While the 87th Precinct police procedural series was built on an entire squad of detectives working together as the main protagonist, this was not how it really worked in its 50-year run. Ed McBain couldn’t help but make his alter ego, Steve Carella, the star of the series. Most times, if they were lucky, the other plainclothes officers got to ride shotgun.
This time, McBain deliberately takes Carella out of the loop, missing and presumed dead. The rest of the team must figure out what he figured out back in Chapter 3, and save their comrade by solving a murder.
However bendy its approach, Doll is a fine example of the classic 87th Precinct formula, a dark and compelling crime, detailed characterizations, clear insights into the processes of a criminal investigation, and a storyline that never slackens. It doesn’t always make sense, but the pages fly by too fast to notice.
Like with many of the 87th Precinct novels, the title takes on many meanings. In the course of the novel, we hear “Doll” used as a term of endearment, of sarcastic contempt, as a job description, and as an object of pivotal significance to the case.
Initially, it plays as a reference to Tinka Sachs, a successful fashion model whose brutal murder opens the novel:
The knife blade swung in a short, tight arc, back and forth, its rhythm as unvaried as that of the words that poured from the man’s mouth. Obscenities and blade, like partners in an evil copulation, moved together in perfect rhythm and pitch, enveloping Tinka in alternating splashes of blood and spittle.
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| A group of French models pose in 1963. We learn early on Tinka Sachs only modelled fully clothed, never in negligees or bathing suits. Later we learn why. Photo by John French from https://www.vandaimages.com/preview.asp?image=2010EK2967&itemw=2&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=1 |
What she leaves behind is a bloody bedroom, a shattered and splattered Chagall painting, and a very frightened young daughter who heard it all happen from an adjacent room.
Initially Carella gets the assignment of solving the case and asks for Bert Kling to be his partner. Kling is in a bad place since his girlfriend got murdered some books back and still takes it out on everyone else. Carella figures his colleague just needs occupational therapy. But Kling is sensitive about his situation, and they start the case on rocky terms.
Shortly after, Carella disappears. Then his car is found with a burnt body inside. Detective Lieutenant Peter Brynes is not happy:
“He found something, that’s for sure,” he said, almost to himself. “He found something or somebody, and he was killed for it.” He turned abruptly. “And not a single goddamn one of you knows where he was going. Not even the man who was allegedly working this case with him.”
For Kling, the case is about redemption. For a not-quite-dead Carella, it is about survival. Meanwhile, other detectives get brief turns in the spotlight to ponder Carella and his apparent demise. Even the nastiest of them, Andy Parker, feels a bit misty, enough to get distracted from the sex worker he corralled into a freebie.
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| Early on in the investigation, Carella and Kling are told the suspected killer resembled film actor Sonny Tufts, above, a popular 1940s movie star with a distinctive blond pompadour. The only problem: Every guy they meet on the case looks like Sonny, too. Image from https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/194869%7C141441/Sonny-Tufts#overview |
If McBain really wanted to give his other detectives an opportunity to shine, Doll doesn’t quite get it done. Even by his absence, Carella all-but-dominates this book.
The amiable Meyer Meyer makes the most of his time getting self-conscious about his baldness (“Hereafter, he would be known zoologically as The Bald Eagle – Nemesis of All Evil, Protector of the Innocent, Scourge of the Underworld!”). He pursues a lead involving the victim’s psychiatrist.
After getting himself kicked off the case, Kling works his own related angle. What his approach lacks in basic human sensitivity it makes up for in directness:
“Was
your wife a dyke?”
“No.”
“Are you a homosexual?”
“No.”
“Mr. Sachs, whatever it was, believe me, it won’t be something new to us.”
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| The dust jacket of the first edition hardcover plays up the dual meaning of the title, both as a beautiful woman and a plaything. In fact, the agency Tinka Sachs worked for called her a "mannequin," a term which strikes Carella as dehumanizing. Image from https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31717535998 |
Kling seems on the brink of losing it at several points in the story, but only just keeps his bearings. Seeing Meyer and Kling converge as they pursue their separate investigations is a highlight of the well-constructed plot.
First-class story elements pop up throughout the book. We get a deep-dive portrait of a one-eyed World War I veteran who goes by the nickname “Cyclops” and operated the elevator Tinka’s killer used before committing the crime. Cyclops is a man of humor and quiet dignity who recalls the suspect resembling the old actor Sonny Tufts.
“All I do every day is look at the people I take up and down,” he tells Carella and Kling. “It makes the job a little more interesting.”
