Product Description

A successful socialite's beautiful wife was raped and murdered in her own home -- and Matt Scudder believes the victim's "grieving" husband was responsible for the outrage. But to prove it, the haunted p.i. must descend into the depths of New York's sex-for-sale underworld, where young lives are commodities to be bought, perverted...and destroyed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #313041 in Books
• Published on: 1992-08-01
• Released on: 1992-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780380713745
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Matt Scudder, the recovering alcoholic private eye from The Devil Knows You're Dead and A Ticket to the Boneyard, embarks on another descent into the nightmarish quarters of New York, this time to investigate the sex-for-sale industry. Hired by the brother of an heiress to investigate her rape and murder, Scudder tails her husband to a boxing match and notices another man whom he saw on video a few months earlier on a different case involving a snuff film. As Scudder calls on old friends for assistance and tours New York's dark physical and social landscapes, Block masterfully builds the pressure that leads Scudder to the violent resolution in this winner of the 1992 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.

From Publishers Weekly
Block masterfully builds the pressure in this Edgar Award winner, as newly sober Manhattan PI Matt Scudder investigates the death of a TV producer's wife.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Unlicensed New York investigator and series protagonist Matthew Scudder seeks to determine if a cable television producer raped and murdered his own wealthy wife. At the same time, Scudder hunts for a brutal man who makes video "snuff" tapes involving teenage boys and a leather-dressed woman. The two cases merge, of course, as Scudder enlists the aid of his motley assortment of interesting friends. This strong cast of supporting characters, along with a riveting plot and forceful prose, place this on the high priority list. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/91.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

All the best Block/Scudder qualities are here
Among Block's fifteen or so Scudder novels, and about sixty books overall, many are not worth reading, but some stack up quite well against the top output of other mystery novelists. Here, the plotting is relatively complicated, with Block using to good effect the common trick of having two separate cases come together. Scudder's history and present life situation are as usual made integral to the story, and many of the peripheral characters get time in the spotlight, with TJ, who's a lot of fun, being introduced here. Hell's Kitchen is vividly brought to life here, and the story is dark enough to - almost - invite comparison to Andrew Vachss. Sometimes the Scudder novels are mostly about his journey through life, sometimes they tend to degenerate into a series of conversations, sometimes the plots are simple, linear, and seemingly designed to give Block enough reason to crank out another book. This one is very solid. Along with Boneyard and Tombstones, this amonts to something of a renaissance for the series.

Intense! Perhaps not for everyone.
I am a big fan of Lawrence Block. I am a bit of an academic snob (i admit it), and i never used to go near mysteries. My grandparents gave me The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (i work on Spinoza), and i have been hooked on mysteries (Lawrence Block in particular--and the Scudder books especially) ever since.

I believe that Dance at the Slaughterhouse is the most powerful and interesting of all of Block's work (with perhaps the exception of a few of the short stories). However, i should add that Dance is certainly not a book to everyone's tastes. It's quite intense.

One aspect of Block's career that i appreciate is the diversity of his talents. The Burglar mysteries and the Tanner mysteries in particular are entertaining in the extreme. The Burglar books fascinate me because of their literary references; the Tanner books because of their political insights. But the Scudder books fascinate me because of their insights about the character of human beings. Consequently, they are often a bit more emotinoally taxing on the reader.

In Dance, Block plumbs the depths to get at some of the complicated relationships between human desire and drives towards violence toward the self as well as against others (and, not incidentally, also to get at the complicated structure that involves the tensions between love and violence as contrary expressions of desire). There's a hard-edge to this work as a consequence.

So while i highly recommend this book, i do so with the qualification that some of Block's other works might be more suitable to some readers (and even most of the other Scudder mysteries are less challenging).

Block's Matthew Scudder is one of the best
I started reading Lawrence Block a few years ago and I have grown to really appreciate his Matthew Scudder books. Block can write extremely readable prose, he can create believable (and interesting) characters, and he can tell a story. "A Dance at the Slaughterhouse" is the perfect example of this. This is a great book that captures the reader early an doesn't turn him loose until the end. Elaine, T.J., and Mick are wonderful supporting characters for Matthew Scudder, who is dogged yet resourceful in his starring role. Scudder is flawed but still highly skilled as a detective and the reader becomes attached to this character very quickly. If you haven't put Scudder/Block on your "must read" list, do so immediately.