The 1970s were called the “Me Decade” because of its tendency for hyper-individuality. Families and communities became untethered by a personal need for self-fulfillment. At least that was the popular view. In Sadie When She Died, we meet a casualty of that culture.
At first the homicide of Sarah Fletcher appears to be the result of a burglary gone wrong. The trail from broken window to bloody corpse is straightforward enough; there’s even a junkie’s confession in Chapter 3. But for lead detective Steve Carella, it’s all too neat.
The more he investigates, the more he learns about Sarah, about a restless life lived on the edge, about a marriage that had fallen apart, about lovers meetings in strange bars. He realizes much more is at play than a simple silverware job.
A bartender describes the homicide victim as “aggressive”:
“You know what that word means? Aggressive? She used to come dressed down to here and up to here, which is pretty far out, even compared to some of the things they’re wearing today. She was ready for action, you understand? She was selling everything she had.”
That is the core mystery at work in Sadie When She Died. It’s not a whodunit because you know who did it since Carella knows who did it. He just can’t prove it. The question boils down to why.
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| No one denies Sarah Fletcher was stabbed by an intruder, including the intruder himself. "She was yelling, I was afraid the whole building would come down," he tells police. "I just stuck the knife in her. I was very scared." Image from https://dosafl.com/2025/02/11/take-action-today/ |
Like why, despite its high reputation, can’t I pretend I like this book? It’s not like I admire its craft or its story, and just can’t accept its bleak view on life. I don’t think it is a good book at all, not even middling. Neither the crime nor the investigation strike me as credible.
Two things really bug me about Sadie When She Died. One is Carella. He was McBain’s hero and I accept that. But this book leans especially hard on the concept he is always right. Even when he’s violating civil liberties and having his precinct put a suspect under 24-hour surveillance, it’s understood to be the right thing to do because Carella has this feeling about the guy he just can’t shake:
“He could have come home, found his wife stabbed but not fatally and finished her off by yanking the knife across her belly,” Carella muses. “Fletcher had four minutes when all he needed was maybe four seconds.”
True, Fletcher does earn suspicion by openly telling Carella at the beginning that he is glad his wife is dead. But when you have a confession from a junkie whose story tracks the evidence, the case against the husband feels too slim to consider seriously. Alas, in this case, the possible becomes the probable becomes the truth.
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| Sadie When She Died was published just three years after the Apollo 11 mission, which prompts this memorable Carella quip: "Why should everything down here be expected to work perfectly just because we put men on the moon?" Photo by Thunderbolt Tw Bai Heng Yao from https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/gettyimages/collections/thunderbolt+tw+bai+heng+yao+photography |
The other thing which aggravated me was Detective Bert Kling and his pitiful love life. The novel begins with him on the rebound. As his ex-girlfriend was an assault victim whose case he worked on, he wastes no time trying the same strategy of mixing business and pleasure by pursuing a date with an attractive material witness to Sarah’s murder.
“I’m sorry it was painful,” he tells her after finishing his questioning. “Can the Department make amends by taking you to lunch?”
McBain writes about Kling’s relentless pursuit sympathetically, as if it were a natural part of being a man. It’s Saturday night and the guy is alone, so why shouldn’t he hit up someone he met while working a crime. Kling’s courtship of the witness, and her alternating encouragement and rejection, gives Sadie When She Died an already cringey subplot. Add to this some gunplay and illegal search and seizure Kling employs as his involvement with the woman deepens.
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| Kling eventually steals some letters he finds during a visit to the witness's apartment, to get insight on someone who may have done him harm. "Reading other people's love letters is like eating Chinese food alone," McBain notes. Image from https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/culture/lifestyle/spaeth-underhill-love-letters-baltimore-WCNUBB6QEVEJDGRUXVHKF7JAGI/ |
Sarah Fletcher is the only element that makes this case interesting, only not that much. We discover her motive for a double life was a lack of fulfillment as a wife. Carella begins visiting some of her old haunts, meeting lovers, picking up clues to what made her tick.
That trail ends almost as soon as it begins, however, not quite providing enough information either for a character study or a murder investigation. I found myself contemplating the idea I began this post with, of the Me Decade coming into focus. This is more strongly emphasized in Sarah’s husband, who lives a life of surface respectability but proves just as unfaithful as his late wife. His form of self-gratification involves toying with Carella by sharing some secrets.
Is he working from guilt, innocence, or even a shameless braggadocio? Maybe all three? Therein lies an angle, I guess, which McBain toys with in the second half, but it didn’t help me to enjoy the book:
It did not matter whether or not Fletcher truly was cleverer than Carella, or more sophisticated, or better at his work, or handsomer, or more articulate – the truth was unimportant. Carella felt Fletcher was all of these things; the man’s manner and bearing and attack (yes, it could be called nothing else) utterly convinced Carella that he was in the presence of a superior being, and this was as good as, if not more potent than, the actual truth.
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| A 1972 first-edition hardcover of Sadie When She Died. It is among the highest regarded of 87th Precinct novels by fans of the series. The blog Tipping My Fedora ranks it among the 100 best mysteries of all time, while Hark! The 87th Precinct Podcast awards it a whopping 87 police shields. I just don't get it. Image from https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/140527/evan-hunter-ed-mcbain/sadie-when-she-died |
I was still stuck on not liking the detectives, or at least the way McBain handled them. They operate in this book in a manner that seems designed to trigger anyone concerned about civil liberties. Worse, the emphasis on electronic surveillance and what it yields puts Carella and the other investigators in a largely passive role.
What judge would sign off on an eavesdropping warrant on a detective’s hunch? What precinct captain would have detectives working round the clock shadowing a suspect on a case that is officially solved?
It is an unusual case for Carella and his team, just not that gripping. Presenting Sarah a figure of mystery is an involving angle, but with no payoff. Her husband is more ambiguous, and becomes somewhat intriguing, but once Carella decides he’s the perp we aren’t really given any reason to think otherwise. We are just waiting for the arrest.
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| A Pan paperback edition published in the United Kingdom includes a reproduction of Sarah's address book, with phone numbers and letter codes under individual names. Here lies the secret of Sadie waiting to be uncovered. Image from https://pastoffences.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/sadie-when-she-died/ |
The novel is set around Christmas. Late in the book, quite unrelated to the main story, we get a standout description of the pickpockets, shoplifters, and drunkards that are hauled in for the holiday:
A man named Felix Hopkins dressed for his annual shopping spree in a trench coat lined with dozens of pockets to accommodate the small and quite expensive pieces of jewelry he lifted from counters here and there. A tall, thin distinguished-looking black man with a tidy mustache and gold-rimmed spectacles, he would generally approach the counter and ask to see a cigarette lighter, indicating the one he wanted, and then rip off five or six fountain pens while the clerk was busy getting the lighter out of the display case.
But the focus of this book is not on sideshows, but rather Carella’s obsession with Fletcher and Kling’s need for some weekend action. Both these storylines are tedious and extended to improbable levels, and in Kling’s case, proves excessive and deadly.
Kling
is at his worst in this book, constantly pushing his luck to gratify his lust.
Was McBain using him to work out his own issues regarding dating in the 1970s? Kling’s terrible decisions regarding the women he meets are matched only by the
awfulness of the women themselves.
Was McBain trying to make a point about police officers abusing their authority? It was the era of Serpico, after all, and Attica State. McBain even includes a lengthy description of a city penitentiary which seems inspired by abuses then in the news. But putting the otherwise likeable 87th Precinct crew under such a lens was not on the agenda here, and to be fair, I didn’t want it to be. I just wanted to like these guys again.
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