Lawrence Block’s novel A Walk Among the Tombstones returns
Once again, the folks at Titan Books have released a great new movie tie-in novel to expand upon the experience of an upcoming blockbuster. A revival of the 1994 Lawrence Block novel A Walk Among the Tombstones (click to buy) is on the platter this time around, and I ate up the dark mystery without knowing a thing about the Matthew Scudder universe. Coincidentally, I wasn’t really aware of the film of the same name with Liam Neeson in the Scudder seat, so it was a pleasant surprise to enjoy a new novel while discovering a little more about an intriguing new thriller that’s passed under my radar.
Read a little bit about Lawrence Block’s novel and watch a trailer for A Walk Among the Tombstones after the jump.
It’s fun to compare the film’s plot synopsis to the back cover synopsis from the novel.
Here’s how the film is described:
Based on Lawrence Block’s bestselling series of mystery novels, A Walk among the Tombstones stars Liam Neeson as Matt Scudder, an ex-NYPD cop who now works as an unlicensed private investigator operating just outside the law. When Scudder reluctantly agrees to help a heroin trafficker (Dan Stevens) hunt down the men who kidnapped and then brutally murdered his wife, the PI learns that this is not the first time these men have committed this sort of twisted crime…nor will it be the last. Blurring the lines between right and wrong, Scudder races to track the deviants through the backstreets of New York City before they kill again.
And here’s how the the original A Walk Among the Tombstones novel is sold on the back cover:
Kenan Khoury’s wife went out grocery shopping and never came home. Alive, anyway. But because Kenan Khoury buys and sells drugs for a living he can’t go to the police for help. He goes to Matthew Scudder instead – an alcoholic ex-cop and unlicensed private eye who will stop at nothing to bring the brutal killers to justice before another innocent woman falls beneath their knives.
Given that the Max Scudder saga stretches through at least 17 books from Block, there’s a good chance the film cherry picks from different aspects or even events in the private eye’s career. Or, with the Taken franchise’s well running dry, this might be an opportunity to introduce the character of Scudder with Neeson on the screen and either continue forward in the book series chronologically or step back and see another actor jump into a younger Scudder’s shoes. Either way, it’s interesting to see the revival start literally in the middle of the series (I keep saying that because the character has been around and working through continuous mysteries since the late ’70s, A Walk Among the Tombstones is the 10th Scudder novel, and Jeff Bridges has been the only other actor to bring Scudder to the big screen).
As far as the book goes, it appears to be a reprinting of the original from 1992, which means nothing has been changed. If you’re catching up on the series or simply jumping in because you caught the trailer and were curious, A Walk Among the Tombstones acts as a standalone mystery while continuing what I imagine is the long and sordid story of Matthew Scudder. The guy has been around more than a few life-altering blocks, and even after one novel he measures up to any long-standing character created by similarly-inclined authors like James Patterson or Michael Connelly.
I suppose that’s as good a reason as any as to why this book excels where other movie tie-ins might fall short. Lawrence Block, like his character, has seen more than a few murders and mysteries unravel, so by novel 10 the author seems really comfortable exercising his most popular character’s quirks or pratfalls. Oftentimes, it’s writer-for-hire-types who get contracted in to craft a movie-to-novel adaptation for newer films, and more often than not the lack of investment in the characters and their world spills over and spoils something for the reader in a strange way. Here, it benefits both the book and the movie to have such an expansive backstory and a weathered author supporting A Walk Among the Tombstones, and I’m pretty excited to see how the new film helps bring the book back to life.
As mentioned above, Block’s novel would sit nicely next to your Connelly or Patterson collection, and fans as well as detractors of the genre know who they are. As someone who casually enjoys a good mystery and has been known to pop in an audiobook adventure to pass the time on long trips, I got sucked into the Scudder world and would recommend A Walk Among the Tombstones to fanatics and light readers alike. That said, knowing how many entries are in this series, it’s hard not to instead recommend starting from the beginning and working through all 17 Scudder novels. Now there’s a great idea for getting through the winter!
You can catch A Walk Among the Tombstones starring Liam Neeson in theaters at P.M. screenings tonight and nationwide tomorrow (September 19, 2014), and the novel from Titan Books is on sale now!