![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Lawrence Block - A Long Line of Dead Men
This is one of the middle books in Block's Matthew Scudder hard-boiled PI murder mystery series. I reread this book recently enough (in the last couple of years) to remember whodunnit, but I read it again this week just to appreciate the intricate murder mystery plotting. It's a very 80s book and particularly 80s in its character archetypes (the recovering alcoholic PI, the call-girl girlfriend, the streetwise teenage sidekick) but it's dated in a way that's mostly charming, and the misdirects/fakeouts in this book are so well done. Mainly I just wanted to take a careful look at what he did and how.
Below the cut I'm going to mention a few highly spoilery technique notes. I'm not going to summarize the plot so much as just mention the things I think it did particularly well. Still, if you like murder mysteries and you like to be surprised, it's worth reading this one unspoiled, because it's very well done.
- The book opens with a compelling mini-mystery that keeps you reading until the actual mystery kicks in. Basically it drops you into a very intriguing "what the hell is going on" situation and then by the time you start to get a handle on that, the actual mystery has begun to materialize. The entire reason why I reread this book the last time was because I was reading the first pages of a bunch of different books off my bookshelf to get a handle on openings, and I couldn't stop reading this one because the mystery was so compelling! The setup with the Club of 31 is just so weird and curious and engaging, with the hints of conspiracy and then the gradually introduced details of the members and the murders.
- Block plays absolutely fair with the reader (something he usually does in his books, IIRC). All the clues are there; and in fact you get the suspect list right off the bat, and the killer is in there. Block just does a really excellent job of taking the actual killer out of play right off the bat in a non-suspicious way, by making him one of the victims and in a way that's particularly difficult to check up on, but also a cause of death that doesn't jump out as the kind of death in which "the body was never found and we all know what that means."
- I think even more than taking the killer out of play as a suspect, something Block does particularly well in this book is that he provides a good cover for the killer to interact with the hero and quiz him about the progress of the case without it appearing weird or out of place. Their mutual involvement in AA is so obviously the reason why the other guy keeps calling him and why they get together occasionally that it never seems like an obvious ploy for information until the penny drops. It's so subtly done that it all seems to be a mostly unrelated subplot until the reveal and then you realize that Block found a very clever way to give us a good up-close look at the killer without making it obvious that he was doing so.
I do find the end of this book a bit far over the moral event horizon -- I get that they're in a very tricky situation with a serial killer who can't be connected to most of his crimes, but their actual solution for what to do with the killer is kind of ... yikes. This time around, the cruelty of it bothers me less than it does the last time I read the book, but the logistics bother me more. The entire plan hinges around a family of random OCs being totally okay with bringing food to a guy who's chained up in a remote cabin for the rest of his, and their, lives and never telling anyone about it. That's kind of ... A Lot.
So after reading A Long Line of Dead Men and enjoying it, I went and got some more of the Scudder books from the library. I own a couple of random ones, and I've read a lot more, but I haven't read most of them in decades and I've forgotten almost everything. Thus far I've read Eight Million Ways to Die (published in 1982) because I was under the mistaken impression that it was the first book in the series. Turns out it's like book 5, oops. So now I'm moving on to A Time to Murder and Create (1976), which is book 2 (the earliest one in the series that the library had).
Eight Million Ways to Die doesn't have as well-crafted a mystery plot as A Long Line of Dead Men (the mystery, which involves murdered prostitutes, actually feels somewhat random and not very well set up) but the characterization is much better, sharper and more literary with less of a "80s TV movie of the week" feeling to it. It's also got an incredibly wrenching day-by-day description of going through the early days of breaking a severe alcohol addiction. The author is either working off personal experience or read a lot of memoirs. I'm simultaneously taking mental notes for writing Ward, and just really wanting to give the protagonist a hug.
The books are, obviously, quite dated in some ways, but one thing that I find interesting about them is a level of casual background diversity that I wouldn't have expected for books of their era (the ones I've been reading were written between the mid-70s and early 90s). I mean, given that they're hard-boiled crime novels, a lot of it is the kind of diversity that you don't precisely want, but it still interests me that even as far back as the 70s, and maybe earlier, Block populates the background of his world with racially diverse people and gay people and so on. I'm particularly surprised by how many background LGBT characters he has, in an era when you just don't really expect that from genre fiction all that much. And yeah, some of them are prime examples of What You Don't Want, but there's also things like a character's offhand mention that he bought his house from a gay couple and so forth, or the protagonist dropping in on a mostly-gay AA meeting -- it's just a very casual part of the world. There's a trans woman in Eight Million Ways to Die, who is a dead prostitute because of course she is, but I also noticed that she's consistently referred to with female pronouns and, while the way that some of the (non-protagonist) characters talk about her is ... very 80s ... there's also a lot of narrative sympathy for her in the book and, in general, the feel you get from the book is that both the protagonist and the book itself are fine with gender reassignment as a thing. This from a book published in 1982. It's kind of like ... I wouldn't exactly hold these books up as great examples of representation, particularly by modern standards, but Block also clearly recognizes that he and his protagonist live in a world that's full of black people and LGBT people and women, all of whom are just people, and his books reflect that, which I appreciate since it's definitely not a given from a white dude born in 1938.
