A Time to Scatter Stones: A Matthew Scudder Novella

Sometimes, an old warhorse has one more ride left in him. When Matthew Scudder — ex-cop, ex-private investigator, recovering alcoholic — meets a former hooker with an abusive john who won’t leave her alone, he ventures back into the fold to make things right. Some problems, after all, can’t be solved by calling 911.

A moody exploration of the part of the private eye’s life we never see, the world of retirement, A Time to Scatter Stones is the perfect denouement for one of crime literature’s most famous and well-textured characters.

For a series that has often returned to the concept of mortality hanging over all of us, revisiting Scudder in his retirement is a natural stroke of the pen, literally showing us the world passing Scudder by, even as he strives to remain useful and do a good deed. Block’s patient plotting and expert attention to minor detail adds so much to what is, on the surface, a simple story.

A Time to Scatter Stones/is beautiful in its melancholy and goes all too quickly. You simply hate to say goodbye to a character this rich and engaging.