King’s Ransom (87th Precinct) 3.5Stars

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Title: King’s Ransom
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 147
Words: 56K

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A rich man, who has trampled everyone who ever got in his way, has his chauffeur’s boy kidnapped when the kidnappers confuse the two boys. The ransom is enough that the rich man won’t be able to push through his latest deal and so he doesn’t want to even try to cooperate. It’s not until his wife leaves him with their son that he finally begins cooperating with the police. With a police officer hiding in his car, the rich man drops off a suitcase of fake money and the couple who are holding the boy decide they want no more and release the boy and make their escape to Mexico.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with this when I realized it was going to be about the kidnapping of a young boy. Especially when one of the kidnappers was a violent punk of a man who attacks the wife of his co-kidnapper and attempts to rape her. He doesn’t get that far, but that was his intent and I almost dnf’d the book at that point.

In many ways, this was more about the rich man and his journey of self-discovery that he was a complete bastard than about the kidnapping. The rich man was a real jerk but he was nothing worse than the businessmen of today who sacrifice whole companies and their entire workforce simply to increase a projected profit and feed the greed of the shareholders. It’s sad that the love of money destroys people like this, from the inside out.

On the plus side, we don’t get much about Cotton Hawes, the manwhore. I was quite ok with that. Steve Carella is once again front and center and I like him, as he’s a good cop.

★★★✬☆

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From the Publisher & Bookstooge.blog

Synopsis – click to open

The story centers on the moral dilemma faced by a wealthy man when he is forced to choose between using his wealth to fulfill a personal ambition or saving the life of a kidnapped child. Two of the three kidnappers repent and tell the police where the boy is and disappear. The boy is rescued.

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‘Til Death (87th Precinct) 3.5Stars

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Title: ‘Til Death
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 139
Words: 46K

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How does an author manage to pack such an exciting and thrilling story into just 139 pages? Magic. That is the only explanation that I can logically come up with for how McBain tells this taut thriller, keeping me on the edge of my seat the entire time and yet not making me feel like I ever missed out on something.

Part of this is that it is not a “normal” situation for the officers of the 87^th Precinct. It’s all off duty, at the wedding of the sister of one of the main characters. Somebody wants to kill the groom and it’s up to the off duty officers to figure out who and prevent it. The kicker is, and while this is a spoiler, none of you are ever going to read this so I’m not too worried, there is actually more than one wanna-be killer. I totally did not see that coming.

It is amazing how McBain can turn little circumstances at a wedding into incidents that hold a lot more meaning. And the obsessed ex-boyfriend? Whoo boy, that guy kept getting worse and worse through the story and by the end, I had to wonder how he had avoided doing something before this that landed him in jail. He would be every girl’s nightmare and the kind of guy a big brother would have to squash to make him leave his sister alone. It was sad to see him living in such a delusional state, convinced the bride should be his and that she would be happy with him instead of with her fiance. And he’s not the guy who is trying to shoot the groom either!

See what I mean about McBain packing stuff in? It was fantastic.

★★★✬☆

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From the Publisher

Synopsis – Click to Open

The wedding day of Detective Steve Carella’s sister Angela should be the most romantic, special day of her life. But it might turn out to be the worst if her brother can’t figure out which man on the guest list has come to murder the groom.

Carella and the men from the 87th Precinct find themselves on the clock as they desperately hunt amongst the name cards and catered dinners for the would-be assailant. Trouble is, the crowd has numerous people with viable motives: the best man who stands to inherit everything the groom owns, the ex-boyfriend with a homicidal crush, and even an ex-GI with a score to settle. But time is ticking, and if they don’t act fast, Angela will become a bride—and a widow—on the same day.

Another riveting installment of the 87th Precinct series, ‘Til Death is one of bestseller Ed McBain’s finest, an intense, life-and-death nerve-wracker hailed by the Literary Review as “zestful, inventive, and utterly compulsive.”

