Ed McBain Mystery Collection

Ed McBain Books and Novels

Money, Money, Money: A Novel of the 87th Precinct by Ed McBain

Amazon.com
Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer, and Fat Ollie Weeks having been working the 87th Precinct for more than 40 years, but they're still the top dicks in town for devotees of Ed McBain's absorbing police procedurals.
When a pretty, red-haired, ex-military pilot is killed, the boys in blue blunder around for a few chapters before they unmask her secret life as a drug courier. By then the burglar who broke into Cass Ridley's apartment and stole the "tip" she got for her last run has already tried to spend one of the $100 bills from her stash, attracting the attention of the Secret Service. The "superbill" is phony, and by the time Carella and his crew uncover the international counterfeit ring behind it, McBain has notched up the action with a terrorist plot to bomb Clarendon (read Carnegie) Hall, where an eminent Israeli violinist is performing. There's also a conspiracy involving a publishing company whose sales reps are so venal and violent you might think they were the creation of a writer who blamed them when his last book failed to sell. Not so McBain, who can't have too many complaints in that department. His publisher's reps have been living well for decades on the commissions earned on McBain's books (including those of Evan Hunter, his alter ego).
That he has kept this series going for so long without tricking up the plots, turning his characters into stereotypes, or sacrificing their humanity is a tribute to his authorial gifts: expert pacing, sharp-edged dialogue, authenticity, wit, and confidence. There's only thing getting old in this, his 51st book in an evergreen series: the fictional convention that locates the 87th in a place called Isola instead of midtown Manhattan, where it so clearly is set.

Candyland : A Novel in Two Parts by Evan Hunter, Ed McBain

Amazon.com
Two of the best mystery writers in America team up in this interesting Law and Order-type experiment. In the first half of the book, a sexually voracious architect prowls the dark corners of New York looking for some action before he heads back to his frigid L.A. wife. In the second half, a prostitute's grisly rape-murder engages the attention of the guys (and girl) in blue. What's the connection between the murdered woman and the obsession-ridden architect? A string of coincidences that make the reader expect a surprise ending, of course. But it doesn't happen, which makes one wonder why the two authors (who happen to be the same person) bothered with the gimmick. Still, both Ed McBain (author of the 87th Precinct novels) and Evan Hunter (his more literary and much sexier incarnation) are old pros, so the pacing, character development, and thorough knowledge of police procedure and human nature that mark this tidy little mystery make it a pleasant enough diversion. A new McBain or Hunter is always cause for celebration, and Candyland, which is a lot grittier than most police procedurals, will titillate their many fans until either (or both) comes through with a new thriller. The distinct narrative voices of the multitalented writer are on view here; although the writing styles aren't different enough to make it more than a parlor trick, the result is still twice as good as most of the season's new offerings.

Shotgun by Ed McBain

With Walter Damascus, a psychopath who likes his women well-off, well-built, and dead, loose on the city, the boys of the 87th Precinct must work overtime.

Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear by Ed McBain

Amazon.com
This time around Matthew Hope finds himself in southern Florida and in a mess. A woman he's representing is suing a toy manufacturer she says stole her idea. The problem is, the president of the toy company was murdered, and guess who's the prime suspect? The other problem--or problems--is that Hope's primary private investigator winds up on a boat kidnapped by drug runners leaving Hope, who is still smarting from gunshot wounds he collected in other adventures, to contact by himself the subjects for the investigation, all of whom reside on boats. Got that? He does get some help, in the form of an old-school PI named Guthrie Lamb, who throws in his techniques to try to crack this rather nutty case.

Sadie When She Died by Ed McBain

Detective Steve Carella investigates the death of Sarah Fletcher, relying mainly on her little black book and its record of her sexual adventures to solve the crime.

Cop Hater : An 87th Precinct Mystery by Ed McBain

Swift, silent, and deadly -- someone is knocking off the 87th Precinct's finest, one by one. The how of the killings is obvious: three .45 shots from the dark add up to one, two, three very dead detectives. The why and the who are the Precinct's headaches now. When Detective Reardon is found dead, motive is a big question mark. But when his partner becomes victim number two, it looks like open-and-shut grudge killings. That is, until a third detective buys it. With one meager clue, Detective Steve Carella begins his grim search for the killer, a search that takes him into the city's underworld to a notorious brothel, to the apartment of a beautiful and dangerous widow, and finally to a .45 automatic aimed straight at his head....

Death Flight by Ed McBain

Milt Davis is way out of his league--he thinks. The FBI solves plane crashes, not small-time private eyes. Then he's shot at, beat up, and caught in a lie by the one person he'd like to know better. But the dark truth is emerging. And now Milt knows he's on familiar territory--between men, women and money they don't deserve.

He Who Hesitates by Ed McBain

As Roger Broome tries to muster the courage to visit the 87th Precinct to talk about Molly, the woman he had met in a bar and took home, but Amelia, a pretty Spanish girl, leads him to forget his intentions, and with his every hesitation, the countdown on a innocent woman's life continues.

