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Title: Give the Boys a Great Big
Hand
Series: 87th Precinct #11
Author:
Ed McBain
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Crime Fiction
Pages: 143
Words:
50K
Publish: 1960
Body
parts start showing up in the Big City and it’s up to the 87th
Precinct Boys to figure out what is going on before the murderer
strikes again.
Oh, this was a twisted one, really twisted. This is exactly why I can’t read many of these in a row. Right now, my goal is three before I rotate into something different for a couple of months and then come back. Honestly, I’m thinking of going down to two 87th Precinct books and then rotating. It is brutal and unsavory while not necessarily being salacious or in bad taste. If I was my own parents, I wouldn’t have let me read these as a teen. What my teen self would have thought of that I’m not sure, but I doubt I’d have had too much trouble with going along with that.
Books like this are why I’ve never gotten into the hardboiled detective stories, where the stories go even darker. It’s like eating black licorice. I love black licorice but can only eat so much before I have to stop or bad things happen. I don’t want bad things to happen in my literary endeavors either.
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher & Bookstooge
The mystery man wore black, and he was a real cut-up king. Why else was he leaving blood-red severed hands all over the city? Was he an everyday maniac with a meat cleaver, or did he have a special grudge against the 87th Precinct? Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes went along with the grudge theory, because the black-cloaked killer didn't leave any clues to go on - the grisly hands even had the fingertips sliced off. And how do you nail a murderer when you can't identity or unearth most of his victims? That's what the boys of the 87th Precinct have to find a killer before he carves up any more corpseless hands!
Turns out a producer of “exotic” dancers was in love with one of his dancers, a thorough slut who used men for the fun of it. When the producer realized he was being used, he killed the dancer and her lover and cut off his hands and finger tips. And went completely off the rails mentally and stayed with the decomposing corpse, acting like it was still alive.
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