Everybody Dies

Starred review from September 28, 1998
The body count is indeed high in this latest Matt Scudder tale, which is also the best since A Walk Among the Tombstones (1993)--resonant, thoughtful, richly textured and capped by a slam-bang windup. At the center of the case is Matt's old buddy, Mick Ballou, the murderous and hard-drinking Irish mobster with a deeply philosophical streak who is one of Block's most enduring creations. Two of Mick's henchmen have been killed in what should have been a routine liquor hijacking. After Scudder helps Mick bury the bodies at the mobster's upstate farm, he finds he has been targeted himself. Two hoods try to rough him up on the street, then an old friend, Matt's sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous, is gunned down in a restaurant after being mistaken for Matt. It soon becomes clear that someone from Ballou's past is aiming to destroy him, and Matt, caught in the crossfire, has to try to determine who's behind the mayhem. He does so in his usual ruminative way, working it out with wife Elaine, streetwise sidekick TJ and old cop comrades who are now, because of his friendship with Ballou, against him. In the end, Matt has to stand alone with Ballou to put a stop to the vendetta in a blaze of gunfire. Block's seamless weave of thought and action, and his matchless gift for dialogue that is true, funny and revealing, have seldom been on more effective display. The pages leading up to the climax have an almost Shakespearean feel for human resignation in the face of mortality.

Robert Forster's matter-of-fact delivery suited Block's new HIT MAN so perfectly that listeners may need to adjust to Forster as older series regular Matt Scudder. Scudder returns married to Elaine, still with his own ethics and undiscerning loyalty to friends. When his outlaw Irish buddy, Mick Ballou, needs him, we are swept away by Hell's Kitchen intrigue and Forster's brogue. Other accents are equally captivating, whether those of West India, Bangladesh or New York City streets and boroughs. He successfully adds an intermittent flutter for the females and, to help distinguish characters, well-chosen pauses for the dialogue of unaccented males. Forster's level voice may be the best choice for the deadly suspense in this volatile mystery. R.N. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine