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Summary
Summary
It's not a mystery, it's a story of survival and triumph. That's what some people say about Romance, a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wielding stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. And before the detectives of the 87th can solve that crime, the same actress is stabbed again. This time for keeps. A.D.A. Nellie Brand moves in for a murder conviction, but Detective Steve Carella is sure she's got the wrong guy, and wrestles for the case with Fat Ollie Weeks, Isola's foulest cop. While Bert Kling interviews witnesses and suspects ranging from the show's producers to the author - who has written novels about cops and knows how it's done - to the lead's lovely understudy, he can't keep his mind off what's happening to him. He's falling in love. With a doctor. Who happens to be a deputy chief surgeon. Who happens to be a black woman. In the city of Isola, nothing is black and white. In the play Romance, no one is guilty or innocent. And in the gritty reality of the 87th Precinct, everyone is in love with something - even if it's only murder.
Author Notes
Evan Hunter was born in 1926 in East Harlem, New York on October 15, 1926. During World War II, he 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 (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Romance and drama capture police detectives Carella and Kling of the 87th Precinct in McBain's Manhattan clone, Isola City. An actress in a play about an actress who gets stabbed is stabbed. Her superficial wound draws little blood but enough media attention, perhaps, to save the drama from the opening-night closing its director expects. The play is titled Romance, a subject very much the focus of Kling's personal life as he doggedly pursues another cop-black surgeon, Sharyn Cooke. Next, a cast member is fatally stabbed and another member of the company dies in a suspicious fall out of an apartment window, giving the case some urgency and, not incidentally, stirring up ugly interprecinct politics, notably with Carella and King's loathed colleague, Fat Ollie Weeks. McBain has fun in this 48th 87th precinct tale, weaving romantic dialogue into the investigation and taking shots at various dramatis personae of the theater world. When McBain has fun, so do his readers. Mystery Guild selection; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; author tour. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
McBain's densely textured procedurals (And All Through the House, 1994, etc.) have made him a national treasure, but his latest 87th Precinct novel--the 46th in the series--offers no more than what you'd expect from lesser mortals: a niggardly plot and a half. The plot involves the misfortunes of Michelle Cassidy, talent-free star of the avant-garde new play Romance. Like the heroine she plays, Michelle's been stabbed in a dark alley, but even though her testimony to Detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling is inconclusive, we know who stabbed her: her agent/lover, Johnny Milton, who thought (it was partly sweet Michelle's idea) that it would give the play some nice publicity. The ploy is so successful that it's no surprise when somebody--presumably not Johnny, though the boys of the 87th carry him off--stops by Michelle's place with another knife and finishes the job. Meanwhile (this is the half a plot), Bert Kling has struck up a tentative romance with Deputy Chief Surgeon Sharyn Cooke, whose higher rank bothers him more than her race--though she's plenty bothered by the fact that he's white. Eventually McBain, who seems worried that he's going to run short on side dishes, has Carella's wife, Teddy, booked for assault when she kicks the woman who rammed her parked car, but this episode never goes anywhere, and neither, really, does the backstage whodunit. Clearly the work of a gifted McBain impersonator who has the dialogue and local color down but still needs to work on the story. Skip this one and pray the real McBain escapes from wherever in Isola the bad guys are holding him. (Author tour)
Booklist Review
Romance is in the air as McBain, acknowledged master of the hard-boiled police procedural, offers up another surefire best-seller. This time, McBain evokes a certain whimsical lightheartedness--albeit mixed with his usual tough violence. Actress Michelle Cassidy is starring in an insipid mystery called Romance, and in an effort to get some much-needed publicity for the play, she persuades her lover to give her a couple of realistic-looking but superficial stab wounds. The trick works, and the play's assured of success until someone fatally stabs Michelle, then pushes the show's stage manager out a tenth-story window. Which of the characters from the play--the Detective? the Stage Manager? the Understudy?--had the most to gain from the two deaths? Steve Carella and his partner, Bert Kling, try to figure it all out. McBain toys with readers by using a number of devices to spice the story, such as a play within a play, a play on words, and the way events in real life keep imitating art. And he includes a bit of real-life romance, too, as whitebread Detective Berg's hot love affair with ebony-skinned Dr. Sharyn Cooke sizzles amidst the murder and mayhem. As usual, McBain and the 87th Precinct produce another gem. (Reviewed Apr. 1, 1995)0446518042Jasmine Nights