Time to Murder and Create (Matthew Scudder)

Small-time stoolie, Jake " The Spinner" Jablon, made a lot of new enemies when he switched careers, from informer to blackmailer. And the more "clients", he figured, the more money -- and more people eager to see him dead. So no one is surprised when the pigeon is found floating in the East River with his skull bashed in.And what's worse, no one cares -- except Matthew Scudder. The ex-cop-turned-private-eye is no conscientious avenging angel. But he's willing to risk his own life and limb to confront Spinner's most murderously aggressive marks. A job's a job after all -- and Scudder's been paid to find a killer -- by the victim...in advance.

Naturally enough, Scudder accepts and then honours his agreement to find out who the murderer is. In order to flush out The Spinner's murderer, Matt decides to confront each of the people being blackmailed with the news that they're still not off the hook in the hope that one of them will blink. The obvious downside to this plan is that he would be making himself a target which, if you forget about the subsequent 13 Matt Scudder books for a moment, makes for some very tense and exciting reading.

This is quite a fast-paced mystery that gives us multiple suspects to choose from with the wrong choice possibly proving fatal. Scudder is still an introspective soul who seems to view the world and his place in it with bemusement. Lawrence Block doesn't waste a word in his narrative which serves to move things along nicely.

It's another compelling entry in a series that I think fans of hardboiled crime books would love.


Bumbling along   August 30, 2001
Tom Bruce (East Moriches, NY)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

The second in this series of 14 mysteries, soon to be 15, finds our unlikely hero Matthew Scudder further along on his trek to alcoholism, mixed up in unsavory mahem, and trying to get by day to day. It's an interesting case: A blackmailer posthumously hires Matt to determine which of his three pidgeons killed him. So the quasi-detective sets himself up as the blackmailer's replacement to entice the murderer to strike at him so he can solve the case. Matthew, because his mind is becoming benumbed by booze or maybe he just isn't a very good detective, bumbles this case every step of the way, and comes to a less than satisfactory conclusion -- the type of ending only Block has the nerve to create. It's book noir at a higher level. The dialogue is terrific and true, the settings in Manhattan are recorded with exactness, it's a fine tale that kept me reading well into the night. One aspect I especially appreciated, Block didn't seem to feel he needed gratuitous foul language in this second in the series as he did in the first. The book is a great example of why the series is so popular.


Not bad early Scudder with a disturbing flaw   March 8, 2001
Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

"Time to Murder and Create" is the second novel in the Matthew Scudder series. Like many of the earlier Scudder tales, it is relatively short and not a greatly complex story. The plotline is clever; an extortionist gets a premonition of his own murder and hires Scudder in advance to investigate if anything happens to him. The story is well told, and this still being Scudder's drinking period, it is full of plenty of despair and loneliness. One major flaw exists however. One of the people the extortionist is blackmailing is politically connected figure who has sex with underage boys. Scudder's lack of outrage at the man's activity leads to a less than approriate conclusion of the story. If this had been Andrew Vachss' Burke, the pedophile would have gotten his just desserts. Overall, this is a fairly conventional mystery by Block standards. But it does have its moments.