The concept behind Jigsaw, book #24 in the 87th Precinct series, is that standard crime just doesn’t cut it anymore, not even for criminals. Sometimes they must play their own little games, spicing things up to keep life interesting.
That was true for Ed McBain, too. Already inclined to experiment in his police procedurals, the author pushes the envelope further with an offbeat tale about long-dead hoodlums and their unrecovered loot from a bank heist. Instead of providing us with prose pictures, he gives us an actual picture, a photograph cut into puzzle pieces by one of the goons. It’s up to the detectives of the 87th Precinct to put it all together again and find the money.
The trick is finding all the pieces.
However experimental this fragmented approach may be, the idea itself is easy enough to grasp. As the author explains:
And then finally they got back to the photograph, everything always got back to the photograph because it was obvious to each of the cops in that squadroom that four people had been killed so far and that all of them had been had been in possession of a piece or pieces of a picture showing the location of the N. S. L. A. loot, and if a motive were any more evident than that, each of them would have tripped over it with his big flat feet.
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| If there is an obvious inspiration for Jigsaw, it is found not in "Dragnet" or Ellery Queen stories but rather the famous adventure novel Treasure Island, with its buried loot and motley crew of crooked-dealing villains. The influence is most clear at the end. Image from https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2023/1/29/treasureisland |
The main character this time out is Arthur Brown, the 87th Precinct’s one black detective who typically served a supporting role in the books. Partnered with series lead Steve Carella, Brown is assigned to investigate a double homicide. One of the victims holds a scrap of a photograph, quickly seized upon as a likely motive for the killing.
“Why else would it be in his hand?” Brown asks.
I don’t think the 1970s was the best decade for the 87th Precinct. For one thing, the series had been caught short by the explosion of police procedurals on television. Cop shows popularized the genre but pushed expectations farther away from the grim reality McBain had always worked to capture. It’s hardly an 87th Precinct novel from this period without some whining in the direction of popular entertainment:
“Ever since the first movie where a guy had a stocking over his face, we get nothing but guys with stockings over their faces.”
The culture shift of the new decade also registered with the 87th Precinct books in ways that were more seriously off-putting. We get explicit gore, profanity, sex, and lengthy ruminations about race and sexual identity that, however valid for the time, not only date the book but pull focus away from a plot that needs it.
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| A visit to an art gallery gives McBain a chance to opine on modern art: "The sculpture was of the junkyard variety, automobile headlights welded to Stillson wrenches, a plumber's red-capped plunger wired to the broken handle and frayed-straw brush of a broom." Sculpture above by Anthony Caro from https://www.laurencefuller.art/blog/2017/1/2/beyond-the-crisis-where-was-the-art-of-the-seventies |
Despite the fact it is at heart a gimmick employing photographic elements in service of an unrealistic situation, Jigsaw moves well enough on its own steam through the first three quarters of the book. McBain’s approach may be odd, but it is never weak. The problem is when he throws in a vague, socially relevant reverie as background:
The ghetto regulars had struck back at a society that forced them to live in such surroundings, little realizing that the people they were harassing had themselves broken with the same society, a society that allowed such ghettos to exist. It was a case of poor slob beating up on poor slob, while five blocks away, a fashionable discotheque called Rembrandt’s pleaded its rock-and-roll music, and ladies in sequined slacks and men in dancing slippers laughed away the night.
This has nothing to do with the story. Nor does a page and a half running description of a series of unrelated brutal crimes, garishly described as part of a normal day in Isola. We’re supposed to be shocked, and I was, but also perplexed as to the point McBain was trying to make, other than that this was no longer the 1950s or 1960s and he could be more explicit.
Giving another 87th Precinct detective other than Carella a chance to carry the story is always good to see. Arthur Brown had been a background character in prior investigations, mostly doing legwork and such. He wasn’t given much distinction beyond his skin color.
McBain seems to acknowledge this in the opening sentence, noting Brown does not like being called black, finding it derogatory:
Brown didn’t need to seek identity in his color or in his soul. He searched for it in himself as a man, and usually found it there with ease.
But McBain offers little else to flesh Brown out. He’s an effective enough protagonist in Jigsaw just moving the plot along, but McBain’s efforts at providing him with a personality never go much farther than pointing out that he’s African American again and again.