So yeah, so far I'm finding that Block is a similar author to Dick Francis in that his books are dated but not nearly as dated as I was expecting considering the era in which he was writing. (As opposed to the vaguely similar John D. McDonald books, which I also read and enjoyed back in the day, and tried rereading a couple of years back and ... yeah. Nope. The Suck Fairy has been there big-time.)
The library also had a few of his really early ones from the late 50s and 60s, reprinted with their gloriously cheesy pulp-era covers, so I picked up a couple of those too. I hope that Killing Castro is as amazingly bonkers as the title and premise suggest.
Below the cut I'm going to mention a few highly spoilery technique notes. I'm not going to summarize the plot so much as just mention the things I think it did particularly well. Still, if you like murder mysteries and you like to be surprised, it's worth reading this one unspoiled, because it's very well done.
- The book opens with a compelling mini-mystery that keeps you reading until the actual mystery kicks in. Basically it drops you into a very intriguing "what the hell is going on" situation and then by the time you start to get a handle on that, the actual mystery has begun to materialize. The entire reason why I reread this book the last time was because I was reading the first pages of a bunch of different books off my bookshelf to get a handle on openings, and I couldn't stop reading this one because the mystery was so compelling! The setup with the Club of 31 is just so weird and curious and engaging, with the hints of conspiracy and then the gradually introduced details of the members and the murders.
- Block plays absolutely fair with the reader (something he usually does in his books, IIRC). All the clues are there; and in fact you get the suspect list right off the bat, and the killer is in there. Block just does a really excellent job of taking the actual killer out of play right off the bat in a non-suspicious way, by making him one of the victims and in a way that's particularly difficult to check up on, but also a cause of death that doesn't jump out as the kind of death in which "the body was never found and we all know what that means."
- I think even more than taking the killer out of play as a suspect, something Block does particularly well in this book is that he provides a good cover for the killer to interact with the hero and quiz him about the progress of the case without it appearing weird or out of place. Their mutual involvement in AA is so obviously the reason why the other guy keeps calling him and why they get together occasionally that it never seems like an obvious ploy for information until the penny drops. It's so subtly done that it all seems to be a mostly unrelated subplot until the reveal and then you realize that Block found a very clever way to give us a good up-close look at the killer without making it obvious that he was doing so.
I do find the end of this book a bit far over the moral event horizon -- I get that they're in a very tricky situation with a serial killer who can't be connected to most of his crimes, but their actual solution for what to do with the killer is kind of ... yikes. This time around, the cruelty of it bothers me less than it does the last time I read the book, but the logistics bother me more. The entire plan hinges around a family of random OCs being totally okay with bringing food to a guy who's chained up in a remote cabin for the rest of his, and their, lives and never telling anyone about it. That's kind of ... A Lot.
So after reading A Long Line of Dead Men and enjoying it, I went and got some more of the Scudder books from the library. I own a couple of random ones, and I've read a lot more, but I haven't read most of them in decades and I've forgotten almost everything. Thus far I've read Eight Million Ways to Die (published in 1982) because I was under the mistaken impression that it was the first book in the series. Turns out it's like book 5, oops. So now I'm moving on to A Time to Murder and Create (1976), which is book 2 (the earliest one in the series that the library had).
Eight Million Ways to Die doesn't have as well-crafted a mystery plot as A Long Line of Dead Men (the mystery, which involves murdered prostitutes, actually feels somewhat random and not very well set up) but the characterization is much better, sharper and more literary with less of a "80s TV movie of the week" feeling to it. It's also got an incredibly wrenching day-by-day description of going through the early days of breaking a severe alcohol addiction. The author is either working off personal experience or read a lot of memoirs. I'm simultaneously taking mental notes for writing Ward, and just really wanting to give the protagonist a hug.