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Lady Killer (87th Precinct) 3.5Stars

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Title: Lady Killer
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 99
Words: 43K

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With a threatening anonymous note saying the writer will “Kill the Lady”, the detectives of the 87^th Precinct have a mere 9hrs to figure out who the lady is and how to prevent her death. Is the lady a high class whore, is she an actress, is she a dog? Of course, it’s nothing so obvious as that.

I had no idea what was going on the entire time and I loved it. I was as confused as the police and man, it was a great thrill ride. And with it being such a short book, I felt like I jumped into the police cruiser, jammed the sirens on as loud as they could go and went tearing down the highway at 120 miles per hour, slammed the brakes on, performed a vehicular military exfil and shot the perp dead with my SWAT issued automatic assault shotgun. It’s no nuclear bazooka, and Hawes is no Mitch Rapp, but I take what I can get. Nuclear bazookas come and go, but an assault shotgun is forever. Kind of like love in fact.

Awwww, look at that wittle cutie! Just makes you want to cuddle it, doesn’t it?

★★★✬☆

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From the Publisher

Detective Cotton Hawes of the 87th Precinct scrutinizes a tip-off letter that says “I will kill the lady tonight at 8”–giving him nine hours to find the victim and the killer in a city of eight million people.

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Killer’s Wedge (87th Precinct) 3.5Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Killer’s Wedge
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 100
Words: 45K

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Wow, talk about a taut police procedural. The whole book takes place almost in one office and yet the tension never let up. A crazy lady comes into the police station to kill one of the officers and ends up taking a whole bunch of officers hostage as well as a prisoner and a pregnant lady.

Oh man. So, there was a perfect example of a character being totally stupid and ruining things for everyone. The prisoner is a hispanic lady who was picked up for knifing a gang leader. She’s fiery and angry and doesn’t let anyone tell her anything. She ends up hating on the crazy lady and you’d think they would be bitter enemies. BUT. Just as one of the police officers is about to make a successful move against the crazy lady, the prisoner interferes and has a chance to escape. However, she believes the crazy lady over the police officers, with predictable results of everyone still being held as hostages. I was so outraged that I just dropped my kindle on the bed spread and starting hollering out loud. Poor Mrs B had to listen to me for a solid 5minutes. The things wives have to put up with, hahahahahaa.

Cotton Hawes played a large part in the story, but thankfully, there was no sleeping around. I kept waiting for him to hit on the crazy lady though, just because.

Everything gets resolved in the end and we find out the nitroglycerin was real, not water like the police officers eventually gambled on it being. It made me laugh. KABOOM!!!

★★★✬☆

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From the Publisher

Her name is death – and her name is Virginia Dodge. Virginia Dodge is determined to put a bullet through Steve Carella’s brain, and she doesn’t care if she has to kill all the boys in the 87th Precinct in the process. Armed with a gun and a bottle of nitro-glycerine she spends an afternoon terrorising Lieutenant Byrnes and his men with her clever little home-made bomb. Is there anything the boys at the 87th can do to save Carella or will this crazy broad achieve her goal ¿? In one of the most dazzling novellas of the Precinct, Ed McBain exposes the dangerous loyalties that keep the boys of the 87th together, and threaten to tear them apart at the same time.

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Killer’s Payoff (87th Precinct #6) 3Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Killer’s Payoff
Series: 87^th Precinct #6
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 118
Words: 53K

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Wow, it’s been a while since I read an 87^th Precinct book! I was thinking I had stopped in November of ‘23, but looking at the the blog, it turns out it was back in June with Killer’s Choice. Man, time really got away from me on this series. That’s ok though, as these are essentially standalone stories with just little tidbits connecting them to any previous books.

Cotton Hawes was introduced in the previous book and he’s the main character here. He literally sleeps with some woman every other chapter and is the main reason this didn’t get 3 ½ stars. It’s not graphic or anything, but McBain makes it a point and by the end, it’s almost a joke. But that kind of thing isn’t a joke.

