A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

Widely acknowledged as one of America's leading crime writers, Block has won praise for his style, for his twisty, realistic stories, but most of all for his ever-intriguing detective, Matthew Scudder.

An ex-cop, and a frequent visitor to AA meetings, Scudder has seen so much on the street that he thinks he is incapable of surprise. But then he becomes involved in a case that takes him on a terrifying tour of the darkest and most twisted side of sex for sale in New York City.

It all begins conventionally enough. A rich, beautiful woman is murdered. Her husband stands to inherit almost a million dollars, the woman's brother suspects the husband. . .and Scudder is hired. But then Scudder stumbles across a snuff film involving a young boy, and the case takes a chilling turn. Somehow Scudder and his girlfriend Elaine must find a connection between the two crimes and set a trap for the killer.

In A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, Block is at the top of his considerable powers. Writing with feverish intensity, he's thrown Scudder into a nightmarish world filled with the kind of moral ambiguity and insight into the dark recesses of the human soul that Block's readers have come to expect.