Police corruption, and a fairly smarmy cop (who has also been on the take) ratting them out to some political functionary with aspirations to upward mobility (the governor's office) on his mind. The cop hires Scudder when a call girl files charges against him for extortion. When she is murdered, his situation becomes rather more serious.
As seems to be the pattern in these, Scudder solves the crime - but it doesn't lighten the picture any. After Scudder figures out who actually killed the call girl, the informant cop is murdered. Logically, it seems likely that cops did it - and that there will be no investigation. He wasn't a good guy, so getting him killed isn't totally depressing - but who and why leaves a rather sour taste.
So, why read them? I read one many years ago - I've never forgotten the title, Eight Million Ways to Die, and remember nothing else, except a fixed decision at that point in time to avoid Block's work in the future. Now I'm curious about rereading that one to see why it made such a strong, if negative impression; I think it comes up pretty soon. I'm not exactly sure why I went back to them, but they are quite amazingly well written - no surprise considering the source. Then there is my general program of reading a whole lot of murder mysteries. I suppose I could claim that I am interested in comparing, but mostly I just enjoy reading them.
No comments:
Post a Comment