Lawrence Block has been, and continues to be, the most industrious purveyor of a wide range of American crime fiction; from comic to the tragic, the ridiculous to the sublime, light-hearted to the most serious of subjects – it is all in his range. Block is the one the others point to as the master craftsman of the genre. With a shelf full of awards (including four Edgars, four Shamus Awards, two Maltese Falcon Awards, the Nero Wolfe Award, and Grandmaster status from the Mystery Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association of the United Kingdom), he is the one others point to as the master craftsman of the genre. Compulsive plots, deft characterisation and dialogue the zing’s; this Matt Scudder detective novel is no exception. A good deal of it alternates back and forth between Scudder and his adversary. He investigates an online lover of an acquaintance and another plotline is and about a criminal who ingeniously framed another guy. However, the main attraction is in Scudder’s character and what he learns about himself. He is with this 16th outing getting on as they say.

Plotline: “A man in a Virginia prison awaits execution for three hideous murders he swears, in the face of irrefutable evidence, he did not commit. A psychologist who claims to believe the convict spends hours with the man in his death row cell, and ultimately watches in the gallery as the lethal injection is administered. His work completed, the psychologist heads back to New York City to attend to unfinished business.”  Meanwhile, Matthew Scudder has just agreed to investigate the ostensibly suspicious online lover of an acquaintance. It seems simple enough. At first. But when people start dying and the victims are increasingly closer to home, it becomes clear that a vicious killer is at work. And the final targets may be Matt and Elaine Scudder.

A Lawrence Block story appeared in the anthology No Alibi and he did an appreciation of Ian Rankin for the short story collection Beggars Banquet. Two other Block books were issued in Scorpion Press editions but have sold out. They are The Burglar in the Library with a James Sallis appreciation and Hope to Die with an extensive appreciation of the Matt Scudder series by Peter Straub. All The Flowers are Dying was issued in 2005 with an appreciation by British crime writer Simon Kernick.