Country: USA
Genre: Hardboiled
Pages: 273
Blackmailers are richer than stool pigeons, because their commodity is not a one time thing; they can rent it out to the same person over and over for a lifetime. The only problem is that their lifetime tend to shrink.
Stop No.2 is my new found project of reading everything Matthew Scudder. It was confusing, because TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE has been published in 1977, after IN THE MIDST OF DEATH but according to the chronology of Scudder books, TIME is the sequel to THE SINS OF THE FATHERS, and MIDST come in third. I don't know why that is, but I almost read them out of order, which I'm sure isn't THAT bad anyway. Just thought I'm mention the quirk. Now, the Scudder novels have the same formula, which is normal for a series. I could stress the fact that it uses the same investigation template as THE SINS OF THE FATHERS, but if you read a series you better make peace with that fact pretty quick. It's common usage to make it a "same-character, different-investigation" routine. Plus, TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE feels tighter, better wrapped up than the first Scudder book. Made for a different, but equally enjoyable kind of reading.
Scudder is still miserable, living in a hotel and crawling from bar to bar, killing himself one drink at the time. One day, he receives the visit of an old acquaintance, Jacob Jablon, most commonly known as Spinner for he keeps spinning a silver dollars whenever he talks to someone. He has a package he needs Scudder to sit on, in case something happens to him. Of course, it was an omen of doom and Spinner ends up disappearing after a little while. When Scudder opens up the envelope, he's not surprised to find out Spinner was blackmailing people. A rich business owner, covering for a lethal hit and run his daughter committed, a rich man's wife who used to have a career in porno and the next governor of New York State. Only that. Being the reckless, depressed trainwreck that he is, Scudder will put his neck on the line for someone he didn't know that much, in order to smoke the killer out of his hole. That's Scudder in a nutshell. Allergic to injustice, especially from upstanding citizens.
For seven consecutive Fridays I got telephone calls from him.
That's the first sentence of TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE. Whenever I review a book, I'm trying to keep off the technical stuff, but DAMN is this a good hook or what? Took me one sentence and I started asking WHO? WHAT? WHERE? HOW COME? Block understand the language economy of hardboiled very well and therefore, makes his novels as lean and efficient as they come. The achievement over his first novel here is that you're kept on your toes until the last page as to know who killed Spinner Jablon and who keeps trying to kill Scudder. It's deliciously complex. Add the layer of Scudder's personal issues and you get the intoxicating mix of a reckless alcoholic P.I being caught up in the middle of a triangle of dangerous people. The best part is that it's all a part of Scudder's plan to bring down the killer. Reminded me of Rorschach's awesome prison tirade in WATCHMEN: "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with ME". That, except that Scudder is a lot less emotional than the friendly-neighborhood ginger psychopath.
"I don't think I know you."
"You don't want to know me. All you gotta know is it's a big river, plenty of room in it, you don't want to try and fill it up all by yourself."
What sets Lawrence Block ahead of the competition is the little details. The plot itself is a classic "whoddunit", but the story engineering behind it is brilliant. He never takes any shortcuts and the truth at the end of the line is always tangled up in violence and human mediocrity. I'm getting hooked on Scudder. While he lives on the fringes of society, he's not interested in the underworld. He takes his shots at those who wear a mask, at the wolves in disguise. The fact that he once was part of this world and slipped down into a life of alcoholic drifting makes it even more interesting. TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE is darker and more complex than its predecessor, it blends tough guy interrogation with murder attempts and blackmail. Great novel that shows what hardboiled literature is all about.
FOUR STARS