For the next fourteen or so months (save February and March), I’m going to do a Matthew Scudder re-read. I love these books and I’ve been aching to revisit them. If I’m fortunate to live for a few years, I may do this with favored series. It’s good to revisit them, not as much too see what you missed the first time but to gain a deeper perspective of what drew you to them in the first place.
The Sins of the Fathers is not the first Lawrence Block book I read; that distinction goes to In the Midst of Death. I didn’t even know eight years ago that when I picked it up, I had already read a book in this series or that it was even a series! I was drawn to the religious angle.
I think about the conclusion a lot though and I had even before I decided to down the Matthew Scudder novels. But in reading the rest of the book, which I originally nabbed as 3-stars, I discovered that it’s better than I remember. I dinged it because I didn’t have much tolerance for alcoholic PIs and murdered sex workers, thus it was tough to look past the cliches. But reading it now, I see how Block elevates the genre. There’s some rough moments, like Scudder calling a female potential witness the b-word. Even his final showdown with the killer felt a little hoakier than I recall. But the touches on what would be a great series were there: the deep empathy, the shoe leather detective work, the dive into the wild world of 1970s Manhattan.
Getting older, I try to fold a book’s faults in with its overall narrative rather than look at the faults independent of it. Matt, like Lawrence Block is a creature of the time for better and for worse. This time, I could take both and still appreciate a quality detective story.
