Three routine favors for barroom friends. One lethal spiral of violence and deceit. In 1970s New York, the tab has finally come due.
In the dark days, in a sad and lonely place, ex-cop Matt 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.
Between morning coffees laced with bourbon at Armstrong's, he agrees to help a saloonkeeper buy back a stolen set of skimmed ledgers. An illegal after-hours joint on Fifty-first Street loses its cash box to masked gunmen.
A telephone salesman in Bay Ridge wants him to nose around a ransacked house where a woman was stabbed to death in her bed. Working the city's bars to find the truth will cost more than cash.
