The Frumious Bandersnatch – Ed McBain, 2004 ★★

Late McBain Leaves Bitter Taste

Pop music has always been a rough business, but how about this: a young singer’s major-label debut is transformed into a violent kidnapping. Despite the Lewis Carroll-inspired title, this is one of the grimmest and edgiest 87^th Precinct novels Ed McBain ever penned.

Did he go too far this time?

I think so, though I didn’t hate this one as much on a second read. It has a clever, suspenseful plot once it gets going and offers some memorable highlights. It’s just that McBain’s increasingly bleak outlook and his willingness to indulge himself too much on matters away from the main story make this one tough to like.

Fat Ollie’s Book – Ed McBain, 2002 ★½

Side Character Takes Over

Ed McBain wrote two kinds of 87^th Precinct novels. In one he details a single story that more or less takes over the entire book. The other is when he hops around, juggling multiple plots.

Fat Ollie’s Book is very much in the latter mold, a novel that dances around quite a bit keeping you trying to keep up, playing multi-layered games of who is fooling who, and even favoring us with fictional writing from one of the series’s most despicable characters.

It should be fun, since McBain knew how to tweak his established formula for humor and thrills. But somewhere along the line, he lost interest in providing the very thing readers expect when they pick up one of his books: a tight, involving police procedural.

Kiss – Ed McBain, 1992 ★½

A Policeman's Lot

Solving murders, it turns out, is a lot easier than stopping or prosecuting them. In this late installment of the 87^th Precinct police procedurals, series hero Steve Carella gets shoved hard against the limits of his job.

Meanwhile, author Ed McBain inches ever-closer to full-on despair. Whether it be criminal justice, race relations, or the capitalist rat race, Kiss is a novel reeling in misery. Perhaps because of this, it lacks the usual series springiness, stretching out a thin plot for over 350 pages.

At least the author was inspired enough to write original song lyrics to justify the book’s title. But like the book, it’s not a song you remember.

Lullaby – Ed McBain, 1989 ★★★

Pushing it to 11

There are times when a novel by a favorite author has what you want and expect to the point it becomes a liability. Passion and energy are revved up to an overheated degree. Fast-paced conversations read like boxing matches. A super-heavy mood looms large.

Lullaby is a fantastically developed and fleshed-out dive into the world of Ed McBain’s legendary 87^th Precinct. It would no doubt have read better if it had been shorter. Alas, what makes it so brilliant a read also holds it back. The author is on such a tear he knows not when to stop.

A couple return to their Isola apartment from a New Year’s Eve party to discover the corpses of both their infant daughter and her teenaged babysitter. At first, a burglar is suspected. Further investigation suggests a more personal motive. But which victim was the target?

Tricks – Ed McBain, 1987 ★★★★½

McBain's Masterful Medley of Mayhem

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 87^th 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.

Heat – Ed McBain, 1981 ★★★½

When 'I Do' Becomes 'Oh No'

Marriage and summertime are two things we associate with happiness. Yet both can also be sources of intolerable pressure, like when they are used as key elements of a police procedural. In Heat, love makes the world go round, but also leads to murder.

While a typically energetic 87th Precinct page-turner, Heat is unique in the series for how quickly it makes the main criminal activity secondary to a riveting subplot involving one of the detectives.

Bert Kling has a problem. He’s married to a beautiful model, only now he suspects something is going on. A comment by a drunk girl at a party makes him wonder if his wife is having an affair.

Calypso – Ed McBain, 1979 ★½

Who Feels Like Dancing?

Has this ever happened to you? You re-read a book you remember really disliking, only this time you can’t recall what it was that put you off. What you are reading flows really well and keeps you engaged.

Was it you? A bad mood, say, or an uncomfortable chair?

This happened to me with Calypso, a novel I remember being a nadir of my previous jaunt through the 87^th Precinct. But blow me down; what a strong start! It has what you look for in a police procedural: a compelling murder victim named King George, a sense of authentic urgency, and sundry aspects of police process brought in with smooth clarity.

Then with no warning it takes a hard left into Silence Of The Lambs territory, with a crazy subplot that more or less renders all prior conventional police work meaningless. This isn’t the worst 87^th Precinct novel; it does pull one in. But it may just be the most disjointed.

Blood Relatives – Ed McBain, 1975 ★★★

One Body, Too Many Suspects

The more Ed McBain novels you read, the more you discover there is no such thing as a straight Ed McBain novel. He avoided the easy path of working to templates or formulas. He wrote police procedurals, yes, but always changed them up with crazy twists or skewed angles.

Blood Relatives may be his closest stab at a routine police procedural, centering on a single murder where suspects and testimonies are worked over until a culprit is found. Yes, he delivers real surprises but plays his cards straight from the deck.

