One Last Night at Grogan's

I began writing about Matthew Scudder in the mid-1970s. The first novel, The Sins of the Fathers, appeared in 1975, and A Drop of the Hard Stuff--the 17th and most recent--was published in 2011. Over the years Scudder has also been featured in 11 short works of fiction.

One Last Night at Grogan's is the last of these, and takes place some months after Matt's conversation with Mick Ballou at the end of A Drop of the Hard Stuff. Elegaic in tone, it'snopt so much a crime story as a summing up of the whole series; while it's not the best place to meet Scudder for the first time, no fan of the series will want to miss this finale. Its sole appearance has been in The Night and the Music, my 2011 collection of all 11 Matthew Scudder short stories, available for Nook or in handsome trade paperback form.