When I first read Everybody Dies a few years ago, I found it disappointing. Matt partnering with his gangster friend Mick Ballou sounded like fun but the execution was meh. Block used it as an excuse to kill off a lit of auxiliary characters from previous books, while the killer himself wasn’t especially interesting and I didn’t feel like I understood Ballou’s character more than I already did.
So I wasn’t really jazzed to go back to it for my Scudder re-read, which is almost complete. But rules are rules.
And a second dance made an enormous difference with it. In fact, it might be one of the best in the Scudder series.
I had hoped for a rollicking gangster tale through Hell’s Kitchen, or what was left of it in the Giuliani Era. But instead, this is a meditative tale on friendship and survival. Block is not interested in Ballou’s character as much as he is Ballou’s relationship with Matt, their unlikely bond formed over the back half of the series. And while ignoring that forest for the trees the first time, I missed out on what a great job he did teasing it out.
Also, while still I found killing off some other characters a bit silly, I kind of appreciated what Block was doing here: he didn’t originally think he’d write the series this long so each book has its own specific spirit rather than feeling like a long interconnected series. And I think by focusing on Mick and Matt, he’s sanded down everything for a series that’s running its course. It’s a weird narrative decision but it made more sense when I considered the trajectory of Matt’s arc.
So yeah, this is very good just for its two central characters and it’s an important capstone novel for the whole series, which I love.