My Reading

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I like reading books, especially novels. Now I live in an English country, but my English is not good enough, even though I have studied English for a very long time. Two years ago, I began to read and listen to English novels, and I hope my English could be improved. I could understand the outline of those novels. Here I'll try to give a brief narrative of those books I've read.

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The first novel I read this year is “ The Sins of the Fathers” (1976) by Lawrence Block. This is the first novel in the explosive Matthew Scudder Series. Matthew Scudder, an excellent former policeman, was a private detector without a license. Sometimes he did favors for people. They give him gifts.

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A young girl had been murdered, the murderer had been captured at the crime scene. Several days later, the criminal—a minister's son—hanged himself in his jail cell. The case was closed. According to newspapers, the young girl had been a pretty prostitute, the murderer a pimp. They had lived together.

One day, Matthew Scudder was drinking his coffee spiked with bourbon in a restaurant, the father of the dead girl, a rich businessman, came to ask him for help. The father wanted to know something detailed about his daughter. He wanted to know why his daughter had been a hooker, why she had been killed. He said: “I want to know who she was.” Scudder accepted this job.

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-Chapter 1
Scudder said:
Do you know what an Identikit portrait is? You've probably seen them in newspaper stories. When the police have an eyewitness, they use this kit of transparent overlays to piece together a composite picture of a suspect.
You want photographs of your daughter and the boy who killed her. I'm not equipped to offer you that. No one is. I can dig up enough facts and impressions to make composite Identikit portraits for you, but the result may not be all that close to what you really want.

The father said:
Wendy's not my biological daughter. I adopted her. My wife is Wendy's mother. Wendy's father was killed before Wendy was born, he was a Marine, he died in the landing at Inchon. I married Wendy's mother three years after that. From the beginning I loved her as much as any real father could have. When I found out that I was... unable to father children myself, I was even more grateful for her existence.
I have to know how much to blame myself.

Why did Scudder leave the force? He replied:
I lost the faith. I found out I didn't want to be a cop anymore.
I was off duty one night in the summer. I was in a bar in Washington Heights. Two kids held up the place. On their way out they shot the bartender in the heart. I chased them into the street. I shot one of them dead and caught the other in the thigh. He's never going to walk right again.
One shot went wide and ricocheted. It hit a seven-year-old girl in the eye. The ricochet took most of the steam off the bullet. An inch higher and it probably would have glanced off her forehead. Would have left a nasty scar but nothing much worse than that. This way, though, nothing but soft tissue, and it went right on into her brain. They tell me she died instantly. There was no question of culpability. As a matter of fact, I got a departmental commendation.
Then I resigned. I just didn't want to be a cop anymore.

A waitress Trina said:
You'd rather just sit here and get drunk. Coffee and booze. It's a very weird combination. Booze to get you drunk, and coffee to keep you sober.
Scudder shook his head:
Coffee never sobered anybody. It just keeps you awake. Give a drunk plenty of coffee and you've got a wide-awake drunk on your hands.

Scudder withdrew some money, went to a church, slipped one-tenth of his rewards into the poor box. Then he lit three candles on the way out. For Wendy Hanniford (the murdered young girl ), who would never get to be twenty-five, and for Richard Vanderpoel (that self-hanged young man) , who would never get to be twenty-one. And, of course, for Estrellita Rivera ( that little girl), who would never get to be eight.

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phrases or sentences:

I dropped the idea.
I'll give it a shot.
I had an impulse
Some people reach for a cigarette when they're tense, others when the tension passes.

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-Chapter 2

Matthew Scudder，the detector without a license, went to the Sixth Precinct to find his former colleague Lieutenant Eddie Koehler. Scudder reached over to shake hands with him and said: "You look like you need a new hat." Two tens and a five passed smoothly from his hand to Koehler’s.
Evidently, “new hat” was jargon about police bribery. As far as Scudder was concerned, the corruption had never bothered him. He thought that a policeman would have found it hard to support a family without it.
Scudder wanted to have a look at the police file on that murder case.
Lieutenant said: Why go through the motions? You're not gonna find anything there.
Twenty minutes later, Scudder had another twenty-five dollars less in his wallet and a manila folder on the desk in front of him
After reading those files, Scudder wanted to talk to the arresting officer, patrolman Lewis Pankow.
Lieutenant  Koehler agreed to set that up, arrange an introduction in a bar. Lieutenant asked: "What the hell are you gonna ask him, anyway?”
"I want to know what obscene language Vanderpoel was using."
Lieutenant  Koehler said in surprise: "Seriously? I think you're as crazy as Vanderpoel. For the price of a hat, you can hear all the dirty words in the world."

