The pretty young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer-a minister's son-hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's father has come to Matthew Scudder for answers, sending the unlicensed private investigator in search of terrible truths about a life that was lived and lost in a sordid world of perversion and pleasures.

Bad cop Jerry Broadfield didn't make any friends on the force when he volunteered to squeal to an ambitious D.A. about police corruption. Now he's accused of murdering a call girl. Matthew Scudder doesn't think Broadfield's a killer, but the cops aren't about to help the unlicensed P.I. prove it -- and they may do a lot worse than just get in his way.

Tormented by the slaying of the hooker who turned to him for help just before her death, cop-turned-private eye Matthew Scudder begins an investigation into the woman's past that reveals secrets that could be deadly for him.

This is a city that seduces dreamers . . . then eats their dreams. Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Schudder is the best-and now the ex-cop-turned-P.I. is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the...

A successful socialite's beautiful wife was raped and murdered in her own home -- and Matt Scudder believes the victim's "grieving" husband was responsible for the outrage. But to prove it, the haunted P.I. must descend into the depths of New York's sex-for-sale underworld, where young lives are commodities to be bought, perverted... and destroyed.

A deranged derelict, a crazed Vietnam vet, has been arrested for gunning down successful young lawyer Glenn Holtzmann at a corner phone booth on Eleventh Avenue -- and the suspect's brother wants P.I. Matthew Scudder to prove the madman innocent. But Scudder's curiosity and dedication are leading him to dark, unexplored places in his own heart...and to passions and secrets that could destroy everything be loves.

Matthew Scudder knows that justice is an elusive commodity in the big city, where a harmless man can be shot dead in a public place criminals fly free through holes in a tattered legal system. But now a vigilante is roaming among the millions, executing those he fees deserve to die. He calls himself "The Will of the People"-an ingenious serial killer who announces his specific murderous intentions to the media before carrying through on his threats....

The city caught its collective breath when upscale couple Byrne and Susan Hollander were slaughtered in a brutal home invasion. Now, a few days later, the killers themselves have turned up dead behind the locked door of a Brooklyn hellhole -- one apparently slain by his partner in crime who then took his own life. There's something drawing Matthew Scudder to this case that the cops have quickly and eagerly closed: a nagging suspicion that a third...

After a childhood friend is shot down while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder is drawn into a murder investigation that threatens to upset his path toward recovery--and get him killed in the process.

MATT SCUDDER RETURNS. More than 40 years after his debut and nearly a decade since his last appearance, one of the most renowned characters in all of crime fiction is back on the case in this major new novella by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block. Well past retirement age and feeling his years-but still staying sober one day at a time-Matthew Scudder learns that alcoholics aren't the only ones who count the days since their last...