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Title: Killer’s Choice
Series: 87th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 97
Words: 44K
From the Publisher and Bookstooge.blog
Annie Boone is dead. She was shot four times in the chest, pieces of the liquor store’s windows spread over her body like raindrops from a lethal storm. For 87th Precinct Detectives Carella, Kling, and newcomer Hawes, even more troubling is the loss of one of their own. Detective Roger Havilland is murdered shortly thereafter, a shard of glass through his jugular.
Faced with a host of suspects—from Annie’s former mother-in-law to her ex-husband, employer, and a string of boyfriends—the detectives find themselves with a victim whose identity spurns all conventional definition. She was the store’s saleswoman…as well as a divorced mother, pool shark, society lady, drunk, and patron of the ballet. Each facet of her life has a corresponding potential suspect. The only way for Carella and the men to find her killer—and maybe that of Havilland, too—is to find out who she really was. The problem is, the only one who really knew her died in a shower of glass.
Turns out the woman was having an affair with the owner of the store and the man’s wife got tired of him cheating on her. So she killed her competition. She would have gotten away with it too except she sent the murdered woman a gloating note and said note was written on a torn off piece of vehicle registration, which had the wife’s info all over it.
There are times I do not understand why one of these books is super gritty and makes me feel horrible while at other times, like this particular book, its like I’m just reading a newspaper report with zero emotional impact.
This was one of those cases where the victim had portrayed herself to each person who knew her as somebody different. Why, we’re never told. But it made life really hard for the detectives and made me glad I’m a land surveyor and all I have to worry about is poison ivy, stepping on ground nests of hornets and abutters who are dumb as bricks and don’t even know it. I can deal with those things!
I’m glad this didn’t hit me like some of the previous books. Means I can keep on reading the series.
★★★✬☆
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