The Big Bad City

Unmistakeable McBain - a murdered nun, a quirky burglar who leaves cookies for his victims and the man who killed Carella's father is egged on to get Carella before Carella gets him. The stories are masterfully orchestrated with dark sly wit written in a voice that is by turns mordant, comic and grim, evoking the sprawl of seedy, homey, squalid humanity in the Big Bad City. Like, say, Lansdale, McBain is the closest approximation to an experience of skilled oral storytelling on the printed page.

In this edition of life in the 87th Precinct, Detectives Carella & Brown are working the mystery of a young woman found strangled in a park who turns out to be a popular nun with breast implants. Unknown to Carella, the man who murdered his father is trailing him watching for a chance to shoot him. The burglar known as Cookie Boy is active and proving difficult to track down until he opens a door into big trouble.

Another real page turner.

“So if you came here thinking, Gee, there’s going to be a neat little murder takes place in a town house and some blue-haired lady will solve it in her spare time when she isn’t tending her rose garden, then you came to the wrong city at the wrong time of the year. In this city, things were happening all the time, all over the place, and you didn’t have to be a detective to smell evil in the wind.” (The Big Bad City, Page 32)

The detectives of the 87th precinct, let alone the other precincts of New York City have their hands full. That was before a suspect in the precinct cage knifed a fellow suspect before being shot by Detective Carella. That resulted in two teams of paramedics being brought in and the obligatory visit from show more Internal Affairs Detectives on a mission to determine what the heck happened. It doesn’t help that it is August and the air conditioning in the precinct house is seriously on the fritz.

Then there are the murders.

One murder is the dead young lady found in Grover Park in front of a park bench. One could tell by looking at her throat she had been strangled. Detectives Brown and Carella had been ready to call it a day and go home when their boss, Lieutenant Brynes sent them out on the case. A case that is going to become incredibly complex.

The burglar nicknamed “The Cookie Boy” continues to do his deal of breaking into places and stealing stuff before leaving a container of homemade chocolate chip cookies behind. Detectives Mayer and Kling have been on that case quite a while. A case that may now involve two murders.

The detectives are not the only ones on the hunt in the city. So too is a man bent on revenge. His target is one of the detectives of the 87th precinct. Like some of the other two legged predators that travel through New York City, murder is on his mind.

The Big Bad City: A Novel Of The 87th Precinct is a complicated police procedural with many moving parts. Like others in the series, it is a solidly good read. As noted in the above quote, this is not a read for cozy readers who prefer sanitized language and situations.

The Big Bad City: A Novel Of The 87th Precinct
Ed McBain
https://www.edmcbain.com
Simon & Schuster
https://simonandschuster.com
January 1999
ISBN# 0-684-85512-7
Hardback (also available in various formats including paperback and digital)
272 Pages
$25.00

My reading copy came from the downtown branch of the Dallas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2019 show less

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This is another entirely solid and enjoyable entry in the 87th Precinct series, albeit not on of the very best. It’s the 49th book, so I guess it’s no surprise that McBain had his formula and craft very well honed by this point. ‘The Big Bad City’ has three parallel stories running: the investigation into the murder of a nun, a spate of burglaries by a criminal who leaves his victims a plate of freshly baked cookies, and a character from a previous book on the hunt for hero Steve Carella.
The nun story is definitely the main plot and is a satisfying mystery, with Carella and Brown doing the legwork to tie the motive back to events in the dead woman’s show more surprising past. The burglary plot is a somewhat atypical one in that its largely told from the criminal’s perspective, with the cops only getting involved towards the end. It reads a bit like a standalone short story, albeit one without a terribly satisfying ending. The Carella story is the one with the most tension, with Steve unknowingly in peril throughout.
It’s not as funny as some of the books, but certainly has its moment, including one brilliant sequence where the narrator expresses consternation at the fact that the notoriously lazy detective Andy Parker manages to catch a suspect in a foot chase. Fat Ollie Weeks features, managing as always to be something of a hero as well as a complete tosser. There’s one particularly repellent sequence where he unsuccessfully tries to wind up a Pakistani cab driver, reminding the reader how obnoxious he can be. Matthew Hope, the lawyer hero of McBain’s other series, also makes a surprise appearance.
As always with McBain, it skilfully mixes police procedural detail with amusing characters, a smattering of liberal politics and solid plotting. If you’re a fan of the series you know what to expect and won’t be disappointed. show less

As with Cop Hater, the locale in Big Bad City bears a strong resemblance to gritty real-life New York City. While McBain never writes the words "New" or "York" together readers can imagine a 1990s version of the Big Apple. The three different story lines weave around each other like a Celtic knot in The Big Bad City: first, a young nun with breast implants is discovered murdered on a park bench. Unbeknownst to Carella, the man who murdered his father has been stalking him, waiting for the right time to gun him down survival-of-the-fittest style; and speaking of guns, how did notorious Cookie Boy the burglar go from petty theft to two counts of murder in fell swoop? Precinct 87 has their hands full with these seemingly unrelated crimes.

McBain loves his story arcs, some stretching over thirty years, but this was a shallow one. Apart from a few moments of writing genius floating around the characters of Weeks and Brown this was a loaf of very dry bread. This one confirmed for me that nothing McBain has written in the last fifteen years (or maybe twenty) has matched the power, economy and comedy of his early 87th Precinct novels. Not recommended for any except the die-hards.

Enjoyable police procedural with its fair share of shocks and surprises, but overall a little leisurely. McBain tries to throw too much into it -- three plots and some family matters also. Probably a more enjoyable read for those already immersed in these characters, but surprisingly, this was my first McBain book.