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-Chapter 3

Detector Matthew Scudder went to the building the victim and murderer had lived in，talked with the super of the building---a female artist.
Detector asked the super: "Did you know she was a prostitute?"
She said: "I still don't know it. I read lots of lies in the papers."
Detector said: ” I'd like to know what your impression of them was.”
“you know how I thought of them? As brother and sister."
"Why?"
"I can't say exactly," she said. " Just the vibrations they gave off, the sense you got of them when they were walking along. The sense of how they related to each other."
She added: "Another thing. I sort of took it for granted that he was gay."
"Why?"
"Physical type, I suppose. Mannerisms.”
The super told him that the victim had been living with someone else before, that was a woman.

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-Chapter 4

Detector Scudder met the arresting officer, patrolman Lewis Pankow in a bar.
Pankow described the situation at that time:
Vanderpoel was standing about two doors from the building where the murder took place. He had blood all over him. His clothing was disarrayed, his pants were unbuttoned and unzipped and his thing was hanging out. He was uttering obscenities, kept yelling, 'I'm a mother fu**er, I'm a mother f**ker, I f**ked my mother.' He kept shouting this over and over. Evidently, he went nuts.
When detector had all he was going to get, he put a five on the table for the drinks and passed twenty-five dollars to the patrolman. He didn't want to take it.
"Stupid. This isn't graft. It's clean money. You did somebody a favor and made a couple of bucks for it," said detector, “If you don't take money when somebody puts it in your hand, you're going to make a lot of people very nervous. Besides, Lieutenant Koehler's going to expect a five-dollar bill for steering twenty-five your way. You want to pay him out of your own pocket?"
"Jesus. What do I do, just walk into his office and hand him five dollars?"
"That's the idea. You can say something like, `Here's that five you loaned me.' Something like that."
"I guess I got a lot to learn."
Detector Scudder said. "You've got plenty to learn, but they make it easy for you. The system takes you through it a step at a time. That's what makes it such a good system."

phrases or sentences:
Sometimes the whole is a lot less than the sum of its parts.
every once in a while something new comes along and knocks you on your ass

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-Chapter 5

It was said that the murderer of the case had worked for an antique importer. Detector Scudder went to the Antiques Imports Shop to talk with someone.
A clerk told him: “I hardly knew him at all. My boss Mr. Burghash could tell you.”
Scudder asked: "Was he homosexual?"
"Well, I always assumed it, for heaven's sake. He certainly seemed gay."
Mr. Burghash met Scudder in his office.
“He was a good worker. Very good. Very conscientious, and he had a feeling for the business."
"He went home early that day."
"That's right. He didn't feel well when he came back from lunch. He had some curry at the Indian place around the corner, and it didn't agree with him. I was always telling him to stay with bland food, He had a sensitive digestive system, and he was always trying exotic foods that didn't agree with him. He came back from lunch feeling lousy. I told him right away to take the rest of the day off. You can't work with your guts on fire. He wanted to tough it out, though. He was an ambitious kid, a hard worker. "
"You were surprised when he killed her."
"I was astonished. I simply could not believe it. And I'm still astonished. "
On his way out, Detector Scudder ran into that young clerk.
“They're both dead. So what's the point in poking around in corners?"
Scudder answered with a question:
"Why would a homosexual live with a prostitute?"
"Gawd, I don't know. Maybe she let him take care of her overflow."
"Why in hell would he kill her? He raped her and he killed her. Why?"
"Well, he was a minister's son."
"So?"
"They're all crazy," he said. "Aren't they?"