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| The concept of a black crime fighter was not so out there in the early 1970s. Just one year after Jigsaw, the world was introduced to Shaft, featuring Richard Roundtree (above) in the title role. But Detective Arthur Brown is working for the police, not himself, and goes by the book, at least most of the time. Image from https://www.pluggedin.com/movie-reviews/shaft/ |
As Brown goes through the steps of his investigation, he often ponders how white characters treat him. Sometimes it is in the form of crude epithets which Brown does his best to shrug off in pursuit of his case; other times it is racier in nature.
“Ever been to bed with a white girl?” Gerry asked suddenly.
“No.”
“Want to try?”
This was pretty shocking in 1970, when interracial romance was not only uncommon but had been illegal in some states just three years before.
McBain also works other hot-button topics. At one point the detectives visit a gay bar, which as they say these days, is pretty cringey reading. At least with Brown, the author is at pains to let you know bigotry and stereotyping are not good, however stereotypically he can depict the way blacks and whites relate. The homosexual content is egregiously stereotypical and only sidetracks the plot. Why include it? Just being topical, I guess.
Having real photo fragments reproduced on the page to show us what the detectives have to work with is a clear contrivance, but once you push that aside, this plot device plays rather well. After the reveal of the first piece in Chapter 1, the treasure hunt takes off with the introduction of insurance investigator Irving Krutch. He whets the detectives’ appetite by providing another piece of the picture, then asks for their help finding the stolen money.
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| In 1994, Jigsaw was adapted for the screen as an episode of the detective series "Columbo," featuring Ed Begley Jr. (above) as Krutch. Despite his professed dislike for TV cop shows, McBain and his alter ego Evan Hunter wrote several teleplays over his (their?) career. Image from https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0130563/mediaviewer/rm3460811009/ |
Krutch has a constant habit of talking about himself in the third person: “It helps me to be objective.” He also talks like he’s reading from a movie script, ignoring the frustration of the surly precinct detectives who press him to get to the point. Krutch emerges as a figure of both mystery and humor, and one of the better elements of the book.
Like many 87th Precinct novels, the true strength of Jigsaw is probably with its supporting players. In addition to Krutch, there is a hood named Weinberg whom Brown encounters undercover and becomes a partner in crime briefly. While a nasty piece of work who relies on brains over brawn, Weinberg is also surprisingly endearing in some of his drunken conversations with Brown.
The best character for me is Dorothea McNally, an ancient prostitute who is introduced calling Brown the N-word but then develops into a sympathetic, poignant figure with a lost-love backstory. All the while Brown patiently presses her to find her piece of the puzzle:
“Look,
you didn’t take offense at that, did you?”
“No, of course not. Why should I take offense at a harmless little remark like that?”
Eighty-seventh Precinct fans will also enjoy some marvelously detailed glimpses we get of Isola, Manhattan’s fictional twin city, with debris-strewn tenements and comfortable suburbs set less than a mile apart.
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| The complete photograph when assembled is not a slam-dunk for the detectives. They have to allow for the fact what the photo shows has changed over the six years since the bank heist took place. Image from http://www.columbo-site.freeuk.com/mcbain.htm |
For me, the novel falls down as it begins winding up. After having developed the jigsaw idea to a point where I stopped doubting it and just looked forward to the next piece, McBain tries to justify his conceit by having a character expound on what he calls “The Game Aspect,” explaining the purpose of this gimmick and why it wasn’t such a stretch:
Why the hell hadn’t he just whispered the location to each of his hoods, and asked them to whisper it in turn to each to their friends and loved ones? Ah, but no. That would have taken from the crime one of its essential elements, known to gumshoes far and wide as The Game Aspect. Take the fun out of criminal activity, and all the prisons in the world would be empty.
It worked better before he tried to explain it.
The ending is a rush job that plays like a bad sitcom. Brown’s race is once again utilized in a way more hackneyed than offensive but too much of both. Worse, it plays completely out-of-character for the person we watched sensitively quiz old Dorothea. If it was supposed to come off as funny or whatever, it just doesn’t work. You feel once again how badly dated a book can become by trying to be shockingly timely.
McBain’s
overall commitment to write against routine in his 87th Precinct
novels had a lot to do with why they are still so much fun to read. Here a
corny concept is developed effectively enough to make the book one of the
fastest reads in the series, something to polish off in one night. But the
ending not only fails to work, it compromises the rest of the novel and renders
it wholly forgettable despite its creative drive.
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