Showing posts with label McBain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McBain. Show all posts

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The Last Dance (2000)

So, yeah, this is helping to answer my questions about the end of the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which wasn't his real name either)—not bad. As it happens, this is also a milestone in the series, the 50th book, so perhaps McBain was unusually up for it. The main case is a pretty good tale of murder for greed. Fat Ollie Weeks has more than ever become a character of interest, and it's all for the good. He represents a very adroit balance of loathsome and fascinating. Lots of nice touches here such as some misdirection about Houston, Texas, or the Broadway-style panache of the stage show producer and his minions. I'm not sure I hear the same hum and crackle of earlier titles, but it's still plenty serviceable as a procedural thriller. Multiple bodies are involved, the cruelty is wanton but comes in a variety of styles. I love the feeling of Isola as an alternative universe New York City that somehow exists with New York City in this world, though little is said (that I've seen / recall) about New York City in detail. Steve Carella feels a little tired or exhausted. They all do, a little, those left. I wonder how the timeline works in this series, because here we are, some 44 years later, and Carella is just turning 40. I am not trying to involve the consistency police and cause trouble—just curious. Because that makes apparent there is no one-to-one kind of correspondence with reality and instead something more complicated, or nonexistent. Why complicate it? It's just one of those things. I can roll with it. I was particularly happy to see Law & Order referenced, as I was curious about his take. It seems to be a favorite of at least two characters, the longstanding Bert Kling and his love interest, a highly accomplished African-American woman, a surgeon liaison with the police, Sharyn Cook. One of the detectives is shot and injured. But that and the Kling thread do feel a little pro forma. So overall maybe a B+ for this one, upped a notch simply for making it to 50 in reasonably good style. But let's put this in perspective. There's no reason I've seen yet not to keep at the '70s and '80s titles, which are generally best, though the '50s—oh hell, all eras really up to then, the '60s too—definitely have points to recommend them. Before you get to these later ones in the '90s and beyond. In general, they can wait. This one too.

In case it's not at the library.

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Kiss (1992)

Shocking, in a way. It's been more than 20 years since I have read from the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either), which means that even a book published in 1992 I have to take more or less as new, all further developments as yet unknown beyond a certain point in the late '80s. By this time McBain was writing them pretty fat—"fat" as in big, not indulgent. Not that this couldn't have stood some judicious cuts. But it's reasonably lean and swift, focusing largely on a plot about a wealthy investment banker who hires a hit man to murder his wife. This is interwoven with a soap opera storyline about one of the detectives, Steve Carella, observing the trial of the man who killed his father. So one thing I see is that Carella's various woes continued apace at least to this point. Kiss is not a best effort in many ways. Even the title turns out to be a hunk of nothing that simply molders there. The twist ending is too cute by half, stepping all over some otherwise intriguing plot points, offering up a kind of Double Indemnity narrative line that I think would have been better developed in the light. The court case and Carella thread may or may not be slightly belabored (I think yes), but it's interesting to read now among other reasons because of its close proximity preceding the OJ Simpson case. A snapshot of a certain historical moment in criminal justice, if you will. I also wonder how well McBain might have been familiar with Law & Order at that time, still in its early years but already achieving excellence with its second season. Maybe I'll find out more about that as I read more of the later ones. McBain often rambles on in discursive fashion, as usual, and the sidebars are often as interesting as the investigations because they are all so skillfully integrated. Also interesting to come back and find points that are so vivid now—such as the general unpleasantness of Andy Parker (nonetheless a pretty good cop, though lazy)—but which don't ring much of a bell from the earlier encounters.

In case it's not at the library.

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Tricks (1987)