The books are, obviously, quite dated in some ways, but one thing that I find interesting about them is a level of casual background diversity that I wouldn't have expected for books of their era (the ones I've been reading were written between the mid-70s and early 90s). I mean, given that they're hard-boiled crime novels, a lot of it is the kind of diversity that you don't precisely want, but it still interests me that even as far back as the 70s, and maybe earlier, Block populates the background of his world with racially diverse people and gay people and so on. I'm particularly surprised by how many background LGBT characters he has, in an era when you just don't really expect that from genre fiction all that much. And yeah, some of them are prime examples of What You Don't Want, but there's also things like a character's offhand mention that he bought his house from a gay couple and so forth, or the protagonist dropping in on a mostly-gay AA meeting -- it's just a very casual part of the world. There's a trans woman in Eight Million Ways to Die, who is a dead prostitute because of course she is, but I also noticed that she's consistently referred to with female pronouns and, while the way that some of the (non-protagonist) characters talk about her is ... very 80s ... there's also a lot of narrative sympathy for her in the book and, in general, the feel you get from the book is that both the protagonist and the book itself are fine with gender reassignment as a thing. This from a book published in 1982. It's kind of like ... I wouldn't exactly hold these books up as great examples of representation, particularly by modern standards, but Block also clearly recognizes that he and his protagonist live in a world that's full of black people and LGBT people and women, all of whom are just people, and his books reflect that, which I appreciate since it's definitely not a given from a white dude born in 1938.
So yeah, so far I'm finding that Block is a similar author to Dick Francis in that his books are dated but not nearly as dated as I was expecting considering the era in which he was writing. (As opposed to the vaguely similar John D. McDonald books, which I also read and enjoyed back in the day, and tried rereading a couple of years back and ... yeah. Nope. The Suck Fairy has been there big-time.)
The library also had a few of his really early ones from the late 50s and 60s, reprinted with their gloriously cheesy pulp-era covers, so I picked up a couple of those too. I hope that Killing Castro is as amazingly bonkers as the title and premise suggest.
no subject
I've read some books written in the early part of the last century, and it can be quite hard to push some attitudes to one side (sometimes I've had to give up because of them), and yet I've also found some that, considering when they're written, actually don't treat the 'natives' as if they are brutal savages. Which for the era written, is quite forward thinking - though would fall far, far short of modern day's standards.
Trouble is, many nowadays would refuse to read them because they don't reflect today's standards, and yet I think some of them should be read, so people don't forget how people of colour etc were viewed in the past. But maybe I'm wrong.
no subject
no subject
As a reader of historical detective books, I find it interesting to see how authors deal with the attitudes of the era that they're writing in. Most don't tend to challenge them (even revel in them), but some will have the detective (whatever term they use for this, dependent on era and country etc) who is more in line with modern thinking, even if only in his/her thoughts. Some might not like that, but if it's done well, I do.
Like Lindsey Davis' Falco (Roman era), who is ruled by the female members of his family much more than he rules them (let's be honest, he doesn't really rule them at all, lol!), and is not keen on having a slave at first. Or Rosemary Rowe (Roman era again), whose character in a mosaic maker who was a slave himself, so it's no surprise he frees two of his slaves when they come of age, or that he sometimes ends up taking in slaves that have been mistreated.
Or Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma books (around the late 800's AD, in Ireland) that shows us how ahead Celtic culture was, where women were considered pretty much equal - contrasting this to Saxon, Angles and Roman laws/attitudes towards women, and the battle between Celtic ways and the ever increasing influence from Rome on their laws (and, of course, the conflict between Celtic and Roman Christian faiths).
Then you have Steven Saylor (Roman again), whose character frees and marries a slave and does end up freeing a couple more along the way, and taking in a couple of kid slaves who were being neglected. His books are very gritty and really show the inhuman conditions of slaves, and the terrible attitude towards them - which resonates with the later black slavery that happened. It was a real eye opener to me. Not that I didn't know bad things happened etc, but when you read it in a book and it's 'just the way things are', it really hits you (which I think is what he's going for, as well as historical accuracy).