The Last Dance : A Novel of the 87th Precinct by Ed McBain

Amazon.com
Penzler Pick, January 2000: When it comes to the novels of big-city cop life revolving around a single station house's daily dramas, Ed McBain wrote the book--50 of them, in fact. And whatever one thinks of the virtues of NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, or even Law and Order, there's the undeniable truth that McBain was there first, with his wonderfully reimagined New York. (Fans know that Isola is the stand-in for the borough of Manhattan, Riverhead for the Bronx, Majesta for Queens, Calm's Point for Brooklyn, and Bethtown for Staten Island.)
Here, as one hopes and expects, a body turns up within the opening pages. And also, as is often the case, Detective Steve Carella is there to spar with the medical examiner.
But there are other bodies and other police personnel in a story that takes the typical McBain route--no short cuts--that amounts to a crook's tour of the city he loves. With a cast of characters that ranges from socialites to hookers, The Last Dance takes in theater world chicanery, police brutality, and a pizza-joint massacre.
Ed McBain, also known as Evan Hunter, is the only American ever to have won the British Crimewriters Association's Diamond Dagger; he is a grand master of the Mystery Writers of America; his books have sold over a hundred million copies around the world; and he wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, the Matthew Hope series of mystery novels with fairy tale and nursery rhyme titles (Rumpelstiltskin, Goldilocks, etc.), as well as the classic The Blackboard Jungle.
Celebrating the publication of the 50th novel in a series that stays amazingly fresh and incredibly readable is no small thing. This much-loved and seminal writer is a national treasure. If you're a mystery reader, you've undoubtedly read Ed McBain. If you haven't read one for a while, try this one. It's so good it will immediately send you scurrying back for the ones you missed.

The Last Best Hope by Ed McBain

Amazon.com
Matthew Hope is at the end of his spiritual rope. He's divorced from his wife, recovering from a coma and tired of living in Calusa, Florida. When Jill Lawton hires him to find her husband, who's been seen "up north" with another woman, Hope thinks it's just another failed marriage ... until a body washes up on the beach with no face and Jack Lawton's driver's license in his pocket.
Hope enlists the help of Steve Carella, from the 87th precinct, and together they find that the Lawtons weren't the wholesome, tennis club members that they appeared to be. Jack Lawton is planning to steal a prized Greek artifact from the Calusa museum. Jill has a plan of her own, and both of them are sleeping with Melanie Schwartz, who is also sleeping with Peter Donofrio and Ernest Corrington-both ex cons.
The Last Best Hope is a wild ride. It starts out as a sleepy, love-gone-bad story and twists itself into a tightly wound tale of murder, deception and kinky sex. Almost every character is unpredictable and almost every character is a suspect. Ed McBain's two series characters-Hope and Carella-make a powerful team and the friendship that develops through the book lends the story an important sympathetic element.

The Big Bad City : A Novel of the 87th Precinct by Ed McBain

Amazon.com
Ed McBain is the only American winner of the coveted Diamond Dagger Award, and he is also a past recipient of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. So, when a reader picks up the latest installment of McBain's 87th Precinct series, the bar is set pretty high. But with The Big Bad City, McBain meets expectations.
In the opening pages, Steve Carella and Artie Brown return to the department with 9 basketball players (the 10th player was murdered) only to discover a knife fight erupting in a holding cell. It's a steamy August night, and Carella and Detective Parker end up having to shoot one of the fighters to cool things down. Then Meyer and Kling enter the scene; they're hot in pursuit of the Cookie Boy, a thief who leaves chocolate-chip cookies at every crime sight. Before the interminable day is done, Carella and Brown are called out to Grover Park to investigate a homicide. A nun has been strangled to death, but she's no ordinary Sister. She's got signs of a breast augmentation operation that hint at a sordid past. Finally, readers are privy to a conversation between Juju and Sonny. Sonny killed a cop's dad, and Juju is convinced that the police will bend the rules to see that Sonny winds up dead. Juju insists that the only way out of the death trap is to kill the cop first. The officer's name is Steve Carella. And all of this happens in the first 15 pages.
McBain is one of the artists of the police procedural. Though his city is fictional, it breathes with the darkness and gritty reality of many American cities. He enters the minds and hearts of his characters to uncover the daily insecurities that accompany the work of policemen. Readers new to the 87th Precinct will want to venture back to such tales as 1956's Cop Hater, 1964's Ax, and 1965's Doll, among the 47 installments in this series. Those who've been along for the ride will be happy they did not give up their seat.

Bread by Ed McBain

Investigating the murder of a warehouse watchman, the cops of the 87th Precinct face a disturbing outbreak in cash-related crimes that link a prostitute's death, a warehouse fire, and a slum redevelopment deal.

Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here! by Ed McBain

Detective Steve Carella attempts to find out who killed a nude dancer, bombed a ghetto church, murdered a local resident, and shot Detective Andy Parker.

Jigsaw by Ed McBain

Detective Arthur Brown discovers that the odd-shaped snapshot found clutched in the dead man's hand is a piece of a deadly puzzle worth a suitcase of stolen cash.

Driving Lessons by Ed McBain

Amazon.com
Ed McBain--author of the immensely popular 87th Precinct crime series--packs his plots with the kick of a .44. Driving Lessons--his entry in the Sounds Like Murder collection of original crime stories--is no exception. Written exclusively for audio production, it's a twisting tale of murder, deceit, and love gone bad that opens with an accident. One crisp autumn day, a woman steps off the curb in front of a student driver. It's the last mistake she ever makes. "She lay in the gutter some twenty feet from where a highway patrol car was just pulling in behind the Ford. Red coat open over a blue skirt and jacket. White blouse with a stock tie. Eyes closed. Hands at her sides, palms upward, fingers twitching." You might chalk it up to inexperience, just one more tragic blunder. But when a local detective starts digging she uncovers some troubling clues.

Fuzz by Ed McBain

In this great novel set in and around a NYC police stationhouse, Steve Carella finds how two brutal murder cases converge through coincidence in a startling and savage conclusion.

OxfordBooks.com / Oxford, MS

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