Perils of following large series over a span of decades: sometimes you acquire the same book more than once. I read this novel from the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either) back when it was still pretty new, but had forgotten everything except the harrowing decoy stakeout in pursuit of a serial slasher / rapist. At this point McBain is so good he makes it look easy. Set on a warm Halloween that brings frigid temperatures with evening, it's premised on goofs around the word "tricks." Trick or treat—it's Halloween. The serial killer targets prostitutes, posing as a john. A stage magician suddenly vanishes and hours later pieces of his dismembered body begin turning up. A crew of midgets in costume is holding up liquor stores, and killing clerks and bystanders. And Parker looks up a 60-year-old good-time girl named Peaches and ultimately turns a few tricks of his own. Et cetera. The centerpiece in Tricks is the stakeout and ultimate confrontation between Eileen Burke and the killer. Burke previously (no doubt in one of the books in the series) was attacked and raped on a similar operation, so here she is haunted by that. The character of the serial killer is an interesting one, reminiscent of Jim Thompson figures in the way he charms with an endless barrage of streaming jokes, which are often actually funny. It's an interesting device—a good trick, if you will—at once chilling and utterly engaging. Tricks is a real page-turner, as they say. In fact, it's one of McBain's best. At the same time, I will take the opportunity to say here, the details of violence (notably what has to be classified as his fetishizing of knives) and a too-frequent resort to rape as a plot device work to undermine interest. They are the stock devices of genre fiction, hardly exclusive to police procedurals. The fascination, such as it is, is a play on deepest fears. When people talk about exploitation drama, it's the exploitation of our basest fears I think they are talking about. McBain's regular resort to them has to be counted as a weakness. On the other hand, we are always looking for fascination too, so there's that.

In case it's not at the library.

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Lightning (1984)

This is another I had previously read in the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either) and I found it worth revisiting. Part of the continuing interest in the series is how McBain found ways to reinvent it, as in the '80s the novels became these one-word one-concept titles with multiple cases going on, which are twice the size of the novels from the '50s. McBain unfortunately fits with John D. MacDonald and countless other mystery / thriller writers who seem a little too interested in the variety of harm and trauma men can inflict on women, so it's drifting some in a direction I'm not entirely comfortable with. The pattern of events depicted and the attention to certain details suggest unpleasant things about writer and audience alike. In one of the main storylines here a man is stalking and murdering women (in a notably fiendish way) and then stringing them up by their necks to lampposts. Altogether too detailed and dwelt upon. But now I've read it through twice so there's that too. It's got all the usual pleasures of the 87th Precinct characters, plus another role for Fat Ollie Weeks. This is the one I remembered where the characters discuss Hill Street Blues and all the similarities to themselves, which is basically McBain getting his digs in about sources and inspiration and it is priceless. Someone even name-checks Hunter, which is cute. Always there are the beguiling personal soap opera threads detailing the lives of his characters, and McBain is not afraid to deal severe blows to them, as happens to a significant continuing character here, Eileen Burke. We're also privy to the ongoing adventures of Steve Carella's wife Teddy (a deaf woman who signs and reads lips), who is not by any stretch a cop. Here she has decided to find a job after many years at home raising their children, and is in for a rude surprise. For all my misgivings about the treatment of women, and the level and detail of the violence, I'd still have to call Lightning a solid outing and maybe even a little better than that.

In case it's not at the library.

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Calypso (1979)

The 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either) generally maintains a decent level of quality across the 50+ individual novels and stories that compose it. But Calypso is fairly weak sauce. The premise is promising, the main case involving multiple murders, including the death of a colorful calypso cum rock star guitar player figure. But it relies again on a villain who is insane—batty, bonkers, tetched, mad as a hatter, fruitcake in cloud cuckoo land, etc. You really need to be careful with this in any fiction, because it is license to do anything and has to be used responsibly, and that's hard. The more we find out about our dastardly one in Calypso the harder it is to believe. In fact, I stopped believing it almost right away. I still enjoyed mixing it up with the familiar characters—including yet another appearance by the notable Fat Ollie Weeks, who is much more of a regular than I had recalled—but not much is advanced there. It's focused almost entirely on the single case, but longer than many of those, and feels a bit bloated. I liked something about the idea of using calypso in the reggae era. McBain has the first victim decked out almost like Jimi Hendrix, with an act, as described, reminiscent of Bob Dylan (and/or Arthur Lee). This had to be projection on my part because nothing at all comes of any of that. Plus, thinking about it, the series city of Isola is obviously New York, and what was happening in New York at the time—some of the most significant forerunners of rap and hip hop, among other things—still had some calypso elements floating around (e.g., "The Tide Is High"). But the calypso theme dies with the victim in the first scene, that whole side of the story quickly devolving to pitiful corpses and clichés about prostitutes and small-time scamming independent record labels. Again, I never believed any of this. In fact, really, what I think this confirms is the '50s style and attitudes so deeply embedded in McBain, the impressions formed then still holding sway near the dawn of the Reagan era (and the eclipse of the reggae era). You might do worse in this series but it can't be by much.

