The Night and The Music
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About this ebook
Lawrence Block’s 17 Matthew Scudder novels have won the hearts of readers throughout the world—along with a bevy of awards including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe (Germany), and the Maltese Falcon (Japan). And it’s MattScudder who’s been largely reponsible for Block’s lifetime achievement awards: Grand Master (Mystery Writers of America), The Eye (Private Eye Writers of America), and the Cartier Diamond Dagger (UK Crime Writers Association).
But Scudder has starred in short fiction as well, and it’s all here, from a pair of late-70s novelettes (Out the Window and A Candle for the Bag Lady) through By the Dawn’s Early Light (Edgar) and The Merciful Angel of Death (Shamus), all the way to One Last Night at Grogan’s, a moving and elegiac story never before published. It was short fiction that kept the series alive on the several occasions when the flow of novels wass ingterrupted, and short stories that took Scudder down different paths and showed us unmapped portions of his world.
Some of these stories appeared in such magazines as Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, and Playboy. The title vignette, The Night and the Music, was written for a NYC jazz festival program; another, Mick Ballou Looks at the Blank Screen, has appeared only as the text of a limited-edition broadside. And the final story, putting Matt and Elaine at a table with Mick and Kristin Ballou in a shuttered Hell’s Kitchen saloon, has its first appearance in this volume.
Several stories look back from the time of their writing, with Scudder recounting events from his former life as a cop, first as a patrolman partnered with the legendary Vince Mahaffey, then as an NYPD detective leading a double life. In Looking for David, Matt and Elaine are on vacation in Florence, where they encounter a man Matt arrested decades earlier; now Matt finally learns the motive behind a brutal homicide.
Along with the eleven stories and novelettes, The Night and The Music includes a list of the seventeen novels in chronological order, and an author’s note detailing the origin and bibliographical details of each of the stories.
Brian Koppelman, the prominent screenwriter and director (Solitary Man, Ocean’s Thirteen, Rounders) and a major Matt Scudder fan, has sweetened the pot with an introduction.
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block is one of the most widely recognized names in the mystery genre. He has been named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and is a four-time winner of the prestigious Edgar and Shamus Awards, as well as a recipient of prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. He received the Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association—only the third American to be given this award. He is a prolific author, having written more than fifty books and numerous short stories, and is a devoted New Yorker and an enthusiastic global traveler.
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Reviews for The Night and The Music
7 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I had read most of these stories previously, and I have to say they stand up better alone than in a group. However, for the Scudder completist, this collection is a must.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Why Do We Read Romance Novels and Crime Fiction: “The Night and the Music” by Lawrence Block “I learned to like the music because I heard so much of it there, and because you could just about taste the alcohol in every flatted fifth. Nowadays I go for the music, and what I hear in the blue notes is not so much the booze as all the feelings the drink used to mask.”
In the short-story “The Night and the Music” from the collection “The Night and the Music”
Is that a fact only women read romance novels? I don't buy it. The same way I don’t buy only men read Crime Fiction. If safely exploring the brutal and violent world and the disproportionate threat women apparently face is the motive, perusing academic journals and scientific studies, even TV documentaries, makes more sense than reading stories and literature that feature brutal violence. Is it possible that one of the reasons women (and men for that matter) like reading about human violence and brutality is that it fascinates and even in certain instances titillates? Romance novels sell millions of copies - despite even its fans deriding the atrocious writing. Are the novel's largely female readership using the books as an indirect tool to make sense of (some) women's tendencies to be submissive sexually and willingly degraded by a dominant male? I don't think so. I even conducted a pool on my woman friends, and it’s a “fact”.
If you're into what-turns-men-and-women-on-fictionwise, read on. If your sensibilities lie elsewhere, don't bother. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great book, well written with excellent characterization. I'm going back to pick up a few others, even the ones I've read before.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Really excellent collection of Matt Scudder stories. My favorite, I think, was the one in which Scudder is approached by a lawyer who gives him a check for twelve-hundred dollars, the bequest of a bag lady Scudder didn't know, who had been murdered several weeks before. In his inimitable way, Matt seeks out why he and others might have been given the money and while he has really little to do actively with discovering who committed the murder, he is the instrument of its solution. Very bleak.
The stories portray different periods of Scudder's career and evolution as a human being. Some have suggested that the last story may be the last in the Scudder series. I would hope not, for Block's genius is quite apparent in this collection - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A few choice pieces for fans of the Matthew Scudder series about alcoholic ex-cop who does favors for people, investigating, but not a licensed detective. May not give a full picture of the character unless one has read several of the novels. The ending essays in which block traces the history of the series is interesting.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There's nothing amazing here, but it is still nice to see Block's old characters again.