Lawrence Block—All the Flowers are Dying I may say this book is well-developed and well-written novel, yet I would not say it is interesting. Actually, since When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, the attractiveness of Scudder’s series was just going down. During the last few pages of this latest novel, which is published in 2005, I rather expected Mathew Scudder ends his life and this series. However, he revived. I am not sure if it is equal to the coming of next book, while I hope it is not. The most interesting parts of Scudder’s series base on some subtle but accurate descriptions of people’s actions and interactions, especially which used to fill some paragraphs and slow down the tempo. The most impressive part , according to my memory, is that when Mathew talked in phone and felt impatient, he heard a long ,sharp sound of braking on the street and expected the following crash, but it did not happened. The same situation might happen to almost everyone, but it is too subtle to be noticed. When it is uncovered and located appropriately, surprises arise inevitably. In All the Flowers are Dying, descriptions of the kind scatter all over the books. For example, after spending a day searching someone through Google, Mathew just told his wife that he found another person with the same name who concerns another case, and eventually he found it interesting and read it on the Internet for several hours. Ha, I do so all the time. Another example is CSI, which is mentioned twice. The police officer in the book complained this show just reminds all criminals of their possible mistakes, and all jails in the USA have the show on their TVs and the inmates are sitting there and making notes!! Mathew also mentioned baseball, when he tested his own memory. I was expecting he could have said something about Wang Chang-Ming, but he didn’t. Despite of those fascinating narrations, the story is a cliche. A pervert killed several people without any motication, Mathew got involved, and he and Elaine were the final goal of the killer. I don’t know when such model began. All cruel, amazing homicides in the story are just appetizer, the killer must ultinately aim at the detective’s wife, little son, daughter, girlfriend, poppy, kitty and so on. The arrangement leads readers more involvement and empathy, plus a massy fight to end the story. When the model repeats, however, it just makes investigation and deduction trivial, because the only thing you can conclude is: THIS GUY IS A NUT!! I wonder why the detectives never consider staying at home with thousands of bullets, but make so many unhelpful efforts without preventing any victims get killed. Besides, the model appears in a previous Scudder’s story, the one in which the guy could beat Mathew by pressing his points. I admit All the Flowers are Dying is better than that one, including the detailed portrayal of the killer’s metal condition. However, the repeat structure might imply the lack of creativity of the author. In short, I would not say I don’t like this novel, but I miss Scudder the Listener more. It is nice to say goodbye to old Scudder, and say goodbye to those drunk days. -- "I'm still a drunk and a junkie, man. You know the difference between the two? A drunk will steal your wallet." "And a junkie?" "Oh, a junkie'll steal your wallet, too. And then he'll help you look for it." --

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