Welcome back to Books With Cause. Let’s dive straight into my latest review. For this one, we’re going back to the 70s. Back to a time of hardboiled crime and smoky bars, where we meet a broken detective
Every so often, a writer comes along who creates a character that transcends themselves and, arguably, everything else. For Ian Fleming, it was James Bond. For Arthur Conan Doyle, it was Sherlock Holmes. For Lawrence Block, it’s Matt Scudder.
Matt Scudder is the protagonist of twenty-one books. Most of these are novels, but there are a couple of short story collections, a novella, and a fictional autobiography. The Sins of the Fathers (published in 1981) is the first in the series.
The most famous story might be A Walk Among the Tombstones, which is the tenth book in the series, but has been adapted into a film starring Liam Neeson. I haven’t yet seen the film – I don’t feel I’ve earned the right yet – but because I want to, I thought it might be the time to start working my way through the series.
At the start of the book, Scudder is an alcoholic who has recently quit his job as a New York Police detective after a previous case went wrong. He is separated from his wife and kids. He works (when he feels like it) as an unlicensed private detective, but he doesn’t think of it that way. He considers himself “doing favours for friends”.
This is a short book – less than 200 pages – and it unravels at a pace. A grieving father comes to see Scudder after his daughter is murdered. He wants to hire Scudder, but Scudder doesn’t really know why. The murderer is already dead. It seems open shut. Scudder is reluctant, but the man is insistent. If nothing else, he wants to understand his daughter better. For the right price, Scudder acquiesces.
What follows is a journey into the underbelly of 1970s New York. We spend time in grimy apartments and late-night bars. There’s an abundance of drinking, smoking, and ambiguity everywhere. There are no computers, no internet, no modern forensics. There’s something about this kind of setting that I just love. I often endeavour to read more hard-boiled detective novels. There’s something about the nostalgia that gets me. A longing for times gone by. If I had a time machine, the 60s and 70s are the first places I would go to.
The Sins of the Fathers tackles themes of identity and religious hypocrisy. And of course, this was a time when people took religion a lot more seriously. This is an introduction to a Scudder and his world. It gives a taste of what’s to come. I wonder if Lawrence Block had any idea of the longevity of the character and the series when he penned this first entry. Meanwhile, I’m curious to read what comes next.
My Goodreads rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 stars)
