Finding Yourself 'In the Midst of Death'

Review of IN THE MIDST OF DEATH (Jove ed. 1984)
Author, Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block is the kind of writer who can pretty much do it all. I’ve read books from his series about Evan Tanner, the perennial insomniac, and the droll burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. But my favorite of his protagonists has to be Matthew Scudder.

Scudder works as an unlicensed private eye. He was once an NYPD officer, but quit after accidentally killing a young girl when a bullet he fired at a fleeing criminal took a bad ricochet into the girl’s head. As a result, he quit the force, left his wife, took a room at a Manhattan hotel and began drinking bourbon for breakfast. He is, in short, a man with issues.

In addition to drinking too much, Scudder is working through his demons by tithing at the first church he runs across every time he’s paid and trying to right wrongs as an investigator.

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH shows Scudder taking up the cause of Jerry Broadfield, who claims to have been framed for the murder of a high-class call girl. The police would just as soon see Broadfield take the rap for the crime, as he was cooperating (voluntarily, at that) with a police corruption investigation.

So did someone on the force set Broadfield up? Or was someone else behind the prostitute’s murder? Block’s story piles on the questions, the characters and the dead bodies. Our flawed hero, Scudder, gets to the bottom of it all. But does he win in the end? In a story like this, the best one can hope for is resolution—even if it’s not entirely a happy one.