Finished: McBain's 'The Gutter and the Grave'

 "The Gutter and the Grave" was originally published in 1958 and republished in 2011 by Hard Case Crime. It's a classic hard-boiled detective novel.

It has the drunken ex-cop, curvaceous women, guns, lots of booze and jazz bands. All the things that made life worth living in the 1950s.

Detective Matt Cordell was happily married once, and gainfully employed, and sober. But that was before he caught his wife cheating on him with one of his operatives and took it out on the man with the butt end of a .45.

Now Matt makes his home on the streets of New York and his only companions are the city’s bartenders. But trouble still knows how to find him, and when Johnny Bridges shows up from the old neighborhood, begging for Matt’s help, Cordell finds himself drawn into a case full of beautiful women and bloody murder. It’s just like the old days – only this time, when the beatings come, he may wind up on the receiving end...

I gave it a 7+ on the 10-point Haugenometer. Amazonians give it a stellar 4.3 of 5.