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Searching... Amity Public Library | MYS McBAIN 87th Precinct # 40 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
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 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)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
MWA Grand Master McBain scores again with the story of a hellish Halloween in the famous 87th Precinct. Detectives Hawes and Brown get reports of a dismembered corpse that sexy Marie Sebastiani identifies as her husband, magician Sebastian the Great. Meanwhile, detectives Carella and Meyer go after a gang of children whose tricks are killing and robbing liquor-store owners. In another part of the jungle, Eileen Burke poses as a hooker to decoy the city's serial killer, and loses her backup team. The night runs its dreadful course as the kids shoot Carella and Meyer and ends, ironically, with goof-off detective Andy Parker winning credit for a spectacular coup. McBain's machine-gun dialogue and authentic atmosphere keep the reader in screaming suspense throughout the narrative, guaranteeing that this will be a bestseller, like its 40 predecessors. (October 28) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
More from the 87th Precinct--where things peaked about a decade ago (with such distinctive, original stories as Long Time No See), then settled into a competent, streetwise, uninspired groove. Like other recent entries, this one offers a sturdy montage of familiar police-procedural mini-plots, with a sprinkling of quirky, grotesque, only semi-convincing touches--all occurring on Halloween. Plot #1: policewoman Eileen Burke poses as a prostitute in a sleazy bar in order to lure and trap a psycho who has been flashing hookers. (Her cop-boyfriend provides un-official, maverick backup support--with near-fatal results.) Plot #2: a series of liquor stores is held up by a quartet of trigger-happy, costumed ""children""--who turn out to be ruthless midgets. Plot #3: a magician disappears, and what seem to be parts of his dismembered body turn up all over town. And meanwhile veteran cops Carella and Meyer recover from gunshot wounds in the hospital--which is unfortunate, because none of the younger officers provides the sort of character-appeal that made bygone Carella/Meyer outings richly absorbing. Serviceable recyclings, then, somewhere between Dell Shannon and Hill Street Blues--with steady action, solid atmosphere, a few black-comic chuckles, but no chills or surprises. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
It's Halloween night, and a suitably bizarre crime spree taxes the talents of the intrepid 87th Precinct detectives. A gang of midgets, dressed up as trick-or-treaters, knocks over a series of liquor stores, ruthlessly murdering the owners; a magician mysteriously disappears, whereupon his various body parts turn up in scattered locations around the city; and a mad slasher is preying on the hookers who inhabit a seedy bar in the treacherous Canal Zone. McBain's penchant for gritty locale and pathetic people (including the jaded coppers) is well in evidence here, as is his distinctively clipped, rapid-fire dialogue, which certainly moves the stories along but sometimes reads false and/or corny. Fans of the 87th Precinct novels probably won't mind, but this book isn't as good as recent entries in McBain's Matthew Hope series (e.g., Puss in Boots, Booklist 83:1411 My 15 87). The previous 87th Precinct tale was Poison (83:665 Ja 1 87). MAB. [OCLC] 87-11350
Library Journal Review
All the cops from the 87th precinct are featured in Tricks , the 39th novel in this series that began in 1956 with Cop Hater. This new book, a multi-crime Halloween story, involves pieces of a man's body found all over the city; a gang of ``children'' robbing liquor stores and killing the owners; Genero facing sudden death and coming away a hero; Eileen Burke confronting the demons that have been chasing her since she was raped and almost murdered; and more. Women, always major players in McBain's novels, are treated with courtesy and depth of understanding in this utterly fascinating, sometimes shocking, crime story by the undisputed master of the police procedural. JV (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.