I love Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder mysteries. And I love stories about New York City. So I expected to love this anthology of mostly mysteries, mostly noir stories about the city that was edited/commissioned by Block. But I didn't. Sure, I loved some of the stories, but lots of them didn't hold up for me. Some were decidedly creepy, some were surprisingly moving, and some were just fun. But some made me say 'so what?".

I particularly enjoyed the really odd "Chloe" by Jerrold Mundis (not a mystery, more sci fi, but very psychological), "The Dead Client" by Panell Hall (fun), "Hannibal's Elephants" by Robert Silverberg (more sci fi, but rooted in New York geography), "See/Saw Something" by Peter Carlaftes (wacky, but perceptive about post-9/11 paranoia), "The Tour Guide" by Kat Georges (also wacky), "Why I Took the Job" by Peter Hochstein (definitely creepy), and Block's own "Keller the Dogkiller" (which introduced me to another of his series, those involving Keller, a hit man for hire). I'll definitely explore the Keller series.

And I was annoyed by an error is one story, in which a taxi driver turn downtown on Amsterdam Avenue, a street which is one way uptown!