There’s nothing new in the new crime drama A Walk Among The Tombstones, as the brooding, unlicensed private detective Matt Scudder (Neeson) attempts to solve the mystery of who’s been kidnapping and killing the wives and girlfriends of some of New York’s wealthier drug lords. Nothing is new, because we’ve seen Liam Neeson play this type over and over; we’ve seen this gritty world of predator and prey, the unhinged versus the psychotic. Yet without breaking any new ground, and save one caveat, A Walk Among The Tombstones stands up as a quality work of genre storytelling.

Set in 1999, writer/director Scott Frank imbues this adaptation of the eponymous novel with the familiarity of such hard-worn and well-traveled tropes as to evoke a certain timelessness to this story of an ex-cop who’s been hanging by the thread of sobriety for nearly eight years after an alcohol-enhanced incident of off-duty heroics left him wallowing in a well of existential despair. Neeson’s now-natural stoicism is perfect for the role (though maybe he’s due for a comedic turn soon, eh?) as his investigation into the killings falls into the comfortable groove of an above-average TV procedural, aided by the seething tension of Neeson’s resting face. The anti-cellphone, anti-computer Scudder finds his foil in the equally lonely, tech-savvy teen TJ, played by relative newcomer “Astro” Bradley, giving a standout performance.

Wisely, time and setting dictate Frank’s directing style, with keen attention to framing and extended shot lengths moving the film beyond a boilerplate thriller to a legit period piece. Once the whodunit is revealed, the procedural gives way to cat-and-mouse, at times recalling the ’90s godfather of serial-killer movies, The Silence of the Lambs, keeping itself in good company. Unlike the aforementioned genre touchstone, however, A Walk Among the Tombstones suffers from a paucity of female characters who aren’t either beautiful objects to be admired, or more often, screaming victims. Bechdel test: failed. The lack of women in any speaking supporting roles seems a glaring omission for a film so indebted to, and in love with, the decade that saw the genre dominated by the likes of Jodie Foster and Ashley Judd, and this is a blemish on an otherwise good movie.