In case it's not at the library.

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Long Time No See (1977)

Another basically solid entry in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either). By this point most of the leading man duties have devolved onto Steve Carella, who is again the primary lead on the single case this is focused on, the murders of three blind persons and an assault on a fourth. It's more of a mystery book riddle (in the "cozy" vein) than procedural, but it goes to some interesting and unexpected places, such as dream interpretation, with an avuncular appearance by a psychiatrist who discusses Freudian theory. All right, but inevitably the dream and interpretation are perverted to the ends of answering a mystery book riddle. Still, I will look the other way because the mystery book riddle is actually done quite well, expertly scattering out its ration of red herrings and dead ends. I had to keep guessing right along, even though I figured out early the basic shape of it—what this serial killer was more or less about. It's a good strategy and produces a book that is fun to read. The focus on the case is pretty tight, with few detours into the various characters and their personalities and lives. I think I like it when there's a little more of that—and I also like a mix of ongoing cases big and small—but there can definitely be too much. So it's nice to see the foray into mystery writing and keeping the tight focus. By this point in the series McBain slips into bantering digressions easily and frequently, so there's that too. I like the pun in the title, I like a case involving a mysterious serial killer (who obviously has a rational motivation) going after blind people, and I like both Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer, so this goes down well. I'm afraid the knife fetish features again prominently—it's basically the manner of the murders. In fact, at one point there is a discussion of the difference between stabbing and incision. Good to get that straightened out for those wondering. So this is not without faults we already know, but overall a worthy effort for the series.

In case it's not at the library.

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So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976)

This is one of the short, sharply focused novels in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either). It advances a couple of the continuing threads in the series—the detective Bert Kling's bad luck with beautiful women, which from certain angles represents an almost comic pratfall element (though grim), and the persistent noxiousness of Fat Ollie Weeks—although it depends on accepting that what happens here happens to happen randomly to our familiar cast of characters. A psychotic stalker, who is "insane," kidnaps Bert Kling's wife (who is a model) on the day of their marriage. But it's not for ransom. He just wants to keep her and do as he will with her as long as he can. So there is no ransom demand, the cops have no idea where to look, etc. Enter police procedure. You can probably see where it's not easy to pick out the comical element in the Bert Kling thread, because the things that happen to his various women are horrific. More interesting to me, on my recent pass through a bunch of McBains, is Fat Ollie Weeks, who I don't recall encountering much before. I like that he's such a good cop—dogged, creative, with great instincts. I'm less interested in the way he is also a reprehensible human being, and the somewhat trite conflict therein. Mostly I just love watching him figure stuff out. In many ways he's the hero here, showing up and injecting himself into a case the 87th Precinct detectives are obviously taking way too personally to think clearly. That almost has to be Fat Ollie's role to make the big story work, but at least McBain avoids making it a heartwarming moment. Better that Weeks remains basically an asshole. I would really hate to see him reforming much, though I believe he starts softening on some of his racism toward the end of the series, when the books are not as good. But it's not entirely believable at that point. Anyway, this one's a dandy McBain shorty.

In case it's not at the library.

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Blood Relatives (1975)

Blood Relatives is still of the lean, compact variety of novel in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either), less than 200 pages as a mass market paperback, and thus, among other things, a very swift read indeed. Digressions and subplots are minimal, although I don't necessarily count that as a good thing in this series. Blood Relatives is focused on one main case, making it more of a conventional "mystery book," including a twist ending that makes the whole thing unfortunately not very believable and something of a dud. The case is about a pair of teen cousins who are brutally attacked on the street by a maniac with a knife. One survives with injuries and has a confused story to tell. It's a very unpleasant crime, detailed to a discomfiting degree. McBain is fascinated by knives, there's no disputing that, and this is one of the novels where it's right out there. The story eventually goes off the rails (in my opinion) but the fundamentals of the procedural are solid as usual. Steve Carella is front and center, with Meyer Meyer and Bert Kling just to the side, and as often happens in these shorties they are mostly just working the case. And that's fine too, if your tastes run to procedurals as do mine, because McBain is just plain one of the best. Not to be tiresome about it, but when the focus of procedurals shifted to labs and high-tech doohick from, you know, good old-fashioned shoe-leather police work, grinding away at putting together a picture, constructing a narrative if you will (which always incorporated lab work), well, that's when it lost me, as amazing as all that technology is. Again, see true-crime shows such as the Court TV / truTV gem, Forensic Files, for better entertainment values built out of the same materials. "Big case" single-episode TV dramas also more and more preclude the parallel streams of cases developing at the same time, which is one of my favorite aspects of them (again, Adam-12). But Blood Relatives is disappointing to me not just because it is limited to the one case, but also because that case has a number of significant problems, including perhaps worst a pompous sense of profundity. It's the usual gang from the 87th, but proceed with caution.

