic setup: A small-time hood hires Scudder to guard a package; when the hood turns up dead, Scudder opens the package to find four envelopes, three of them holding blackmail evidence--one on an ``architectural consultant'' with pockets deep enough to have bought his daughter off a manslaughter charge; another on a society wife with a secret prostitute past; the third on a would-be state governor with a yen for young boys. The fourth envelope contains $4,000 and a request that Scudder find the hood's murderer among the three. The p.i. visits each suspect, pretending to be their new blackmailer. Soon, two near-miss attempts--by car and by knife--are made on his life; then one suspect kills himself: case closed? Scudder thinks so, until an unexpected third attack sends him on a drunken bender and onto the trail of suspect number two: case closed? Not likely, in Scudder/Block's darkly ironic world. More than paperback hack work, but special only to die-hard Scudder fans--and for glimmers of what was to come. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Named after a line from Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock , this 1976 novel features Block's popular detective Matt Scudder. The plot finds Scudder investigating the death of a small-time hood who, knowing he was marked for death, paid Scudder in advance to solve his murder. All libraries where Block is popular will want to have this first hardcover edition, which also contains an introduction by fellow mystery writer Jonathan Kellerman.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.