The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder takes us back to the very beginning, long before the books began, and gives us our first glimpse of Scudder's childhood, his family tragedies, his upbringing; and a powerful new perspective on how he first got drawn to police work and how, eventually, painfully, he left it. Even longtime readers who think they know Scudder's story will be startled by how much they don't know--and powerfully moved as the aging Scudder...

"It all starts with the body in the water - on what should be the first boat day of the season, McKenzie's wife Nina finds a dead Army vet. As the dock owner and the insurance companies claim that it was suicide, despite the deceased, E.J. Woods, having no obvious reason to kill himself, his widow starts acting suspiciously. McKenzie finds himself pulled into the fight when Naveah, the victim's daughter, convinced her father was murdered, asks him...