Another vignette which sticks is a description of Tinka’s empty apartment, now an unoccupied crime scene with a stained carpet:
An apartment vacated for the summer has a silence unlike that one that is empty only for the day, with its occupants expected back that night. And an apartment that has known the touch of death possesses a silence unique and readily identifiable to anyone who has ever stared down at a corpse. Meyer knew the silence of death, and understood it, though we could not have told you what accounted for it.
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| The post-modern decor of the 1960s dominates several interiors depicted in Doll: "The dominant colors of the suite were pale yellows and deep greens, the rugs were thick, the furniture was exquisitely carved." Image from https://nypost.com/2023/01/05/nyc-apartment-that-looks-stuck-in-the-1960s-lists-for-1-79m/ |
The main woman in the book is an unnamed tormentor who watches over a naked and handcuffed Carella, alternately torturing and kissing him. It is clear from McBain’s description that she is a victim herself:
Rinsed raven-black hair framed the girl’s white face. It was a face hard with knowledge. Smoky Cleopatra makeup shaded her eyes and lashes, hiding the deeper-toned flesh there. Her nose had been fixed once, a long time ago, but it was beginning to fall out of shape so that it looked now as if someone had broken it, and this too added to the victim’s look she wore. Her mouth was brightly painted, a whore’s mouth, a doll’s mouth. It had said every word ever invented. It had done everything a mouth was ever forced to do.
When reviewing another 87th Precinct novel also published in 1965, He Who Hesitates, I pondered how its plot suffered from pulling too far from the regular cast and their investigations. Remembering this book had more cop stuff, I thought combining the two might have made a better single book for 87th Precinct fans that year.
After reading Doll, I don’t think so anymore. I do think Hesitates would have worked better as a subplot than a standalone, but Doll, despite its 150-page brevity, has enough story by itself. Its lack of a distracting sidestory winds up being a plus. Doll is a straightforward showcase for McBain’s natural gift of accelerating tension.
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| "Getting beat up by a beautiful woman just wasn't what he was used to..." A 1969 Penguin paperback released in Great Britain features a more abstract presentation of the central crime, and a somewhat misleading tagline. Image from https://biblio.co.uk/book/doll-mcbain-ed/d/1437274223?aid=frg&srsltid=AfmBOorgN9a0rMQuHFKYtj3kbidOLNOIjxQraT-9GKRvTaiB6MtQFlf8Kkg |
The book does have some minor leaps of logic. Most immediately, there is Carella’s decision to rush to confront the suspected killer without informing anyone else at the 87th Precinct. Given how hard McBain pushes Carella’s professionalism across the series, the absence of it here is both strange and oddly unremarked upon. I don’t like it when stories hinge on left-field stupid decisions being made by smart characters, especially otherwise terrific stories like this.
But after reading some McBain over the years, I appreciate how allowing him to bend the rules some to deliver his signature twists is a small price for being entertained. He wrote mass-appeal paperback fiction that aimed for the gut and the heart more than the head, but a great deal of thought and care went into his writing, and ambition, too. The more you read him, the more you appreciate that.
In Doll, for example, he stands his usual formula on its head. He not only absents Carella from the bulk of the narrative but has him solve the case very early, in a way that leaves the reader in the dark. McBain then plays with the reader by working Kling back into our affections, as well as by throwing in some red herrings and withholding key details regarding Carella’s current situation.
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| A mid-career portrait of author Ed McBain. He published three novels in 1965 as McBain, and two others under his legal name, Evan Hunter. Whether writing crime fiction, genre fiction, or straight fiction, he was prolific across more than 50 years. Image from https://whatareyoureadingfor.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/the-mcbainiad-book-3-the-pusher-1956/ |
As a mystery, I don’t think you could say Doll plays fair. But of course, it is not designed as a mystery but a crime novel. McBain is spinning a yarn designed to engage and propel interest, not presenting a puzzle readers can try their hand at solving before the book’s.
The motive for killing Tinka is a good example of this. We get no solid clues regarding the motive for her killing. The resolution comes out of nowhere in the form of a journal kept by a character we never meet beforehand, which throws out most of the answers to Tinka Sachs’s life and death in a sudden gush of inauthentic prose. Her plight is revealed as a trope just a few degrees south of being tied to the railroad tracks.
This all reads like complaining, but Doll is too enjoyable a ride for that. It’s a crafty, compelling suspense tale all the way through, with McBain working multiple angles to deepen your investment in what goes down.
Maybe the most impressive thing about Doll is the way McBain managed to fit it all into a tight 150 pages. Later 87th Precinct novels got far longer; here he gives readers all they need in a concise span to want to get to the end as fast as they can and see how it all turns out.
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