The Night and the Music: The Matthew Scudder Stories

Lawrence Blocks 17 Matthew Scudder novels have won the hearts of readers throughout the world—along with a bevy of awards including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe (Germany), and the Maltese Falcon (Japan). But Scudder has starred in short fiction as well, and its all here, from a pair of late–'70s novelettes (Out the Window and A Candle for the Bag Lady) through By the Dawns Early Light (Edgar) and The Merciful Angel of Death (Shamus), all the way to One Last Night at Grogans, a moving and elegiac story never before published. Some of these stories appeared in such magazines as Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, and Playboy. The title vignette, The Night and the Music, was written for a NYC jazz festival program; another, Mick Ballou Looks at the Blank Screen, has appeared only as the text of a limited–edition broadside. Several stories look back from the time of their writing, with Scudder recounting events from his former life as a cop, first as a patrolman partnered with the legendary Vince Mahaffey, then as an NYPD detective leading a double life. Along with these eleven stories and novelettes, The Night and The Music includes a list of the seventeen novels in chronological order, and an authors note detailing the origin and bibliographical details of each of the stories. Brian Koppelman, the prominent screenwriter and director (Solitary Man, Oceans Thirteen, Rounders) and a major Matt Scudder fan, has sweetened the pot with an introduction.

Lawrence Block, a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, is a four–time winner of the Edgar and Shamus Awards. He is the author of more than fifty books, among them the Matthew Scudder mysteries Eight Million Ways to Die, The Sins of the Fathers, and A Stab in the Dark.