When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

Oh Scudder novels, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1) Period New York. This time it's a walk down memory lane to 1975. While Scudder remembers more about the sports scene than national politics, he also recalls that it was a big year for Black Russians and tequila sunrises. It's also a time of Irish dominance in Hell's Kitchen (anecdotal origin quote: "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen"), a small rough, industrial down-and-out section of New York. Irish toughs with connections to the IRA have a strong influence in the area, not the least of which are the owners of Morrissey's after-hours club. Then there are the timeless city people: "I generally bought the paper there, unless I bought it from the shopping-bag lady show more who hawked them on the sidewalk in from of the 400 Deli. She bought them for a quarter each from the newsstand--and she sold them for the same price, which is a tough way to make a living."

2) Characterization that makes me feel like I was there. These are Scudder's bar-crawling days, and he has some good-time relationships with his bar tenders and fellow drinkers. There's Buddy, the actor; Skip, bartender and co-owner of Miss Kitty's; Billie Keegan, who tends bar at Armstrong's; Telephone Tommy, the salesman with the small, calculating eyes; Caroline,"with a soft you-all accent that, like certain culinary herbs, became stronger when you steeped it in alcohol." Dialogue is spot-on, that clever good-time mix of stories, social commentary, and good-natured mocking that a group of congenials have.

3) The emotional punch of a likeable lead struggling with alcohol and past demons. Scudder's a little edgier in this one, walking a thin line between anger and depression. Alcohol threads through all the scenes, the backdrop and motivation to most of his routine, the siren that draws him from bar to bar. There is one very ironic scene where Skip tells Scudder that "But even so [alcohol's] a choice for us. That's the difference between you and me and a guy like Billie Keegan." Though Scudder of the past sounds skeptical, the discussion impacts even more strongly knowing the Scudder ten years forward and the extent to which he was deluding himself.

4) Oh-so-subtle foreshadowing and the resolution of three clever little mysteries: a hold-up at Morrissey's, Tommy's marital troubles and Skip's financial troubles. There are hints of trouble from the start, but it isn't until the end that you realize how nicely they all blended in. Nothing is wasted here. The book comes full circle, making the ending even more poignant.

5) The bitter flavor of justice. I read the book again just so I could re-read the ending. Stunning.

I had to request this one from my library's 'lower stacks.' I wonder if they would notice if I never returned it? show less

Every now and then I crave a good PI book, a mystery noir, some 'entertainment.' Lawrence Block has been a master of all these for decades now. I'd read a couple other of his Matt Scudder mysteries ten years or more ago and found them gripping, compelling, entertaining, and very well written. Scudder is, in many ways, that stock character in the PI genre, an ex-cop, an alcoholic, but with a strong moralistic streak. In this particular book, WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES (title courtesy of a Dave Van Ronk song lyric), the alcoholic theme can be found on nearly any given page as Scudder prowls his seedy NYC neighborhoods laced with dozens of dark dives and bars, stopping in randomly for "a quick one," "a short one," "a bracer," etc. And show more the Christian, moralistic theme becomes evident with references to Judas and Jesus and maybe even Pontius Pilate, as a second-rate lawyer comments on a former client, "I wash my hands of him."

I'm guessing there have been a dozen or more Scudder books in the past thirty-plus years, and I'm betting they are all damn good reads. This one was. Block allows his character to change and mature; in other words he makes him real. He writes excellent characters, in fact. In the latest issue of The New Yorker (Jan 14, 2013) there is a short piece about an East Side meeting of some members of the Mystery Writers of America, Block apparently talked of "getting out of the business." He said, "I'm with Philip Roth. Who says writers can't retire?"

Well I suppose they can. But I'm probably speaking for a lot of mystery fans when I say that I hope Lawrence Block isn't quite ready to cover up his typewriter for the last time. He's too damn good. He'd be sorely missed. I'm sure this is not the last Block book I'll read. In the PI/mystery writer ranks, he's right up there with James Lee Burke. show less

The sixth Matthew Scudder novel, “When The Sacred Ginmill Closes,” is a tightly written journey into the gritty realism of bars and after hours clubs of New York City. Scudder, here, is practically drowning in booze and even notes at one point that, when he sets out for home, he ends up in a bar. Most days, he doesn’t even know how he got home. Much of the action in this book takes place in a couple of nearby bars and, if it is not taking place in the bars, it is taking place with the guys

Scudder is hanging out with in the bars. In one bar, a pair of masked men with guns enter, holding up the place. In another, the books are stolen, meaning the real books, not the one that the IRS sees, the one that shows the take before the show more skim. Pretty much all the action takes place at night as Scudder deals with blackmailers and others. Even when he is checking out a client’s home to see where the burglars went and what they did, he can’t keep his hands off the client’s booze.

This may be one of the darkest and gloomiest of the Scudder novels. It is also one of the tightest, focusing on a few days in Scudder’s life as he deals with a few odd cases that are thrown his way from murder to blackmail to masked robbers. What sets this book apart from many other books out there is how realistic the dialogue and action is. Nothing in it is over the top. Nothing in it is purely something that only happens in books or movies. When the guys gather to figure out how to deal with the blackmailers, their reactions are authentic. They are truly a bunch of amateurs.

All in all, it is, without any question, a five-star read, but all of the Scudder series is fine work. It is detective fiction, but involving a most unusual detective. One without an office, without a secretary, without a license. One who doesn’t really know what fee to set when doing favors for friends or friends of friends. Scudder was once a cop, but lost the taste for it after an innocent girl got shot in a shoot-out with the bad guys. One could say he’s drowning in guilt. After he was cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting, he left the force, left his wife, left his suburban home, and makes it one day at a time, one drink at a time. There are probably few, if any, detectives in literary history who are as carefully and as deeply developed as Block’s Scudder is. He is as real as they come, warts and all.
A terrific read. show less

Can almost smell & feel these places, dialogue seems so authentic, need bourbon in hand for this one

It's an interesting approach to mystery writing. We start with all the characters boozing it up in a bar, and as each one speaks, we get a quick character profile of each one. Lots of mysteries have long character lists, but usually we get introduced to them gradually - here it's just bam, bam, bam, ok now you know your characters.

I love Matthew Scudder as a character, though. The boozy ex-cop comes across beautifully as a guy who's seen enough pain in his life and is perfectly ready to drink enough to make sure none of it comes back. The writing fits the character perfectly, unemotional and unblinking. It's completely a man's book; women are only drawn as scenery and and Scudder's too withdrawn into himself to have any capability for show more romance anyway. I've only read a couple in the series so I don't have any feel for how the character pans out.

But the pacing is good, and you even have a decent shot at picking out the bad guy, even though some crucial clues are left until the denouement, and the book works as a character study almost as well as it does a mystery. Well worth reading, even for those who don't think that mysteries count as literature. show less

Former cop Matt Scudder is off the force, split up from his wife (he sees his kids from Staten Island regularly) and living on the East Side of Manhattan, and drinking an awful lot. One night he's present when an after-hours place he frequents (is robbed). One of the owners asks him to help solve the case and it becomes complicated of course.

The mystery is all very interesting and the ending is great, resembling in some ways at times an English drawing-room mystery, where all the suspects are gathered to find out who the guilty party is. But what really makes the book work is its casual portrayal of drinking life on the East Side in the late 1980s. The neighborhood and milieu becomes very real, and the other neighborhoods Scudder visits show more in the course of the story also become very real. show less

One of strongest Scudder's so far. Very dark but such an arresting depiction of alcoholism and the many lies alcoholics tell themselves and their friends.