Hope to Die by Lawrence Block
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"The double murder was more than front-page news. It was, in journalistic terms, a wonderful story. The victims, a prominent attorney and a published writer, were decent, cultured people, murdered brutally in their own home. She'd been raped, always a bonus for the tabloid reader, and subjected to a second violation [...]"

Hope To Die (2001), the fifteenth installment in the successful Matthew Scudder series by Lawrence Block, suffers from the usual malady of later novels in a series: boring familiarity of characters and repetitiveness of themes. The soap opera feel is particularly oppressive in the beginning parts of the novel and since I am strongly allergic to conceptual continuity in literature I had difficulties plodding through the pages. Well, the later parts of the novel focus more on the case rather than on Mr. Scudder, Elaine, or TJ, so I finished reading the book with some interest.

Briefly about the setup of the plot. The Hollanders, murder victims, have just come back from a classical music concert when they apparently interrupt a burglary. Coincidentally, Matthew and Elaine have attended the same concert. If this weren't enough coincidence, the victims live only about a mile away from the Scudders. There is even more: TJ, Mr. Scudder's young protégé and frequent helper, happens to know the murdered woman's niece. Naturally, Mr. Scudder is unable to avoid getting interested in the case.

The first major twist happens very early in the plot - I am not giving any spoilers - it turns out that there is much more to the originally accepted story of the murder caused by interrupted burglary. Then, about one-third into the novel Matthew Scudder offers an alternative version of the events, and to me the exposition of his theory is one of the highpoints of the book. Alas, it follows one of the lowest points, where the author begins a new thread, in the third-person narration. The thread relates thoughts, emotions, and activities of a man who is obviously in some way connected to the events. I find the parallel running of good-guys thread and bad-guy thread a particularly lame literary device, and the use of italics a horrible cliché.

While the repetitive stuff about Alcoholics Anonymous and the soap-opera passages about Mr. Scudder and his family are superficial and uninteresting I have found the two young female characters, the victims' daughter and their niece, very well written and psychologically plausible (as opposed to some of Mr. Scudder's sides of conversations with them). Despite the overall grim mood, there are some nicely humorous scenes like the passage when Elaine, annoyed at her husband's interest in a woman 40 years his junior, engages in a suitable counteraction.

To sum things up: a marginal recommendation from me, based almost entirely on the strength of the plot and ignoring the weaknesses of character portrayal. Very, very far apart in quality from, say, the same author's The Sins of the Fathers Yet for readers who are interested in lives of Matthew, Elaine, or TJ this will likely be a much higher rated novel.

Two-and-a-half stars.

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