Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer. When Scudder's childhood friend Jack Ellery is murdered, presumably while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder reluctantly begins his own investigation, with just one lead: Ellery's Alcoholics Anonymous list of people he wronged. One of them may be a killer, but that's not necessarily Scudder's greatest danger. Immersing himself in Ellery's world may lead him right back to the bar stool. In a novel widely celebrated by critics and readers, Lawrence Block circle back to how it all began, reestablishing the Matthew Scudder series as one of the pinnacles of American detective fiction. "Right up there with Mr. Block's best . . . A Drop of Hard Stuff keeps us guessing." -- Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal "A Great American Crime Novel ... good to the last drop. Totally gripping. The perfect introduction to Scudder's shadow-strewn world and the pleasures of Block's crisp yet brooding prose, [and] a bracing distillation of Block's powers."― Time "Moving ... elegiac ... right up there with Mr. Block's best."― Wall Street Journal "One of the finest in the entire Scudder series ... highly recommended."― Entertainment Weekly "Sometimes you open a novel and you just know you're in the hands of a master. In the case of Lawrence Block's latest Matt Scudder mystery, the tipoff is a brazenly simple plot premise, faultlessly executed...Like a lot of great mystery fiction, A Drop of the Hard Stuff is also a ghost story. Matt's attempt to exorcise his phantoms results in a classic tale about the stubborn persistence of memory and regret."― NPR "Block is a mesmerizing raconteur ... elegiac ... a lament for all the old familiar things that are now almost lost, almost forgotten." ― The New York Times Book Review "Smart and cunning ... reminds us that the really good writers can make even familiar situations seem newfound and energized."― Tampa Tribune "Intriguing. Strong characterization and great eye for atmospheric detail makes his latest effort a dark but enjoyable tale."― Lansing State Journal "A satisfyingly adult story, with a believable number of false starts and lose ends, as it pays tribute to the power of persistence and acceptance."― Columbus Dispatch "Genius...the prose, as always, is like the club soda Scudder sips in the opening pages: cool, fizzy, and completely refreshing."― Booklist , starred review "Powerful...Block's pitch-perfect prose bolsters the elegiac plot. Accessible to first-timers, this book should add many more fans to the author's considerable following." ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Lonesome, wintry, and compassionate . . . guaranteed to get under your skin."― Kirkus Reviews "Pensive and philosophical, at times bleak, and at others surprisingly warm and human ... as rich and rewarding as it is devastating ... if you haven't read any of the Scudder books yet, this might be the perfect way to introduce yourself to one of crime fiction's most enduring characters."― www.PulpSerenade.com "Hypnotic. You don't realize you're being sucked in until - BANG! - the plot thickens and suddenly you can't put it down. Another solid entry in the in one of mystery's most reliable series."― www.SpinetinglerMag.com "There is really only one writer of mystery and detective fiction who comes close to replacing the irreplaceable John D. MacDonald ...The writer is Lawrence Block."― Stephen King Lawrence Block is a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master who has won multiple Edgar and Shamus awards and countless international prizes. The author of more than 50 books, he lives in New York City. A Drop of the Hard Stuff By Block, Lawrence Mulholland Books Copyright © 2011 Block, Lawrence All right reserved. ISBN: 9780316127332 I I COULDN’T TELL YOU the first time I saw Jack Ellery, but it would have to have been during the couple of years I spent in the Bronx. We were a class apart at the same grammar school, so I’d have seen him in the halls or outside at recess, or playing stickball or stoopball after school let out. We got to know each other well enough to call each other by our last names, in the curious manner of boys. If you’d asked me then about Jack Ellery, I’d have said he was all right, and I suppose he’d have said the same about me. But that’s as much as either of us would have been likely to say, because that’s as well as we knew each other. Then my father’s business tailed off and he closed the store and we moved, and I didn’t see Jack Ellery again for more than twenty years. I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him right away. I don’t know whether he would have recognized me, because he didn’t get to see me. I was looking at him through one-way glass. This would have been in 1970 or ’71. I’d had my gold shield for a couple of years, and I was a detective assigned to the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village w