Even the Wicked is different from earlier Scudder mysteries in the series in its extensive use of lawyers as characters and in its extensive discussion of legal matters. In the earliest Scudder mysteries, Matt was a hard-drinking, hard boiled private detective who helped people that the law, i.e. the police officers, could not help. He was a marginal man, overwhelmed by guilt at his having killed a child in a police shoot-out. In the middle examples of the series, readers learned how Matt got sober by attending A. A. meetings and became more respectable, partly through his association with Elaine, a hooker who also invested in real estate.

Elaine's talent for business helped to make her part of Matt's more respectable life. In some of the middle novels, Matt became friends with Mick Ballou and Block experimented with the criminal centered mystery. As a professional...