Out on the Cutting Edge
A Matthew Scudder Crime Novel

This is a typical Matt Scudder mystery: slow as molasses, slim on plot, very grim—and totally absorbing. Scudder—the unlicensed private detective who “does favors” for money—has two cases to solve: 1) the disappearance of young actress/waitress Paula Hoeldtke from Muncie Indiana, and 2) the mystery o......more

And so begins the second phase of Matt Scudder. Block had written about Matt trying to get sober in the mid-‘80s with 8 Million Ways to Die, and then he had done a flashback novel when Matt was still boozing during the ‘70s in When the Sacred Ginmill Closes so there’s been a pretty substantial gap in......more

Matthew Scudder is now three years sober, but he's still living in his tiny Hell's Kitchen hotel room and prowling the increasingly mean streets of New York as an unlicensed P.I. Crime is rising; the city seems dirtier than ever, and the number of homeless and other street people seems to be rising......more

On the Cutting Edge is Lawrence Black’s seventh crime novel focused on Matthew Scudder, an ex-cop and (finally) sober alcoholic trying with great difficulty to keep some balance in his life. As a detective, he is always on the “cutting edge” of death. He’s killed and people have tried to kill him. A......more

Potentially Unnecessary Preamble I have this thing, a compulsion perhaps, wherein I cannot notfinish a book (yes, that double negative needed to happen). I always worry that the ending will be so amazing as to have made any pain involved in the process worth it (that, and I've managed to convinc......more