The results are rather good. McBain’s ability to involve the reader through plot turns and digressions works just as well when he isn’t striving as hard to keep you off-balance.

Sadie When She Died – Ed McBain, 1972 ★½

Sex and Death in the Big City

The 1970s were called the “Me Decade” because of its tendency for hyper-individuality. Families and communities became untethered as individuals obeyed their needs 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.

Jigsaw – Ed McBain, 1970 ★½

One Piece at a Time

The concept behind Jigsaw, book #24 in the 87^th 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 87^th Precinct to put it all together again and find the money.

The trick is finding all the pieces.

80 Million Eyes – Ed McBain, 1966 ★★

Lights, Cameras, Murder

If a sign of a great author is making a book readable even when there is little in way of story, then here is Exhibit A in Ed McBain’s greatness. This book is fast-paced and gripping, capturing authentic moments of life on its margins. But the plotwork falls short of form.

If you are already familiar with and enjoy the 87^th Precinct series of police procedurals, you can find things to extend your engagement. But if you are a newbie wanting to give McBain a fair shot, this is not the book to start on.

80 Million Eyes is more a killer-and-filler entry.

Doll – Ed McBain, 1965 ★★★½

One of Our Detectives Is Missing

While the 87^th 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 87^th 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.

He Who Hesitates – Ed McBain, 1965 ★★

Not a Typical Trip into the City

Ed McBain liked to say he didn’t write whodunits, he wrote whydunits. In this case, what we have is a whatisit. What is the deal with Roger Broome, and what are the strange circumstances that make him think about going to the police?

What it winds up being is a break from a typical 87^th Precinct police procedural. Instead of a fresh corpse and a trail of clues, you have a quiet loner from out of town pondering a secret in real time.

Broome’s odd personality grabs you right away. His mind works along slow and offbeat tangents. Having sold some woodenware in the big and strange city of Isola, he plans to return to his mother, with whom there seems an oddly co-dependent bond. But there is something he wants to get off his chest first, something he thinks he should take to police.

See Them Die – Ed McBain, 1960 ★

Death in the Afternoon

That Ed McBain never served up any two 87^th Precinct novels exactly the same way rightly delights many of his fans. Pick one up, and you don’t know what you will get until you are well into it.

So when I read a book of his that annoys me like See Them Die, I have to remind myself that here was a man who took chances, who never stuck to a set formula, who dared throw things up in the air without knowing how they’d land.

It’s just too bad this one wound up such a mess.

Killer’s Wedge – Ed McBain, 1959 ★★

Squadroom in the Soup

A key difference between mysteries and crime fiction is that the former are about solving crimes, while the latter focuses on committing them.

Like if a dangerous robber was sent to prison, and he dies there, what will his wife do if she’s the kind of person that wants revenge?

Lady Killer – Ed McBain, 1958 ★★★

Killing Time

Detective work is tough enough when trying to solve a murder. How about solving a pending murder?

That’s the challenge members of Isola’s 87^th Precinct face in this early installment of Ed McBain’s long-running series of crime-fiction novels. A note written in cut-out letters handed to the desk sergeant by a young boy warns: “I will kill the Lady tonight at 8. What can you do about it?”

Killer's Choice – Ed McBain, 1958 ★★½

Murder Takes a Back Seat

Why does the 87^th Precinct series still draw readers in, over sixty years after it began, more than a decade after its creator’s death? Can it boil down to more than crafty plots, cocksure villains, and cagey dialogue? Plenty of mystery series offer these; none are the 87^th Precinct.

My theory of the moment: It boils down to investment: Investment on the part of the author to populate his fictional city of Isola with a vibrant community of colorful characters. Investment on the part of readers to relate to these characters, enough so that like the police detectives of the 87^th, we are bothered when some evil is done them.

Cop Hater – Ed McBain, 1956 ★★★

City on the Edge of Forever

Police detectives had been crime-fiction heroes for decades, but in 1955 young writer Evan Hunter got an idea: Instead of one guy, build a story around an entire squadroom of detectives. Thus began a 49-year series of books, the 87^th Precinct novels. Cop Hater came first.

Being first can make something harder to judge on its own merits. As a seasoned 87^th reader, I can’t help but register the comfortable click of a familiar formula, a tone, and characters. But how does Cop Hater stand up as a book?

Long Time No See – Ed McBain, 1977 ★★½

Shaking Up the Old Eight-Seven

Breaking out of an old formula sounds fine in theory, but can result in career death for a successful fiction writer. Ed McBain found himself in the mid-1970s with a need to shake things up, though, and so he gave his 87^th Precinct police procedural series a major retooling.