Award-winning crime novelist Lawrence Block (Dead Girl Blues; Sinner Man) is best known for writing 17 dark and gritty mysteries featuring Matthew Scudder, a former NYPD detective and recovering alcoholic now working as a private investigator. The Night and the Music collects all 11 Scudder short stories--ranging in length from the novella "Out the Window" to the vignette-sized title short story. Night and the Music was self-published by Block in 2011, and a decade later it is finally available for wide distribution by Subterranean Press.
Most of the tales are engaging mysteries, but equally entertaining are the shorter character studies that deepen readers' appreciation of Scudder and those in his universe. "Out the Window" (Scudder thinks a waitress's suicide was murder) and "The Merciful Angel of Death" (Scudder investigates a number of suspicious deaths at an AIDS hospice) are both outstanding and clever mysteries that are also full of haunting images and characters. Fans may recognize elements of "By the Dawn's Early Light." The short story won Block his first Edgar Award, and a year after it appeared in Playboy magazine, he decided to re-work and expand it from an 8,500-word short story into his critically acclaimed 1986 full-length mystery The Sacred Ginmill Closes. In the very moving final story, "One Last Night at Grogan's" (written specifically for this collection), Scudder, Scudder's wife, his best friend Mick Ballou and Ballou's new wife sit in Mick's saloon for one last time before new owners take over.
This sterling collection of Matt Scudder short stories is prime Lawrence Block and essential reading. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant