Hoorah – my favorite hard-boiled NY PI, Matthew Scudder, is back in the latest entry from Lawrence Block – “A Drop of the Hard Stuff.”  I should state that Matt is not as hard-boiled since he quit drinking, and the struggle to do so is partly chronicled in this book.  This is sort of a prequel as it opens with Matt sitting with his old friend Mick Ballou and reminiscing about the past, when Matt was still shy of a year sober.  He had met with an old childhood acquaintance turned criminal at an AA meeting.  His now-sober friend, Jack Ellery, is working on the 12 steps of