Haven't read one of his for ages.
Block is a much better writer than many of the cheap and cheerful (?) detective novelists above. His PI hero, Matt Scudder, like Robicheaux in James Lee Burke, is a dry alcoholic, although he manages his relationship with AA/alcohol better than Robicheaux, who is rarely dry as the plots climax into a haze of drunken and murderous rage against the evildoers.
The plot in this is clever, Scudder becomes involved with a drinking woman, who has in fact killed one of his AA pals to profit from the now empty room in the apartment block she owns.
The denouement is clever. Not himself much given to violence, Scudder befriends an Irish hoodlum who does his dirty work for him. A cop out?
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