Everybody Dies - Lawrence Block

Written by Lawrence Block
Read by Mark Hammer
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Series: Matthew Scudder: book 14
Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
Release date: 09-07-07
Publisher: 2007 Recorded Books, LLC

The body count is indeed high in this Matt Scudder tale–resonant, thoughtful, richly textured and capped by a slam-bang windup. At the center of the case is Matt’s old buddy, Mick Ballou, the murderous and hard-drinking Irish mobster with a deeply philosophical streak who is one of Block’s most enduring creations. Two of Mick’s henchmen have been killed in what should have been a routine liquor hijacking.

After Scudder helps Mick bury the bodies at the mobster’s upstate farm, he finds he has been targeted himself. Two hoods try to rough him up on the street, and then an old friend, Matt’s sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous, is gunned down in a restaurant after being mistaken for Matt. It soon becomes clear that someone from Ballou’s past is aiming to destroy him, and Matt, caught in the crossfire, has to try to determine who’s behind the mayhem. He does so in his usual ruminative way, working it out with wife Elaine, streetwise sidekick TJ and old cop comrades who are now, because of his friendship with Ballou, against him. In the end, Matt has to stand alone with Ballou to put a stop to the vendetta in a blaze of gunfire.

Block’s seamless weave of thought and action, and his matchless gift for dialogue that is true, funny and revealing, have seldom been on more effective display. The pages leading up to the climax have an almost Shakespearean feel for human resignation in the face of mortality.

“Mark Hammer’s gravely voice makes him sound like he’s a continually hungover. Second, Hammer can’t capture the voices of characters. Elaine sounds like a drag queen. TJ like some redneck barroom imitation of an African-American. And don’t get me started with what Hammer does to Irish voices”