Um, I think I've veered off course here a little, sorry.
no subject
But yeah, in historical fiction I think there's always a mix of trying to accurately portray the attitudes of the time, and trying to write the characters in a way that will feel relatable for the modern-day readers who are reading the books. I love the Falco books and they feel authentic and period-accurate to me, but I bet if you could somehow go back in time and give them to a Roman reader, an actual Roman probably wouldn't think they were authentic at all. Because of course they're filtered through the modern viewpoint somewhat, so modern readers can enjoy and understand them. But if you make it feel too modern, it's offputting. It's a balancing act!
no subject
no subject
no subject
If Block isn't a recovering alcoholic I will eat Philip Marlowe's hat. It's very difficult to describe that kind of scene if you haven't been in it. Addiction is like chronic pain, it's hard to understand from the outside.
no subject
his buddy the Butcher Boy kinda freaked me out
Yeah, tbh I really dislike Mick. I appreciate him as a character (sort of) but my reaction to him otherwise is a giant nope. I was curious to find out if I'd like him better this time around than when I was in my teens/early 20s, because I could see him being one of those characters who is offputting to a younger reader but not so much to older!adult!me ... but nope, I still don't like him.
And yeah, I feel that the addiction aspect of the books has to be written from personal experience, even if he wasn't necessarily as deep into it as Scudder clearly is. But yeah, there's a deep authenticity to it that I'm not sure if you can fake.
no subject
I haven't read his other series! except the Burglar who liked Bogart book or whatever the title is, and I was just like....ehh, not for me. The Scudder books got under my skin, though. I really like that Matt kept growing -- like sobering up itself, you think quitting drinking is the end, but it's really the beginning. Very apt.
Yeah, tbh I really dislike Mick. I appreciate him as a character (sort of) but my reaction to him otherwise is a giant nope.
Yeah, I feel like he's supposed to be Matt's dark side or brother in arms or something, and the narration really wants us to like him, but....noooo. I do like his speech patterns, and I might enjoy him more if listening to an audiobook or watching an actor portray him.
no subject
He does have an enjoyable cadence to his character voice, though, and I like his back-and-forth with Matt.
I haven't read his other series! except the Burglar who liked Bogart book or whatever the title is, and I was just like....ehh, not for me. The Scudder books got under my skin, though. I really like that Matt kept growing -- like sobering up itself, you think quitting drinking is the end, but it's really the beginning. Very apt.
Yeah, I read a bunch of the Burglar books back in the day, and some of his other ones, but like you said, Scudder's the one that got under my skin, and they're the only ones I kept. I'm really enjoying my reread.
no subject
And I love when that happens. My favorite example of "tripped and fell into three dimensions" is probably still Frederick Nebel's Kennedy just because in a 1920's Black Mask pulp crime series who expects that, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a downside to it.
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
I always appreciate that.
no subject
no subject
"As soon as the insurance company paid up, he wanted half. It was a million with the double indemnity, since murder is accidental death -- "
"Which I never understood."
"Neither did I, but I guess it's an accident from the point of view of the victim."
no subject
That is a great line.
I've read a couple of Block's standalones, but never any of his series novels; this post is making a compelling case for them.
no subject
no subject
If you like Francis and McDonald, I definitely think you ought to give Block a try! It might be right up your alley.
no subject
I've decided to turn September into the month of reading specifically mysteries, and Block is next on my radar. I'm excited!
no subject
no subject
Like Star Trek -- the original 60s Star Trek treats its female characters so WELL in some ways compared to modern media! (and then so badly in others) But for example, a huge number of the background extras in TOS are women. In short skirts, of course, but a ton of women there working on the ship. I haven't done a full study of this but I'm *pretty* sure they're significantly better about this ratio than the rebooted TOS movies ST 2009 / Into Darkness -- and it's just an uncommented-on thing in the original series.
I suspect sometimes as we get more "conscious" of these things people get wary of being "too PC" or something so things spiral weirdly? Or like, "oh, we're consciously including a gay couple because we're good progressive creators, but okay now we shouldn't put in another one here because that's Too Much Gay" or "if we have too many women that'll be seen as a Message" rather than just putting people wherever...
no subject
But anyway, yeah, this makes a lot of sense to me. I feel as if there was a sort of a, for lack of a better way to put it, a media diversity nadir between about 2000-ish, or maybe the mid to late 90s, until around the middle of the current decade when things suddenly took off again. And I think you're right as to the reasons why -- there was a lot of effort for awhile to produce less white/male media and then kind of an attitude of "well, we made it, so we don't need to keep working on it" or worries about being seen as "pandering", perhaps -- and so, OOPS, back it slid the other way.
But it does feel to me lately as if it's taken off again, possibly kicked off by the first of the new Star Wars movies and various other popular things that came out around that time (Fury Road, Pacific Rim, etc), as well as by creators actively working against the current political climate. But yeah, it's both a little bit startling, and a little bit nice, to be reminded that creators back in the day did actually work on this stuff, dated as it's become in some ways -- occasionally doing better at it than a lot of media does now!