A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

Banal Brutality, as Black as Noir Can Be

A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block is the ninth story to feature private investigator Matthew Scudder. It is a harrowing tale of child abuse and murder with an ending that will make you question right from wrong.

Block delivers the story with such impassive prose that the story is unnervingly convincing. It won the Edgar Award for best novel in 1992.

Synopsis

Ex-New York City cop turned private investigator Matthew Scudder is asked to investigate the case of Amanda Thurman. She and her husband had disturbed a burglary. Her husband was tied up, whilst she was raped and murdered. Both the police and her brother believe her husband was complicit in her demise, but there is nowhere near enough evidence against him to bring the case to court. Scudder’s investigation is going nowhere.

Six months earlier, a snuff movie had fallen into Scudder’s hands. A costumed man and woman had had sadomasochistic sex with a teenage boy and then murdered him, leading Scudder into the appalling world of child prostitution. 

A chance meeting links the two cases together, with hideous, morally ambiguous consequences.

Review

Originally published in 1991, today, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block feels like a historical novel. Thirty years on, Block describes video rental stores and payphones. For those of a certain age, these everyday, but long-gone items, bring back memories that give the book a vivid authenticity. This legitimacy is echoed in Block’s description of sordid, sex for sale, Manhattan at the tail end of the twentieth century. If the VHS recorders feel real, the same is true of Block’s sleazy New York streets.

Block’s most famous character, Matthew Scudder, has a matter-of-fact style. Scudder simply relates events and conversations. This gives the story a disarmingly down-to-earth, genuine feel. You won’t be remotely sceptical when Scudder casually discusses snuff movies with prostitutes, cops and gangsters. The banality of the conversations makes the scenarios and events appear all the more real.

All this directness leaves you beyond shocked as Scudder casually describes a host of sickening events and gratuitous violence.

Then, still stroking the boy’s forehead, still smoothing his hair, he tightened his grip on the pruning shears and cut off the boy’s nipple.

The book is not an easy read, but it is a credible one. Block will take you to a time and place in New York that you have no doubt existed and are grateful you never had the misfortune to visit.

Excerpt

I don’t remember anything specific about the meeting itself, but during the break, a fellow named Will came up to me and said he’d like to talk with me after the meeting. I said that would be fine, but I wouldn’t be able to leave right away, that I had to hang around for a few minutes to put the chairs away.

The meeting resumed, ending at ten o’clock with the Lord’s Prayer, and the cleanup went quicker than usual because Will gave me a hand with the chairs. When we were done, I asked him if he wanted to go someplace for coffee.

“No, I have to get home,” he said. “This won’t take that long, anyway. You’re a detective, right?”

“More or less.”

“And you used to be a cop. I heard you qualify when I was a month or so sober. Look, would you do me a favour? Would you take a look at this?”

He handed me a brown paper bag folded to make a compact parcel. I opened it and took out a video cassette in one of those semi-rigid translucent plastic cases the rental shops use. The label identified the picture as The Dirty Dozen. 

I looked at it and then at Will. He was around forty, and he did some sort of work that involved computers. He was sober six months at the time, he’d come in right after the Christmas holidays, and I’d heard him qualify once. I knew his drinking story but not much about his personal life.

“I know the movie,” I said. “I must have seen it four or five times.”

“You’ve never seen this version.” 

A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block