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Content snapshot
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Violence
A lot
Two crime investigations; violence in the New York criminal underworld
Language
Some
Some strong language
Sexual Content
Some
Some sexual content
Substance Use
Very heavy
Scudder's drinking is the central character fact; bars are the novel's world; significant alcohol throughout
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The specific melancholy of watching a world disappear; Scudder's retrospective awareness of who he was at a particular moment and who he would become
What this book is about
Set in the late 1970s when New York was beginning its long transformation, Matthew Scudder investigates two different crimes that intersect through the neighborhood of bars he frequents. The novel is structured retrospectively — Scudder tells the story after the fact, aware of how it ends — which gives it an elegiac quality unusual in the series. Lawrence Block's sixth Scudder novel is widely considered one of the best in the genre: a portrait of a specific New York moment, a meditation on memory and regret, and a mystery that earns its emotional weight.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
sixth Matthew Scudder novel; widely considered one of the best in the genre
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