The Night and the Music: A Matthew Scudder Mystery Novel - Crime Thriller for Late-Night Reading & Book Club Discussions

Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder has been one of the most enduring and certainly one of the best-written protagonists in the history of crime fiction. Beginning with The Sins of the Fathers in 1976, Block has written seventeeen novels featuring Scudder, the recovering alcoholic who is also a cop-turned-unlicensed and then (finally) licensed New York P.I.Over the years, Block also wrote a number of short stories featuring Scudder, which appeared in a variety of different places and some of which won awards for short fiction. Now, the author has gathered these stories together in The Night and The Music and has added an introduction by screenwriter Brian Koppelman. He has also added a new story, written especially for this collection, titled "One Last Night at Grogan's," an elegiac piece in which Matt, his wife, Elaine, Mick Ballou and Mick's new wife sit around a table in Mick's Hell's Kitchen saloon for one last night of stories before the building is transferred to its new owners.Those readers who have loved this series for so long will treasure these stories, some of which Block incorporated into the Scudder novels, and many of which have not been readily available for some time. One can't help but dread that, in collecting these stories and in writing the last one, Block might be drawing the final curtain on Matt Scudder. Intellectually, one understands that no doubt sooner rather than later, his run will have to come to an end. But those of us who have grown up with Matthew Scudder and who have waited, often very impatiently, for the next Scudder book can only hope that the moment has not come yet. "One Last Night at Grogan's" would certainly be a fitting end to Matthew Scudder's career, but none of Block's legion of fans is ready to face that awful moment yet.