Lady, Lady, I Did It!

My first McBain, but not my last. A quadruple homicide in a bookstore is investigated by a team of cops. Shades of Wahloo and Sjowall's The Laughing Policeman are present, but this came out years before. Supremely economical and efficient storytelling all in the service of what for me was an immaculately realized murder mystery/thriller. This could easily be bumped up to 5 stars if I read more and it turns out to be a standout of the series.

Not even a quirky, seemingly nonsensical title can prevent this from being one of the very best of the Ed McBain 87th Precinct novels I've read. Four unconnected and seemingly random people are gunned down in a shop. One of them is the girlfriend of a detective in the 87th Precinct. The detective's police family rallies to the case with special fervor. While the procedural work of the police force is, as always, central to McBain's cop stories, what really makes this one stand out is the emotional heft McBain gives it. Whether describing love or grief or friendship or family squabbles, the depictions of characters in this novel go much deeper than a good many police novels, even ones as good as McBain's others. I found myself grieving show more for the grieving characters, and really warmed by their camaraderie, to an extent I'm not used to in such stories. The 87th Precinct books are wonderful police novels. This one is a wonderful novel. show less

Clearly, I'm a sucker for the 87th Precinct books, but this one was particularly good. When the loved one of one of the bulls is one of four victims in a shooting, the Precinct goes into overdrive to solve the case. As is often the case with McBain, the mystery turns on a linguistic quirk (I actually laughed out loud with pleasure at this one), but along the way McBain manages to weave in some subtle social commentary that still resonates 50 years later. A great mystery and an excellent popular novel.

Kling's fiancee, Claire Townsend, is killed in a violent bookstore shooting that leaves a total of 4 people dead. The boys in the 87th have to figure out who the shooter was after in order to solve the crime. At first it looks like it might have been Claire, since she had recently helped a girl obtain an illegal abortion (this was in 1960) and the girl later died from infection from the surgery. Turns out that the killer was after someone else in the bookstore: a man who had argued with him over the $25 paint job on his car. Four people brutally murdered for a lousy paint job. You can see the cynicism coming through. Hell, even I felt cynical reading it.

The 14th entry in McBain's storied 87th Precinct series finds the detectives investigating a mass shooting at a bookstore where four people are killed by an assailant who escapes. Once the squad rules out the idea that it was a random act of violence they begin to dig into the backgrounds of the victims, searching for a possible motive. Complicating the investigation is the news that one of the victims is the fiancée of Detective Bert Kling. Could she have been the killer's real target?

The strengths of the 87th Precinct novels for me are the characterization that makes each detective a real person with a life outside the squadroom, and the meticulous recounting of the day-to-day detective work that is decidedly unglamorous but ends show more with an arrest nearly every time. We've met Kling's fiancée in earlier books, so the violence here has the capacity to shock us nearly as much as Kling and his colleagues. The motive, when the killer is finally collared, is depressingly but realistically mundane, another taste of real life in the pages of a novel. show less

*Possible Spoilers*

After a brief time off, McBain is back to involving the boys of the 87th directly with the crimes they are investigating. In this case it isn't Carella's family for a change, but instead Bert Kling's girlfriend Claire Townsend, who is found dead on the scene of a mass shooting at a local bookstore. Claire's death makes it personal not only for Kling, but for his extended family of the 87th, and the boys scramble to track down the mysterious gunman with only one clue, the final word spoken by one of the victims: Carpenter.

Besides the direct involvement of a member of the 87th, which allows McBain more leeway into examining the emotional disposition of the main characters, the bulk of this novel is the same procedural show more rundown as previous novels, with plenty of interviews and false leads - and don't be surprised if that final clue isn't exactly what it appears to be.

One minor drawback to this installment is that McBain feels the need to take us back to previous moments between Kling and Claire, and the numerous flashbacks, while not especially ponderous, do slow down the novel a bit, and have no purpose other than to demonstrate how broken-up Kling is over her death. It doesn't hurt the novel, but it doesn't really accomplish much.

With the earlier novels in the 87th series well over half a century old, it is interesting to look back at how certain subject matters are handled in McBains older novels. McBain was rather progressive for the time these books were written, and he doesn't always take a clear black-and-white Dragnet approach to crime. In this case, abortion plays a small roll in the proceedings, and while some of the terminology ("criminal abortion") and treatment might bother some modern pro-choice readers, McBain makes sure to muddy the waters by throwing an underage rape victim into the mix and have Carella seem to waver afterwards about the practicality of the law.

This actually kicks off a trend with Carella in the series - while previous installments saw Carella becoming increasingly agitated and explosively verbal, with this novel he seems to become more reflective and philosophical, becoming more sensitive to the human drama unfolding within the crimes they investigate. With Carella witnessing both the death of Frankie Hernandez and Parker's flat-out assassination of Pepe Mirandez at the end of See Them Die, Claire's death and it's effect on Kling have apparently broken through his tough cop exterior. This softer Carella (at least emotionally) will serve to play a sharp contrast to Kling's growing abrasiveness in later Precinct novels. show less

Who in the heck shoots up a bookstore? Mamma mia!

This book begins with a tragedy for the 87th, especially for its youngest detective, Bert Kling. And, “Every other cop in the precinct knew that he was a part of the club, and you didn’t go around hurting club members or the people they loved.”

Everyone helps to solve this one for Kling, and when they do, no one is prepared for what they discover. It's a good story, a bit more personal than the others in the series that I've read so far. Poor Bert.

Patterns.