A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

⚖The case for it

Matthew Scudder, recovering alcoholic and unlicensed New York detective, investigates the murder of a professional wrestler's wife. Block's Scudder series is the finest American crime series since Chandler. The AA meetings, the night walks across Manhattan, the moral weight of sobriety earned and re-earned. Edgar Award winner, 1992.

— the canon

✕The case against

Ninth in a series, and it leans on the furniture: Mick Ballou, Elaine, the meetings, all richer if you started earlier. The snuff-film plot is as lurid as Block ever got, its link to Scudder's case a pure coincidence (the tape simply lands in his hands). And the ending asks you to call arranged killing justice.

— the honest librarian