Eight Million Ways to Die

This book grabbed me by the throat and threw me into a world I could literally feel spinning around me—a world in which good intentions don’t mean squat and random chance frequently outperforms the most carefully crafted of plans. Block always hits his target, but this one broke my heart along the way.

I love Lawrence Block’s work. In this book, he transcends genre and defies categorization. He paints a compelling portrait of an ex-NYC cop who is living in an SRO hotel and committing slow-motion suicide, but then he hits one of those bumps in the road—an inflection point. Block shows you a side of NYC that’s as real as it gets.

I left home at 18 with no plan or clue, and I ended up living in NYC in the early ‘70s. I made a lot of mistakes. I mean, a lot. I got away with some of them, or so… show more.

I discovered Lawrence Block at my local library when I was probably still too young to read his searing, heartbreaking stories about damaged men and women navigating lives rocked by trauma and tragedy.

But his books drew me in, especially this landmark story about an alcoholic ex-cop forced to come to terms with his addiction while working to solve a brutal crime.

The character has been played in movies by Liam Neeson and Jeff Bridges, but it’s on the page and in Block’s beautiful sentences that Matthew Scudder truly comes to life.