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Jeffrey Keeten's Reviews > The Sins of the Fathers
The Sins of the Fathers (Matthew Scudder, #1)
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”He had a daughter in a cold steel drawer in the city mortuary.”
Two dead kids. One, the daughter of a successful businessman, and the other, the son of a reverend. How they ended up living together and why everything turned to murder and suicide is going to be the crux of this case.
The cops aren’t really interested in the why. They have a brutally slashed body and a guy muttering crazy things covered in blood. Guy hangs himself in his cell. High fives all around...open and shut case.
The father of the girl, Cale Hanniford, isn’t satisfied. He calls in Matt Scudder to do a little digging, a little rooting in the underbelly where the real answers lie. Is Scudder a private investigator? Not exactly. He can’t charge for his services, but he can accept donations. He’s outside the law, and as you get to know him in this first book in the series, you’re going to find out just how far outside the law he is willing to go. The law stops here. Scudder just keeps going.
On the surface, this looks like a case of green-eyed jealousy getting way out of control. It doesn’t take long for Scudder to discover that Wendy Hanniford was basically operating as a high-end prostitute with a daddy complex. She liked her men with some mileage. Richie Vanderpoel was conflicted about his sexual orientation, not that he didn’t know that he was gay, but with a father like Reverend Martin Vanderpoel, it was hard to accept that your desires, the very ones that would have you burning in hellfire, were natural.
So if this were a case of raging jealousy and Wendy, as Richie’s father said, had trapped him with sex, why was Richie bunking on the couch?
As Scudder continues to dig, he starts to understand that, whatever the sins of the children may have been, the sins of the fathers may be where the truth lies.
The Matthew Scudder series is extremely successful, growing to seventeen volumes and leading to numerous film adaptations. It proves that the American public, if the concepts can be packaged correctly, still has a taste for the underbelly of American society and the hardboiled dialogue that first sprang to life with writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. After hacking out a living for decades writing under numerous pseudonyms,...finally Lawrence Block hit on a character and a concept that hopefully gave him a nice retirement. I talk of retirement, but a Scudder novella was just released in 2019. Who knows what ideas are still percolating in the mind of Block, keeping him from sleeping until he nestles down at the computer and turns his thoughts into words, into yet another novel?
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/
Two dead kids. One, the daughter of a successful businessman, and the other, the son of a reverend. How they ended up living together and why everything turned to murder and suicide is going to be the crux of this case.
The cops aren’t really interested in the why. They have a brutally slashed body and a guy muttering crazy things covered in blood. Guy hangs himself in his cell. High fives all around...open and shut case.
The father of the girl, Cale Hanniford, isn’t satisfied. He calls in Matt Scudder to do a little digging, a little rooting in the underbelly where the real answers lie. Is Scudder a private investigator? Not exactly. He can’t charge for his services, but he can accept donations. He’s outside the law, and as you get to know him in this first book in the series, you’re going to find out just how far outside the law he is willing to go. The law stops here. Scudder just keeps going.
On the surface, this looks like a case of green-eyed jealousy getting way out of control. It doesn’t take long for Scudder to discover that Wendy Hanniford was basically operating as a high-end prostitute with a daddy complex. She liked her men with some mileage. Richie Vanderpoel was conflicted about his sexual orientation, not that he didn’t know that he was gay, but with a father like Reverend Martin Vanderpoel, it was hard to accept that your desires, the very ones that would have you burning in hellfire, were natural.
So if this were a case of raging jealousy and Wendy, as Richie’s father said, had trapped him with sex, why was Richie bunking on the couch?
As Scudder continues to dig, he starts to understand that, whatever the sins of the children may have been, the sins of the fathers may be where the truth lies.
The Matthew Scudder series is extremely successful, growing to seventeen volumes and leading to numerous film adaptations. It proves that the American public, if the concepts can be packaged correctly, still has a taste for the underbelly of American society and the hardboiled dialogue that first sprang to life with writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. After hacking out a living for decades writing under numerous pseudonyms,...finally Lawrence Block hit on a character and a concept that hopefully gave him a nice retirement. I talk of retirement, but a Scudder novella was just released in 2019. Who knows what ideas are still percolating in the mind of Block, keeping him from sleeping until he nestles down at the computer and turns his thoughts into words, into yet another novel?
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/
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Reading Progress
July 10, 2020
–
Started Reading
July 10, 2020
– Shelved
July 10, 2020
– Shelved as:
mysteries
July 10, 2020
– Shelved as:
hardboiled
July 11, 2020
–
Finished Reading
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message 1:
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Cynthia
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rated it 5 stars
Jul 11, 2020 10:03AM
I love this series!!!
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Cynthia wrote: "I love this series!!!"I'm revisting them. I plan to at least read the first six, but I have a feeling I'll be reading more than that.
cool book how was it? why didnt u rate it 5stars??
Chuckles wrote: "cool book how was it? why didnt u rate it 5stars??"It's a long series and I want to read a few more before I settle into my ratings for each book. 4 is just where I decided to put this one for now.
I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again anyway. I love this series and think that this is a great introduction to it. I actually own a first edition, first printing of the book.
James wrote: "I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again anyway. I love this series and think that this is a great introduction to it. I actually own a first edition, first printing of the book."I know! I'm so jealous that you have a first. Now where do you live? And where do you keep it? :-) I've got the first six and plan to run them in through my reading queue rather quickly.