In case it's not at the library.

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Bread (1974)

I have to be resigned when I go off on my binges of the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either) to reencountering books I have already read because I couldn't remember the title when I was swooping them up in my frenzies. It's too overwhelming to consider reading them in order—over 50 titles, published between 1956 and 2005, not to mention I happen to know some of the early entries are rough (because I have tried to read them in order at least once before). So I just plunge on in when the McBain mood strikes again. Bread is where I started on my recent rounds, and as it happens it's not one I had read before. It's got an intricate plot involving fraud and / or larceny of some kind and eventually multiple murders and assaults. It introduces an interesting character from another precinct who would go on to become a series semi-regular, Fat Ollie Weeks, a bone-deep racist with disconcertingly good police instincts, who among other things slips into an annoying W.C. Fields routine when he's in a good mood. I was just reading on Wikipedia how much McBain felt he owed Jack Webb and Dragnet—I don't think I had known that before, though it makes sense, and indeed (full disclosure) Jack Webb is one of my own favorite filmmakers, within and beyond the procedural subgenre. Because of the time frame when I first became acquainted with McBain I have more often associated the 87th Precinct series with Hill Street Blues, which owes it many obvious debts. But yes, now that you mention it, even that opening disclaimer McBain used at the front of all these books—"The city in these pages is imaginary," etc.—derives quite clearly from Dragnet's "This is the city, Los Angeles," etc. Sometime I will have to get into the matter of police procedurals a little more, because I'm not always on board with the most popular ones in this post- / hyper-forensics period we now live in (e.g., the whole CSI franchise is lost on me). Homely true-crime TV trumps them consistently I think. But there's a lineage last seen in the Law & Order standard-bearer (less so the offshoots) that wends back through Hill Street Blues and Dragnet and finds a nice place to dwell in the majority of these great McBain novels and stories. Read 'em by the handful.

In case it's not at the library.

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Hail to the Chief (1973)

Apparently everyone felt entitled to write novels about Richard Nixon along about the time Nixon started his second term, or anyway Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either) did. He is the author of the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, and here, in that context, is his Nixon novel. Hail to the Chief strains after a Vietnam allegory (as opposed to Watergate, for which it might have been a bit early) and it mars the procedural. It's the usual fun visit with the 87th Precinct characters, the usual procedural basics, and it's not bad as political satire. It's broad as the side of a barn—the main gang leader in this garbled tale of an urban gang war, for example, is named Randall M. Nesbitt (note initials) and frequently refers to himself as "the president." What's that two-by-four imprint on your face? I surmised all this as I went—I have to think it's the first thing people knew about it going in, especially back in the day. But I happened to be blissfully ignorant at first. Though something wasn't quite right, it still mostly worked like the usual McBain for me. It starts with the investigation of a notably brutal mass murder, and—no surprise—as long as it stays close to the investigation it does OK. The gangs are where it falls apart, especially the whole crew headed up by Nesbitt, the "Yankee Rebels." There are pretty good passages about how best intentions ("stopping this war") can quickly escalate violence with good old unintended consequences. On the other hand, on another level, I appreciate the scorn McBain obviously has for Nixon's foreign policy and general manner (via Henry Kissinger), and also that it's focused on Vietnam more than Watergate. That's kind of different and refreshing. But it's just that's not why I read McBain novels. But I'm glad he got it out of his system—come to think of it, a lot of the books in the series are him getting something out of his system, and his willingness to experiment and try things is what keeps the series fresh, a good match for his natural storytelling style. This one features Steve Carella (pretty much by this point in the series the main "hero") with Bert Kling. Kling's personal story is advanced with a proposal of marriage to model Augusta Blair. Rereading these books out of order (as I did in the first place) involves some confusion, as I don't know (or remember) much about Blair, and do retain a good bit about Kling's later wife, Eileen Burke. Otherwise Hail to the Chief is a lot of puffed-up buffoonery about three gangs at war (white, black, and Hispanic) and a lot of really foolish slaying—which is nice to see made so explicitly foolish. But this is one for fans more hardcore than me.

