87th Precinct

Over the next few months I plan to review the entire 87th precinct series by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter) and will index all the reviews here for easy access – here is the full list, in chronological order:

Cop Hater (1956)
The Mugger (1956)
The Pusher (1956)
The Con Man (1957)
Killer’s Choice (1957)
Killer’s Payoff (1958)
Lady Killer (1958)
Killer’s Wedge (1959)
’til Death (1959)
King’s Ransom (1959)
Give the Boys a Great Big Hand (1960)
The Heckler (1960)
See Them Die (1960)
Lady, Lady I Did It (1961)
The Empty Hours (1962) [comprising three novellas]
Like Love (1962)
Ten Plus One (1963)
Axe (1964)
He Who Hesitates (1965)
Doll (1965)
80 Million Eyes (1966)
Fuzz (1968)
Shotgun (1969)
Jigsaw (1970)
Hail, Hail the Gang’s All Here (1971)
Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man (1972)
Sadie When She Died (1972)
Hail to the Chief (1973)
Bread (1974)
Blood Relatives (1975)
So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976)
Long Time No See (1977)
Calypso (1979)
Ghosts (1980)
Heat (1981)
Ice (1983)
Lightning (1984)
Eight Black Horses (1985)
Poison (1987)
Tricks (1987)
The Last Best Hope (1988) [cross-over novel featuring Hunter's Matthew Hope character]
Lullaby (1989)
Vespers (1990)
Widows (1991)
Kiss (1992)
Mischief (1993)
Romance (1995)
Nocturne (1997)
The Big Bad City (1999)
The Last Dance (2000)
Money, Money, Money (2001)
Fat Ollie’s Book (2002)
The Frumious Bandersnatch (2003)
Hark! (2004)
Fiddlers (2005)

The police procedural, already established through the works of Georges Simenon, Lawrence Treat and Hilary Waugh, came into its own in the 1950s through the success of Dragnet starring Jack Webb, first on radio (1949-57) and then on TV (1951-59). This had a measurable impact on the McBain stories and Dragnet is in fact mentioned in several of the novels – in Killer’s Wedge Carella at one point says to himself , ‘Now if Joe Friday were here …’. McBain deployed the same basic format as the TV show but reacted against the its flat ‘Just the facts’ style to instead fully exploit the huge variety of stories that could be told using the squad as a corporate character. Some of the books are whodunits inspired by Agatha Christie (Cop Hater), others comedies verging on farce (Fuzz), some (featuring arch-villain ‘The Deaf Man’) are Westlake-like capers, others are religious allegories (the short story ‘And All Through the House’) and political satires (Hail to the Chief) and some even touch on the supernatural (Ghosts). There are also locked room mysteries (Killer’s Wedge) and stories of psychological suspense (Blood Relatives) and one in which the squad plays only a subsidiary role in a first-person tale of a seemingly perfect crime (He Who Hesitates). The main characters are Steve Carella, modeled on Hunter himself, and his deaf-mute wife Teddy; Bert Kling, who has a tragic love-life; red-haired ladies man Cotton Hawes and ultra-patient Jewish detective Meyer Meyer, both of whose fathers thought it amusing to saddle their sons with a comic first names; sadists such as Roger Havilland and Andy Parker; racist Fat Ollie Weeks; coffee-maker extraordinaire Alf Miscolo; pathologist Sam Grossman; and many more besides.

Mr McBain, I presume?

Hunter had hoped to write a concluding novel, to be entitled Exit, but the struggle with laryngeal cancer which he described in his memoir Let’s Talk: A Story of Love (2005), and which would eventually kill the author, made it impossible to go through with his idea. None the less there is a large and impressive body of work left behind for us to discuss and enjoy – a fine legacy. For more information on Hunter, McBain and the whole gang at the 87th, visit the author’s official website at: www.edmcbain.com/