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Matt Scudder

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Lawrence Block
(1938–)

Last call for Scudder?

Loads of fictional private eyes drink oceans of booze. Some become invincible, some become silly, some become virtual Einsteins of deduction.

MATT SCUDDER had no such luck. He drank and became an alcoholic.

He used to be one of New York’s Finest, a decent-enough detective, honest enough to get by, although he certainly wasn’t a saint. He was also a family man, with a wife and kids out on Long Island. But it all came tumbling down when, off-duty, he tried to stop a holdup. A stray bullet in the ensuing shootout took the life of a little girl, and Matt soon found himself divorced and jobless. He lived in a Manhattan hotel and took on the occasional job, doing “favors for friends,” slowly drinking his way into the grave, inexpicibly leaving a tenth of his proceeds in church collection boxes “I didn’t say any prayers. I never do,” he admits in A Stab in the Dark).

But mostly, it seemed, he sat in Armstrong’s, a local bar, “maintenance” drinking and reading the day’s atrocities in the papers. The series appeared to have come to a powerful, emotion-charged climax, with the classic, Shamus-winning Eight Million Ways To Die (1982), when Matt finally realized he was an alcoholic.

Yet, a few years later, after having told everyone who would listen that the Scudder series was stick-a-fork-in-it over and done with, Block brought him back in a short story “By the Dawn’s Early Light,” published in Playboy, which also nabbed a Shamus. It was later expanded and adpted into the novel When the Sacred Ginmill Closes. Since then the series has evolved into some sort of American classic of crime fiction, as Matt, now a recovering alcoholic, gradually comes to terms with his life. In later books, he’s even become licensed, and he’s been thinking of actually getting married.

There are some truly great characters in this series, including reformed call girl turned art dealer and love interest (and lately, wife) Elaine; TJ, the chameleon-like street-savvy black kid who’s slowly becoming Matt’s full-time assistant, and perhaps most notably Mick Ballou, the unrepentant Irish mobster and bar owner who’s become Matt’s best friend.

But the most finely-etched character may be New York itself. The Scudder series, with its sometimes harsh but always vivdly rendered New York backdrop, etched in Block’s bittersweet prose, isn’t for the mild. But it’s not just a string of progressively bleaker nightmares either. As one character puts it in A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, “Drunk or sober, it will break your heart.” He wasn’t referring to the series, but he might as well have been.

There was even a film made of Eight Million Ways To Die, although the result might drive you to drink. Except for the usual great performance by Jeff Bridges in the lead and a nerve-wracking showdown in a warehouse, it’s an embarrassing mess, poorly-conceived, poorly-written and poor-executed, made all the more amazing by some of the talent involved. Scudder’s dark, claustrophobic buttoned-down world of Manhattan bars and gin mills is Californicated up, leaving us with drippy sentimental sun-shiney flashbacks and Hallmark psychobabble (“Do you consider yourself a happy person?” my ass!), a couple in love actually walking hand in hand on the beach and it’s all just way, way too bright and shiny and up with people. It’s a wonder screenwriter Oliver Stone ever worked again after this mess. The film wasn’t even released on DVD in the U.S. for years and years.

Far more faithful to its source, was theadaptation of A Walk Among the Tombstones, starring Liam Neeson, directed by Scott Frank and set to premiere in September 2014, will be a little more satisfying.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence Block is a fan favorite and a writer’s writer. As well as Scudder, he’s been responsible for the Chip Harrison, Evan Tanner and Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery series. But, in my humble opinion, it’s the Scudder series where he really shines. Eight Million Ways To Die is simply one of the best PI novels of all time, and Everybody Dies (1998) ain’t too shabby either.

But why take chances? Read them all.

EVIDENCE

UNDER OATH

CASTING COUCH

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS

COLLECTIONS

FILMS

GRAPHIC NOVELS

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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