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The books were published, but distribution was spotty and sales slow, though people who read them seemed to like them well enough. Paperback originals don’t often get reviewed, but the three Scudder novels did receive a fair amount of critical attention, and Time to Murder and Create was shortlisted for an Edgar Allan Poe award.

But there was certainly no enthusiasm for continuing the series beyond the initial three books, and no reason to believe another publisher would want to take it over. It certainly looked as though I’d be well advised to turn my attention to other books, with other characters.

Scudder, I found, was not that easily abandoned. And so in 1977 I started writing a short story about him, “Out the Window,” and it ran long enough for us to call it a novelette. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine ran it in their September issue, and two months later they printed another, “A Candle for the Bag Lady.” (The latter was briefly retitled “Like a Lamb to Slaughter,” so that it might serve as the flagship story of a collection with that title, and that’s a story in itself—but one I’ll save for another time.)

Those two novelettes helped keep the character alive for me. A couple of years later I took a chance and wrote a fourth full-length Scudder novel on spec, and Don Fine published it at Arbor House. That was A Stab in the Dark, followed in fairly short order by Eight Million Ways to Die.

That was a pivotal volume, for me and for Matthew Scudder. It was twice as long as the early books, and was as much about the dynamics of alcoholism and the general frailty of human existence as it was about the particular murder investigation which drove the plot. The book got a lot of critical attention; it was shortlisted for an Edgar and won a Shamus award outright. But while it looked like the start of something big, the party appeared to be over.

Because how could I go on writing about Scudder? In a sense, the five books and two stories amounted to a single mega-novel, and it had all been resolved in Eight Million Ways to Die. By confronting and owning up to his alcoholism, my protagonist had come to terms with the central problem of his existence. He’d had a catharsis, and what human being, fictional or otherwise, gets more than one of those?

I figured I was done with Scudder. His d’etre, you might say, had lost its raison. I wished it were otherwise, as I enjoyed seeing the world through his eyes and writing in his voice, but I wasn’t willing to force a book into existence.

And that might very well have been the end of it—if not for the third story in this volume, By the Dawn’s Early Light.

Some years before, Robert J. Randisi told me he was hoping to find a publisher for a collection of original private eye stories. If he managed to do so, would I agree to write a story for the volume? It seemed safe enough to say yes, since the likelihood of my ever hearing further seemed remote at best.

But Bob, the indefatigable founder of Private Eye Writers of America, came to me not long after the publication of Eight Million Ways to Die to report success. He’d sold his anthology to Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press, and now he wanted a story from me.

I explained that I seemed to be done with Scudder. Bob was disappointed but understanding. Otto was also understanding, but this didn’t stop him from whining and coaxing and wheedling. I explained it was out of the question, and then I went home and figured out how to do it. The story could be a flashback, with a sober Scudder recounting an event from his drinking days.

It worked rather well. Alice Turner snapped it up for Playboy, Bob tucked it into his anthology, and MWA gave it an Edgar for Best Short Story. And then a year later I added a couple of additional plot threads to the story and expanded it from 8500 words to 90,000; the resultant novel, When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, is the favorite of a good number of Scudder fans.

It was to take several years