Out on the Cutting Edge — Lawrence Block

It isn't called Hell's Kitchen for nothing--a gritty landscape of dark doorways and dirty alleys inhabited by crack addicts and homeless. A sleaze-and-terror playground lorded over by Mickey Ballou, the bloodstained Butcher Boy. Ex-cop, ex-boozer, ex-innocent Matthew Scudder is trying to stay sober in this city gone mad. And, hot on the ice-cold trail of a missing ingenue, he's looking for love in all the wrong places...and finding death in all the right ones.