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-Chapter 6

The murder’s father Reverend Martin Vanderpoel didn't want to see Detector Scudder, "I have spoken with enough reporters, I can spare no time for you.”
Scudder said: ”I was representing the father of the murdered girl. He told me he wanted to see you himself, sir."
There was a long pause. Then Reverend said, "It is a difficult request to refuse. Perhaps this evening?"
"This evening would be fine."
Detector Scudder called the murder’s lawyer George Topakian, found surprisingly that he was eager to talk to someone. "I expected to be relieved.”
Mr. Topakian had been talked with the suspect in the cell before the poor bastard hanged himself. The lawyer said:
I asked him several times if he had killed the Hanniford girl. He said he didn't remember killing her. Other times he said that he must have killed her because she couldn't have done it herself.
The young man remembered he had had a stomachache on the day of the murder. Then he kept talking about blood. `She was in the bathtub and there was blood all over.' I know she was killed in bed, according to police reports.
I don't think he ever lied to me. I mean, I don't believe he remembered killing the girl. Because he admitted something, oh, worse. Having sex with her. Having sex with her afterward.
He kept saying, ‘I f**ked her and she's dead.' As if his having had sex with her was the chief cause of her death. But he never remembered killing her. I suppose he could have blocked it out easily enough. I wonder why he didn't block out the whole thing. The sex act.

Afterwards, Detector Scudder went to the crime scene, sneaked into the apartment of the young girl and her killer. An hour later he went out, went to the Reverend's appointment.

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-Chapter 7

Reverend Martin Vanderpoel said:
Mr. Hanniford has lost a daughter. And I have lost a son. It's so difficult to father children in today's world. I can sympathize fully with Mr. Hanniford, but I fear I have no sympathy for the girl.
Wendy Hanniford’s father no doubt holds my son responsible for the loss of his daughter. And I, in turn, hold his daughter responsible for the loss of my son.
She was evil.
Yes. An evil, Devil-ridden woman. She took my son away from me, away from his religion, away
from God. She led him away from good paths and unto the paths of evil.
It was my son who killed her. But it was she who killed something within him, who made it possible for him to kill.
My son left home, he met Wendy Hanniford. He lived in sin with her. He became corrupted by her. She led him astray.
Detector Scudder asked: Did you ever actually meet her?
I met her once. Once was enough. I went to the apartment where they were living. I wanted her to end her relationship with my son. And she refused.
She was foul-mouthed and abusive. She taunted me.
I tried to talk to my son about that woman. He was utterly infatuated with her. Man is a weakling, he is so often powerless to cope with the awful force of an evil woman's sexuality.
Detector Scudder said: I understand you saw your son once after the killing. In his cell.
Yes. Richard told me he had killed her. He said he did not know what had come over him. He told me that there was a sudden moment of awful clarity when he saw her face. He said it was as if he had been given a glimpse of the Devil and knew only that he must destroy, destroy.
Detector Scudder asked: What did you say to Richard?
My son asked my forgiveness. I gave him my blessing. I told him he should look to the Lord for forgiveness.
I only hope he did, I only hope he did.

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-Chapter 8

During the illegal entry the night before, Detector Scudder searched the crime scene. He watched carefully the bathtub but there was nothing to suggest that anyone had been killed in it.
The living-room couch was a convertible. Obviously, Richard Vanderpoel slept on it.  
Detector Scudder found the name of Wendy’s former roommate was Marcia Maisel.
After careful inspection, Detector Scudder thought that the whole apartment had such an air of placid domesticity to it, a comfortable domesticity that all the blood in the bedroom could not entirely drown.
He thought of his impressions of that apartment and tried to match them up with Reverend Martin Vanderpoel's portrait of Wendy as evil incarnate. If she had trapped him with sex, why did he sleep on a folding bed in the living room?
Soon afterward, Detector Scudder managed to find the phone number of Marcia Maisel, then dialed it and made an appointment with threads to talk to her husband.

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-Chapter 9

Detector Scudder went to a gay bar. He had the newspaper photo of Richie, showed it around a lot to whoever was willing to look at it. Almost everyone recognized the photo because they had seen it in the paper. But no one could give useful recollections.
The bartender recognized Scudder, he was willing to talk more and trying to recall what went with the face. He said:
I haven't seen it in a long time. At least a year. There was a period of a couple of weeks when he was in here almost every night. Then I never saw him again.
when they're young and gorgeous you don't care whether they spend much. They're window dressing, you know. They bring others in. From window shopping to window dressing
Scudder said:
And then he stopped coming in here. I wonder why.
The bartender said:
Maybe he got allergic to the decor. I would guess that h