The young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's father has come to Matthew Scudder for answers.

Matthew Scudder is no conscientious avenging angel. A job's a job after all -- and Scudder's been paid to find a killer -- by the victim...in advance.

Matthew Scudder doesn't think a bad cop's a killer, but the cops aren't about to help the unlicensed p.i. prove it -- and they may do a lot worse than just get in his way.

Louis Pinell freely admits to having slain seven women nine years ago -- but be swears it was a copycat who killed Barbara Ettinger Matthew Scudder believes him.

Nobody knows better than Matthew Scudder how far down a person can sink in this city. A young prostitute named Kim knew it also—and she wanted out.

Matthew Scudder is drinking his life away -- and doing "favors" for pay for his ginmill cronies. But when three such assignments flow together in dangerous and disturbing ways, he'll need to change his priorities from boozing to surviving.

Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City.

Twelve years ago, Matthew Scudder lied to a jury to put James Leo Motley behind bars. Now the ingenious psychopath is free.

In Matt Scudder's mind, money, power, and position elevate nobody above morality and the law. Now the ex-cop and unlicensed p.i. has been hired to prove that socialite Richard Thurman orchestrated the brutal murder of his beautiful, pregnant wife.

Kenan Khoury’s wife went out grocery shopping and never came home. Alive, anyway. But Khoury can’t go to the police for help. He goes to Matthew Scudder instead

A deranged derelict, a crazed Vietnam vet, has been arrested for gunning down successful young lawyer Glenn Holtzmann at a corner phone booth on Eleventh Avenue -- and the suspect's brother wants p.i. Matthew Scudder to prove the madman innocent.

Matthew Scudder investigates a secret, private club in Manhattan whose members suddenly start dying, when it becomes obvious that someone is trying to kill them all.

Matthew Scudder knows that justice is an elusive commodity in the big city, where a harmless man can be shot dead in a public place criminals fly free through holes in a tattered legal system.

Matt Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. The crime rate's down and the stock market's up. Gentrification's prettying-up the old neighborhood. The New York streets don't look so mean anymore. Then all hell breaks loose.

There's something drawing Matthew Scudder to a 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.

A brilliant, savage, patient monster has unfinished business in the big city...and a hunger that can be satisfied only by fear and the slow, agonizing death of Matthew Scudder and the woman he loves.

Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer.

Matthew Scudder has appeared in shorter fiction, and all 11 novelettes, short stories, and vignettes are here in a single rich volume.