A Matter of Conviction
by Evan Hunter
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A racially charged murder pushes a mild-mannered district attorney to the brink in this gritty legal thriller by the author of the 87th Precinct series. After an intense heat wave, storms threaten to blanket New York City, and three boys walk across town with knives in their pockets and murder on their minds. They're tough kids in combat boots, crossing into Spanish Harlem to pick a fight. And when they see one of their intended victims, they surround him, draw their knives, and plunge their show more weapons into the poor boy's gut. The attackers flee, and blood pours down the victim's lifeless body, mingling with the sudden rain. But despite the showers, nothing will be able to extinguish the full-blown panic that threatens to set the city aflame. Prosecuting the case falls to Hank Bell, a Harlem-born district attorney with a solemn sense of civic duty. As the case threatens to unravel, Hank will be the only thing that stands between his city and blood-spattered anarchy. The inspiration for John Frankenheimer's classic film The Young Savages, this is a hard-eyed look at a city on the edge of chaos, written by a man who understood urban crime better than anyone else: legendary crime writer Ed McBain. show lessTags
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Awhile back I visited this cool used book store fairly close to where I live, and found two old Evan Hunter paperbacks I had never seen before. I finally got around to reading one of them: "A Matter of Conviction". It was one of his early books. Assistant D.A. Hank Bell is assigned a case, prosecuting three young men who stabbed and killed another young man, who happened to be blind and Puerto Rican (it's the 1950s). The three boys who stabbed him are white and belong to a rival gang. As a further twist, the mother of one of the killers is Bell's old girlfriend, who wrote him a Dear John letter when he was off fighting in WW2. It had a lot of typical McBain elements to it, and it was a quick, engrossing read.
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364+ Works 32,462 Members
Ed McBain is a pen name for Evan Hunter who was born in 1926 in East Harlem, New York on October 15, 1926. Hunter was born with the name Salvatore Albert Lombino, and he legally adopted the name Evan Hunter in 1952. During World War II, Hunter joined the Navy and served aboard a destroyer in the Pacific. He graduated from Hunter College, were he show more majored in English and psychology, with minors in dramatics and education. He was a prolific writer who also wrote under the names of Ed McBain, Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, and Richard Marsten. His first major success came in 1954 with the publication of The Blackboard Jungle, which was later adapted as a film. He published the first three books in the 87th Precinct series in 1956 under the name of Ed McBain. He also wrote juvenile books, plays, television scripts, and stories and articles for magazines. He won the Mystery Writers of America Award in 1957 and the Grand Master Award in 1986 for lifetime achievement. He died of laryngeal cancer on July 6, 2005 at the age of 78. (Bowker Author Biography) Ed McBain is the only American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. He also holds the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award. His books have sold over one hundred million copies, ranging from his most recent, "The Last Dance", to the bestselling "The Blackboard Jungle", the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" & the bestselling "Privileged Conversation", written under his own name, Evan Hunter. He lives in Connecticut. (Publisher Provided) Ed McBain, aka Evan Hunter, wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and has written many novels. He is the only American to be awarded Britain's coveted Diamond Dagger Award, the highest honor a suspense writer can achieve. He lives in Connecticut. (Publisher Provided) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- En rettferdig dom
- Original title
- A Matter of Conviction
- Original publication date
- 1959
- People/Characters*
- Henry Bell
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Mystery, General Fiction, Suspense & Thriller
- DDC/MDS
- 823.91 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999
- LCC
- PN6071 .D45 .M333 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Collections of general literature
- BISAC
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- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
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- Languages
- 8 — Danish, English, Finnish, German, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 3
