Lawrence Block: Hope to Die (USA 2002)

From the Publisher:
IThe city caught its collective breath when upscale couple Byrne and Susan Hollander were slaughtered in a brutal home invasion. Now, a few days later, the killers themselves have turned up dead behind the locked door of a Brooklyn hellhole -- one apparently slain by his partner in crime who then took his own life.

There's something drawing Matthew Scudder to this case that the cops have quickly and eagerly closed: a nagging suspicion that a third man is involved, a cold, diabolical puppet master who manipulates his two accomplices, then cuts their strings when he's done with them. No one but Scudder even suspects he exists. And his worst fear is that the guy is just getting started...

Lawrence Block: Hope to Die. Harpertorch, ISBN: 006103097X (November, 2002), 400 p., $7.99.

Lawrence Block: Hope to Die (UK 2002)

From the Publisher:
The fifteenth Matt Scudder mystery from NEW YORK TIMES bestseller Lawrence Block.
Byrne and Susan Hollander stroll home from a concert on a fine summer's evening in New York. Some hours later, their daughter Kristin arrives home to discover her parents brutally killed and the house ransacked. She also finds she is now a very young millionaire. A few days later the police trace the two killers to an apartment in Coney Island, and both are dead. One killed the other before turning the gun on himself - at least that's the way it looks. So that's another case solved. But for Matt Scudder it's only the beginning. The more he looks into it, the more things look wrong to him. There's a murderer out there, and he's just getting started. Pitted in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Scudder is up against the most resourceful and diabolical killer of his career.

Lawrence Block: Hope to Die. Orion Books, ISBN: 0752848178 (September, 2002), 340 p., £6.99.

Lawrence Block: Hope to Die (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
Twenty-five years ago, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block introduced his acclaimed unlicensed private investigator to the New York crime scene. Today Matthew Scudder remains one of the most complex, richly human protagonists in noir fiction -- as he pursues a faceless adversary with a unique talent and taste for murder.

When Byrne and Susan Hollander are killed in a brutal home invasion, the whole city catches its collective breath. A few days later the killers turn up dead behind a locked door in Brooklyn. One has killed his partner, then himself. The city sighs with relief. The cops close the case.

Matt and Elaine Scudder were in the same room with the Hollanders hours before their deaths. In spite of himself, Scudder is drawn to the Hollander case. The closer he looks, the more he senses the presence of a third man, a puppet master who manipulated his two accomplices, then cut their strings when he was done with them.

The villain who looms in the shadows is one of Block's most inspired creations, cold and diabolical, murdering for pleasure and profit. Nobody but Scudder even suspects he exists -- and he's not done killing.

He's just getting started...

Lawrence Block: Hope to Die. William Morrow, ISBN: 006019832X (November, 2001), 320 p., $25.00.