One obvious social concern in the Matt Scudder mysteries, and especially in Eight Million Ways to Die, is the plight of the city, here New York City.

The novels present a picture of a city out of control. One symptom of that plight is the rampant lawlessness: from people smoking on the subways to muggers who not only want money but want to kill their victims. The violence that is part of the life of the city appears most grotesquely in newspaper reports of it, in screaming tabloid headlines and in the stories disappearing in the wake of further atrocities, fresher and more monstrous. An example of the randomness of the violence is the report of a television set found on the curb that blew up a family when a man took it home and plugged in the booby-trapped device. In addition, the chaotic savagery of...