In case it's not at the library.

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Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here (1971)

The basic conceit of this volume in the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either) may feel just slightly belabored, but I like the gimmick a lot anyway: a 24-hour ticktock from midnight to midnight following along with pretty much all the detectives of the 87th Precinct (hence the title, one presumes) as they go about their daily business. It's a short novel that basically breaks into two longish stories: "Nightshade" and "Daywatch" by names. It's a real jumble of police business, one of my favorite flavors of the procedural, perhaps best exemplified by the Jack Webb TV series Adam-12, which was less often one big case and more often three to five small threads of case work, some left unresolved. I have to say there's also some welcome relief for me that insane people with or without knife fetishes are missing from this one—they can be overworked in the series. I think these somewhat more low-key efforts are where McBain really did his best work in this series. I wonder if part of that isn't the constraints of the gimmick, reminiscent of those great and strange crime novels of the '30s and '40s such as They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The Big Clock, or Night of the Jabberwock, which among other things chipped in to an intensely creative time in the genre. In fact, Hail, Hail includes a ghost story in the nightshift section. There's a detective here, Kapek, who's not familiar to me. I realized, after I finished a burst of McBains toward the end of the year, that I didn't even get to very many of the titles from the '50s and '60s. I would think there are plenty of McBain partisans who might swear on either or both of those decades as his best, and I may yet include myself among them. Certainly the '90s and later seemed weaker, and there are some continuing problems with the '80s. It's a lot of books, after all—some 54 novels plus miscellaneous. That reminds me, I need to catch up on Dragnet again. Look, I'm just nutty for police procedurals. My favorite TV show of all time is Law & Order. McBain is plain one of the masters.

In case it's not at the library.

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Lady Killer (1958)

I've been reading randomly from the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter, which was not his real name either) lately, hopscotching the decades, out of order, which affords some interesting perspective. The consistency of the characters—beyond the rote physical and/or biographical detail (which nonetheless serve as good cues)—is impressive and they are an interesting bunch of people too, some of whom see quite a bit of development over the years. McBain plainly knew them well. I have had obsessive infatuations with these books, so it was nice to find most of them still pretty good, sometimes remarkably so. Reading out of sequence also provides a glimpse of the broad scope, occupying six distinct decades, from 1956 until 2005. McBain is better later at constructing more intricate interconnecting plot threads, but he is plainly working through the fundamentals of police procedurals and other points of his craft in these early shorties, which are often very good. From 1956 to 1960, he was turning them out at the rate of two or three a year. In a 1994 preface, McBain relates how he wrote Lady Killer in a matter of days in the summer of 1958, bringing it in right at the minimum "180 pages." It focuses on a case involving a message that arrives at police headquarters from someone announcing, via words and letters torn from printed material, that he will kill "The Lady" at 8 p.m. that night. It thus becomes a profile of a precinct mobilized on a single effort, told basically tick-tock fashion. It starts in the morning of one day and concludes that same evening, some 12 or 14 hours total. As always, the "police routine is based on established investigatory technique," with detectives Cotton Hawes and Steve Carella foregrounded for this one. Bert Kling wanders in seemingly from another book (and indeed perhaps so) and is enlisted. Meyer Meyer has some scenes. There is time aplenty, as always in this series (which ultimately ran to more than 50 books), for personal digressions, tedium, distractions, joking around, and frustration as the larger points are pursued. Another strength of McBain is his ability to evoke a creepy vibe seemingly at will. That's here with a curious prostitute operating as "The Lady." Apparently she has a specialty that involves crying, and she switches in and out of character at the drop of a dime. I could do with less of the action scenes—they dominate in the smaller confines of this very short novel, and they're dull. I could also perhaps complain about how conveniently some of the clues turn up. It's still a heck of a good romp, McBain style, the masterful raconteur spinning out his threads and reeling them back in. It's hard to stop reading. It's just another one of those.

In case it's not at the library.
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