The Night and the Music: 18 (Matthew Scudder Mysteries)

Lawrence Blocks 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 its Matt Scudder whos been largely responsible for Blocks 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 its all here from a pair of late-70s novelettes (Out the Window and A Candle for the Bag Lady) through By the Dawns Early Light (Edgar) and The Merciful Angel of Death (Shamus) all the way to One Last Night at Grogans 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 was interrupted 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 Hells 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 authors note detailing the origin and bibliographical details of each of the stories. Brian Koppelman the prominent screenwriter and director (Solitary Man Oceans Thirteen Rounders) and a major Matt Scudder fan has sweetened the pot with an introduction.