A Long Line of Dead Men (A Matthew Scudder Mystery)

An ancient brotherhood meets annually in the back room of a swank Manhattan restuarant, a fraternity created in secret to celebrate life by celebrating its dead. But the past three decades have not been kind to the Club of 31. Matthew Scudder -- ex-cop, ex-boozer -- has known death in all its guises, which is why he as been asked to investigate a baffling, thirty-year run of suicides and suspiciously random accidents that has thinned the ranks of this very select group of gentlemen. But Scudder has mortality problems of his own, for his is a city that feeds mercilessly on the unsuspecting -- and even the powerful and those who serve them are easy prey. There are too many secrets here, and too many places for a maddeningly patient serial killer to hide...and wait...and strike. "It is an ancient brotherhood of prosperous men, created in secret to celebrate life ... by celebrating its dead. But the past three decades have not been kind to the Club of 31 ... As a former cop, an ex-boozer and an unlicensed p.i., Matthew Scudder has known death in all its guises. Which is why he has been asked to investigate a baffling, thirty-year run of suicides ans suspiciously random accidents that has plagued a very select group of gentlemen. But Scudder has mortality problems of his own. For this city feeds mercilessly on the unsuspecting-and even the powerful and those who serve them are easy prey for a patient, painstaking and perfectly relentless serial killer."--BOOK COVER Each year on the first Thursday in May, an exclusive club of what started out as thirty-one men meet at a restaurant for a meal and to read the names of club members who died during the past year. The surviving member will choose thirty more men to form a new group to continue the pattern. But someone is rushing things: the death rate is suspiciously high. Matthew Scudder investigates In New York, members of a private diner's club begin to be murdered one by one and there is nothing to go on, no obvious motive and nothing the victims had in common. PI Matthew Scudder is hired to find the killer. By the author of The Devil Knows You're Dead Matthew Scudder Crime Novel #12. "When Lawrence Block is in his Matthew Scudder mode, crime fiction can sidle up so close to literature that often there's no degree of difference" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).