I found the idea of the police working hard to apprehend the killer of a scumbag blackmailer to be morally repugnant but that is how the Rule of Law works. It doesn’t get to play favorites based on your personal choice of who you like or don’t like. Either the Law applies to all or it applies to none. I didn’t delve into that aspect in my own head very deep because I didn’t want to go down a ranty path where I sounded off about various social ills caused by Big Government either ignoring the Law or actively working against it. But it peeped out. Like a ray of ranty sunshine 😉

I still love the fact that these are so short. I read this in one sitting and when I was done, I just sat back and enjoyed the fact that I had a complete story under my belt and didn’t have to spend the next week wading through purple prose and over descriptiveness and so much detail that nothing was left to my imagination.

Overall, I was happy with this story and the continuing adventures of the police of the 87^th Precinct. Cotton Hawes will be the main character for at least one more book, so I’m prepared now for him to be a total manwhore. I do hope though that he gets married and settles down.

★★★☆☆

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From the Publisher

Click to Open

Sy Kramer, a blackmailer, is shot dead in a 1937-style drive-by execution. But it is 1958 and Cotton Hawes and Steve Carella have to find out who killed him. It could have been Lucy Mencken, a rich and respectable lady with a past that included some very unrespectable photographic portraits, or it could have been Edward Schlesser, a manufacturer of soda pop. Or perhaps it was one of the members of a hunting party that went very wrong. In the end, it was the 3 hunters. They had accidentally killed a man, were seen by Kramer and he was blackmailing them. He squeezed them too hard and so they decided to simply kill him.

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Killer’s Choice (87th Precinct) ★★★✬☆

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Title: Killer’s Choice
Series: 87^th 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.

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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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The Con Man (87th Precinct) ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Con Man
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 150
Words: 51K

From the Publisher

A con man is plying his trade on the streets of Isola: conning a domestic for pocket change, businessmen for thousands, and even ladies in exchange for a little bit of love. You can see the world, meet a lot of nice people, imbibe some unique drinks, and make a ton money…all by conning them for their cash.

The question is: How far is he willing to go?

When a young woman’s body washes up in the Harb River, the answer to that question becomes tragically clear. Now Detective Steve Carella races against time to find him before another con turns deadly. The only clue he has to go on is the mysterious tattoo on the young woman’s hand—but it’s enough. Carella takes to the streets, searching its darkest corners for a man who cons his victims out of their money…and their lives.

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The synopsis is very misleading, in that it makes it seem like there is only ONE con man doing his thing. Well, there isn’t. I won’t tell you how many though, because that would be, GASP, a spoiler and heaven forbid you read a spoiler for a book from 1957! (and by the way, Leia is Luke’s sister) Plus, everyone knows by now that Bookstooge.blog is a completely Spoiler Free Zone and I never tell anyone anything. You bunch of saps…

This wasn’t nearly as “gritty” as the Pusher and I am very thankful for that. McBain doesn’t go into graphic detail about the murders, so that’s good too. And it’s hard to be “gritty” about con men tricking people out of 5 dollars, or 50 dollars or 500 dollars. Basically, trust nobody and you’ll be safe. That’s my philosophy and it would have helped the poor marks who were fleeced in the story.

If it’s too good to be true, then it’s too good to be true. That is true whether you’re talking about money or love. Be happy and satisfied with what you have. Otherwise you’re going to end up losing what you do have. Don’t be stupid.

Well, if you really want to be stupid, you can be. But I’m going to have to charge you for being stupid on my blog. And that’s going to cost you a cool $20 American. Just leave your name, address, mother’s maiden name, credit card number, expiration date and cvw number down in the comments. It’ll be a sacrifice, but I’ll take your data and bilk you. But remember, I warned you, so it’s your fault.

★★★✬☆

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The Pusher (87th Precinct) ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Pusher
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 111
Words: 50K

From Bookstooge.blog

A pusher is killed and it is made to look like a suicide. But it is all a setup to frame the son of the Lt. Of the 87^th Precinct. The son is a junkie and the Lt locks him in his room while he goes through withdrawals. Meanwhile, the detectives track down the guy who is trying to blackmail the Lt, and who has also killed several other people.

