A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

"Yes. I have to say, despite what I just said about thrillers, that this is probably less of a thriller than some of my other choices. Lawrence Block is an American writer who is very much influenced by earlier crime writers like Raymond Chandler, and he has written a number of different books. But the series that I really like, and that has always been a great influence on me, has been his New York PI series about a guy called Matt Scudder. Block started writing them in the 70s and he is still writing them now, and Matt Scudder has gone from a boozer in his late 20s/early 30s into a wiser, more laidback coffee drinker in his 60s. The book that really stood out for me in this excellent series is A Dance at the Slaughterhouse , in which Scudder is hired to find out whether a guy has murdered his wife or not. Basically the man and his wife were supposedly ambushed in their apartment by a couple of burglars who they disturbed after a night out. The man was beaten and his wife was murdered. The wife’s brother suspects that there is something amiss and thinks that the husband is responsible, so he hires Scudder to look into it and we soon find ourselves in the real dark underbelly of New York. He stumbles across a snuff film and the possibility that there’s a group of killers out in the city hunting down people and filming their deaths for their own sexual satisfaction. It really is a dark, dark book that is very pacy and stayed with me long after I had read it. The sign of a really good thriller is that you want to read it again, and I’ve read this one three times even though I know exactly what happens. In fact, talking to you reminds me that I’m due a read of it again."