`A Dance at the Slaughterhouse’ more than a mystery

A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE, by Lawrence Block, Morrow, 309 pages, $19.

When writing about his unique private investigator, Matthew Scudder, Lawrence Block simply gets better and better. Billed as a Matt Scudder mystery, “A Dance at the Slaughterhouse” is, as are all Matt Scudder novels, much more than a mystery.

Although the story opens at ringside, fear not; it quickly becomes apparent that one is not reading a book about boxing. Block skillfully guides us from a set of mundane matches to a far from mundane murder, one unrelated to boxing.

Chapter 2 may have the reader saying, “Aha! Block must have been inspired by the murder in Boston, you know, when that guy, Stuart, claimed a mugger shot and killed his pregnant wife.” Perhaps. But the author has managed to include not only the murder, plus boxing (we really can’t get away from it; trust us, it is not about boxing), but added gay issues, alcoholism, AIDS, smoking and cable television, all in the first 35 pages, without overwhelming the reader with the sense that there are too many issues. Au contraire, Block is so clever that we devour everything he places before us and hungrily race onward, confident in the knowledge that there is always more. More crime, more surprises, more of everything that we have come to expect of this prolific writer.

Block’s Matthew Scudder novels are filled with characters who continue from book to book; it is useful to the reader to have met them before, but not necessary; one never feels that one is on the outside of an inside joke.

Matt Scudder, a recovering alcoholic, is an unofficial private investigator. Often urged to obtain a license, he invariably responds that he’s “thinking about it,” and the reader probably believes this, until we realize that he has been saying this for quite a while now. Hired to investigate the murder of a pregnant wife, Scudder embarks on a personal quest for information regarding a “snuff film” in which a teen-ager is tortured and killed. The dry, unassuming wit, frequently coupled with personal philosophy, as evidenced by Scudder and his friends, serves to keep the reader from being overwhelmed by the truly awful acts committed by various individuals.

Writer Stephen King states, “There is really only one writer of mystery and detective fiction who comes close to replacing the irreplaceable John D. MacDonald, and only one private detective wno comes close to replaclng the irreplaceable Travis McGee. The writer is Lawrence Block, and the detective is Matt Scudder.”

At the risk of contradicting King, this reviewer would venture to say that long ago, perhaps with the publication of “Eight Million Ways to Die,” Lawrence Block created his own place among writers of note and we see no trace of the shadow of Travis McGee falling upon Matt Scudder.

“A Dance at the Slaughterhouse” is the ninth in the Matt Scudder series; we hope for at least nine more.

Lois M. Reed is a free-lance writer who resides in Carmel.