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Oooph, another gritty entry. I’m beginning to think that Darren, in leaving his comment on The Mugger, might have been correct. There is nothing suave here. This is heroin overdoses and whores being beaten to death and families being torn apart by drugs and cops almost dying from being shot at point blank range.

But at the same time, I was hooked. I think I read this in one sitting. It helps that it is so short. I guess people in the 60’s actually worked and got things done, so any entertainment had to slot in wherever it could. Of course, all those hippies went and ruined everything and that is why I am cursed today to be sitting on my couch, eating pizza while enjoying doing nothing. My goodness, my life is so brutal!

While not being disturbingly graphic, McBain doesn’t sugarcoat a thing. It makes me wonder about the people for whom stories like this aren’t fictional at all, but every day life. It also makes me wonder (again) if this is a series I want to continue. I think I’m going to have to take this a book at a time and maybe space them out a bit more. I think I have a total of 5 of these on my kindle right now. Once I’m done with them, I’ll read some other series for a bit and decide if I want to come back.

But the attraction of a short, tight story is undeniable.

★★★✬☆

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The Mugger (87th Precinct) ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Mugger
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 149
Words: 49K

Oh, this not a cozy crime novel and I’m realizing this series is not even going to be “comfortable murder solving 101” like with Nero Wolfe. Not being a “crime fiction” aficiando, I think I would call this True Crime. It’s certainly dirty, gritty and violent enough. I added the ultra violent tag because a 17 year old is killed and she was pregnant, by her brother in law. I felt dirty just writing that.

The whole Mugger thing is a separate storyline and McBain plays the reader like a violin in how he interweaves them and makes them appear as one. It was fantastic. There are times I like being manipulated as a reader and McBain did that masterly in this book.

At the same time, the whole pregnant 17 year old thing was extremely disturbing. She had fallen in love with her brother in law and he used that to his own advantage. It was the grossest violation of adult power that I have read about in a long time. Realizing that people can be, and are, like this really depresses me. As a Christian I know that humanity as a whole is fallen, ie, no longer perfect because of sin. But knowing something and seeing something are very different things. I’ve talked about this with a friend of mine, and that dichotomy of knowing that humanity is the worst while still expecting the best of them, is something most Christians seem to have to live with. So while this kind of behavior is rather normal, unfortunately, it still shocks me.

I do hope this kind of thing isn’t going to be the norm. That would be too heavy a burden for me to deal with I suspect.

★★★✬☆

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Cop Hater (87th Precinct) ★★★✬☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Cop Hater
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 112
Words: 49K

During a steamy hot summer, the 87^th Precinct is plagued by a rash of cop killings. 3 cops are killed in as many weeks, with one of them being Detective Steve Carella’s partner. After running clues to the ground and coming up empty, Steve gets a lucky break, finds the killer and it’s revealed the whole thing happened to cover up a woman having her husband killed so she wouldn’t have to divorce him.

Talk about misdirection! I was impressed. I was flabbergasted too. I know that I’m almost 70 years removed from the time this was written (it was published in 1956) and that divorce was one of those “social” sins of the time AND that I’ve read/watched this scenario before but it still blows my mind that someone will commit murder and view it as a better option than divorce. It’s like blowing up the court house because you don’t want to pay your speeding fine.

This was a nice short story with McBain focusing on what went on and not trying to give me every single characters back story or explain the city in block by block detail. You simply don’t need that bloat, you just want it. And here, McBain kicks your teeth in, tells you to sit down, shut up and read the fething story! Ahhh, if only readers of today could appreciate this sparse way of telling a story. I don’t think it was THAT great of a story but simply not having any bloat or author ego or message to wade through made this very enjoyable.

The 87^th Precinct series is really long one (I currently have access to 40 of them and I’m pretty sure there’s more) so I have decided to add 4 or 5 and then take a break between those little mini rotations. Keep it fresh.

The other thing was the main character’s name, Steve Carella. All I could think of was Steve Carell and so I saw him in his “The Office” role and that made for some really funny mental pictures, as Steve Carella is a tough, no-nonsense detective like Starsky or Hutch.

★★★✬☆