A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

⚖The case for it

Nine books in, Block still “refused to allow Scudder to become a safe and predictable character.” The friendship with Mick Ballou deepens into something readers rank with the great detective-and-criminal pairings, “an alliance on a par with that described by Ian Rankin.” An extended scene at a boxing match gets named repeatedly as the best in the series for its control and its humour. Scudder’s sobriety and the AA rooms read as observed rather than researched. Late-eighties New York arrives in pay phones and flophouses. Many call this “Matt Scudder’s finest outing to date.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

A critic names the amount of coincidence the book leans on as its central flaw. Partway through it abandons the opening investigation for a long flashback, which stalls everything. It runs “half again as long, bloated in the middle,” without the depth to justify it. The child-abuse material in the tape investigation angers a real share of readers, who say Block “did not have to show it so graphically” and are “tired of child abuse as a plot device.” One critic finds “a lazy, even slack, feel.”

— the honest librarian

6h

honest hours

9

sittings