A riveting showcase of hard-boiled crime-story technique blending suspense and wit, Tricks is a genre novel that dares to be great. From start to end, author Ed McBain keeps pulling surprises that are brutally twisted and wrenching yet also supremely fun.
It’s Halloween and the children of the 87th Precinct are running wild. This goes beyond the usual shenanigans. Four costumed small fry bounce out of a car into a liquor store yelling “Trick or treat!” Before the owner can shoo them off, they shoot him dead and clean out his register.
The novel’s title has several meanings. A magician disappears after a final magic act, leaving body parts across town. A mysterious caller bothers a lone woman by claiming to have legitimate questions about her bust size. A slasher stakeout turns deadly for a detective disguised as a sex worker.
This is a rare 87th Precinct novel where each subplot is so fascinating enough on its own that you mind when they get interrupted by each other. McBain’s sense of humor is also a consistent plus:
“Hello, boys,” the M. E. said, coming up the alley. “What’ve we got here?”
“Just this chest here,” Monoghan said, indicating the torso.
“Very nice,” he said, and put down his satchel. “Do you want me to pronounce it dead, or what?”
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| Tricks takes place on a single shift of a single night, Halloween from 4PM to midnight. As children roam through the city in search of candy, we are made aware of others whose nocturnal wanderings are far less innocent. Image by Stephanie Strasburg from https://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2018/10/26/here-are-the-trick-or-treat-times-around-allegheny-county/stories/201810260143 |
As someone who has dipped into the 87th Precinct novels a good deal if not nearly to the point of having read every book in the series, I feel McBain’s 1980s output doesn’t get its due. Many faithful fans tout his earliest works (the 1950s and 1960s) for their streamlined, no-frills energy, but I find the 1980s books are where the city and its people really feel alive. Certainly that’s the case here.
Each story works in a different way. The stakeout story is a suspense yarn focused on Eileen Burke, a police detective and recovering rape victim who is good at her job but struggles with doubts and fears. Waiting at a bar hoping to catch a serial slasher, she wonders if she has what it takes and if her unseen back-up team will be enough to protect her.
“You could back me with the Russian army, and I’d still be scared,” she says.
Eileen’s boyfriend, Detective Bert Kling, is nervous, too, when he hears about Eileen’s assignment. As regular 87th Precinct readers know, a nervous Kling is a dangerous Kling. Suspense and psychodrama take turns dominating this subplot, a nail-biter all the way.
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| A bar called Larry's is the battlefield where Eileen hopes to catch a slasher before he can strike again. One problem she has working undercover is that johns keep hitting on her. Larry the bartender is another problem. "I can't have hookers hangin' around in here 'cept I get a piece," he says. In his case, that means money. Image from https://www.designmynight.com/glasgow/bars/sauchiehall-street/nice-n-sleazy/review |
The one with the missing magician is a straightforward mystery with several hairpin turns, reminiscent of Dame Agatha if she had worked with an R-rating. The trick-or-treater story, bloody as it is, is also flat-out funny in the way it plays up its left-field premise.
“So what’ve we got here?” Monroe said. “An epidemic of kindergarten kids holding up liquor stores?”
One of the delights I get from this book as someone who has read more than his share of 87th Precinct novels is how McBain has the entire detective division chasing down various subplots. Some of the novel’s stars are the same detectives who get passed over for attention in other books.
Dick Genero, the dimmest bulb in plainclothes, struggles to spell the word “dismembered” in a police report. Yet he nurses dreams of breaking a big case someday, like series hero Steve Carella:
The only way to get ahead in the Department was to crack a good homicide every now and then. Not that it had done Carella much good, all the homicides he cracked. Been a detective for how many years now? Still only Second Grade. Well, sometimes people got passed over.
Genero will get his big chance here, ironically enough while stuck on regular patrol duty while the other bulls catch the big cases.
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| Author Ed McBain. Tricks catches him in a playful mood. In addition to his crafty plot bait-and-switching, he also toys with perception and reality. Image from https://www.royalbooks.com/pages/books/158306/ed-mcbain-subject-evan-hunter/two-original-photographs-of-ed-mcbain-signed-by-mcbain |
Andy Parker, the 87th’s resident bad apple, likewise catches a break at a costume party, holding court about life and love. This is one of those rare 87th Precinct novels Steve Carella doesn’t dominate. In fact, he is sidelined for much of the book in a moment of real crisis McBain plays for emotion, but not too much.
The different storylines work in tandem, forming a kind of contrapuntal rhythm and harmonic unity while you take in the building mayhem of one crazy night. Conversations about two different cases are alternately quoted and blended one into the other without identifying speakers or transitions. You must pay attention to keep track of who is talking about what.
Writer’s vanity? Perhaps, but this actually works to foster a sense of character identity. It also feels like something you might experience if you were witnessing the confusion firsthand.
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| A body is uncovered in Manhattan, NY, 1980s. In Tricks a body turns up in several pieces. "You won't need an ambulance for this one," a homicide detective notes. "All you need is a shopping bag." Image from https://allthatsinteresting.com/1980s-mafia#13 |
Even with more than thirty years of these novels under his belt, McBain still made it all sound fresh, no matter if the scenery described is anything but:
Squadroom coffee cups all looked alike. Dirty. In some squadrooms, the detectives had their initials painted on the cups, so they could tell one dirty cup from another. She sipped at the coffee. The imprint of her lipstick appeared on the cup’s rim. It would probably still be there a month from now.
McBain has fun with cop shows, dinging the realism of “Hill Street Blues,” which was about to go off the air after a six-season run, by mocking the cast’s perfect teeth. One detective, we are told, hasn’t been shaving because he is cultivating a “Miami Vice” look, that being a big hit of the time. Several cops discuss authenticity in crime fiction, agreeing you have to be a police officer to get it right.
“Ain’t nobody who didn’t used to be a cop can make a book sound real about cops,” Detective Parker claims.
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| A U. S. first-edition cover of Tricks. Jack-o-lanterns do not figure in the plot, but the detectives do encounter a seductive card-dealing mystery lady at the center of one of the stories. Image from https://www.ebay.com/ |
The book even anticipates the TV show “Law And Order” a decade before it was launched with cop talk that sounds straight from the mouth of the late Jerry Orbach doing his thing as Lennie Briscoe:
“I didn’t know Ralph was dead till I walked inside.”
“Ralph?” Monroe said.
“Ralph Adams. It’s his store. Adams Wine & Spirits. He’s been here in this same spot for twenty years.”
“Not no more,” Monroe said tactfully.
Even the minor characters breathe in Tricks. At one point, two detectives visit a custodian and his checkers-playing buddy at a school after hours. It’s an inconsequential scene in the narrative, but McBain still fleshes out some five pages with tiny details that add color, interest, and life. The custodian just knows the cops are on to him stealing school supplies. He mops his brow. The detectives sense he is hiding something, but they have a murder to investigate. The buddy explains he is a widower who has nothing better to do. The vignette ends, and so it goes.
It’s hard enough to end one good story on a satisfactory note. How
McBain manages to do it so brilliantly in triplicate boggles the mind. As it
lacks a clear central focus, Tricks may pose a challenge for someone
unfamiliar with the series, but its multiplicity of angles makes it very
enjoyable. It was the author’s vision when he began the series to have what he
called a “conglomerate hero,” and that is what he delivers here, along with craft,
comedy, and a lot of heart.
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