Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (Ed McBain, 1972)

In this one, we follow three unrelated cases assigned to detectives Carella and Kling. So, I guess, it's about a typical week at the 87th precinct police station.

The best one by far is the "Jesus case" - a young man wearing only shorts was found nailed to the wall in the abandoned building. I loved the scene in which various officials (medical examiner, detectives, policeman) who arrive at the crime scene argue about who is responsible for getting the poor John Doe off the wall and into the morgue. The investigation that follows is not exactly a typical “police procedural”, but I think it’s a pretty common one – basically lots of legwork. Since Kling's only solid clue is a left tennis shoe, all he can really do is roam around the neighbourhood asking people, “Have you seen this man?” Things start to unravel when he encounters a suspicious guy who acts nervously and refuses to cooperate. And he’s missing the left shoe...

So, btw, I would disagree with that “he eventually cracks [the case] mainly thanks to the long arm of coincidence” in the otherwise excellent review that can be found here.

The second story is cool too. It’s about catching a daring thief who operates in an area of posh apartments and who’s arrogant enough to leave a little kitten as a calling card in burglarised flats. It’s pretty intriguing and, at times, funny (I liked that part where the surveillance cop’s undercover is immediately blown by a stripper) with an unexpected ending. Needs to be said, though, that the whole thing gets a bit tarnished by a silly romance between Kling and supermodel Augusta, whose flat was on our cat (kitten)-and-mouse guy's list. It goes something like this: "You're so beautiful... Yes, I am, but it's my job to be beautiful... You are beautiful too"...

Unfortunately, the third one, which is the central one, is a total mess. It's about this uber-criminal Deaf Man - a modern Dr Moriarty type - planning and pulling off a bank heist. The essence of his ingenious master plan is to hit the bank twice in the same day so that the second time employees wouldn't be so alert and (with a little bit of luck) police would ignore the silent alarm even if one were triggered. Hm... Obviously, for this to work, Deaf Man needs to make sure that the first attempt will fail, so he sends a few cryptic clues to the police department. Which are, in fact, so cryptic (for example, a picture of the Japanese zero fighter symbolises a circle which represents repetition; get it?) that the police choose to simply ignore them. And I must say I didn't blame them...

I don't know. I guess McBain tried to blend his police procedural stuff into a classical mystery, but the end result just doesn't work. But nevertheless, it was a quick and fun read. Definitely worth 1 euro it cost me.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling

Location: 
The usual "The city in these pages is imaginary..." stuff, but it's pretty evident that it takes place in New York. In fact, the whole 10th chapter is "dedicated" to the city, which I found a bit redundant...

Body count: 
5, not counting "badly wounded" robber of the second "assault team" and also not counting the guy killed in the domestic violence call from the above-mentioned 10th chapter that has nothing to do with any of the three stories.

Dames: 
Supermodel Augusta Blair - “He had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life”
Angela Gould  - "perhaps the least attractive woman the Deaf Man had ever met."
Mary Margaret Ryan - "as sweet a young lass as had ever crossed herself in the anonymous darkness of a confessional."

Blackouts: 
Carella gets knocked out when muggers sent by the Deaf Man steal his badge and gun.

Title: 
Pretty weak. And it totally ignores the other two stories. Something like "Deaf Man's caper, the Jesus case and little kittens left behind" would sound much cooler.

Cover: 
Deaf Man is not really deaf; he's just hard of hearing, so he wears a hearing aid.

Notable cover blurbs: 
For some reason, the reviewer at the Sunday Telegraph found this "Marvelously ingenious, as always." Surely they were not referring to Deaf Man's master plan!?

Cool lines:  
The girls were wearing blue jeans and long hair. The boys were bearded. In terms of police investigation, this was awkward. It meant they could be (a) hippies, (b) college students, (c) anarchists, (d) prophets, (e) all of the foregoing. To many police officers, of course, long hair or a beard (or both) automatically meant that any person daring to look like that was guilty of (a) possession of marijuana, (b) intent to sell heroin, (c) violation of the Sullivan Act, (d) fornication with livestock, (e) corrupting the morals of a minor, (f) corruption, (g) treason, (h) all of the forgoing. Carella wished he had a nickel for every clean-shaven, crew-cutted kid he had arrested for murdering his own brother. On the other hand, he was a police officer and he knew that the moment he showed his badge in this place, these long-haired youngsters would automatically assume he was guilty of (a) fascism, (b) brutality, (c) drinking beer and belching, (d) fornication with livestock, (e) harassment, (f) all of the foregoing. Some days, it was very difficult to earn a living.

Hail to the Chief (Ed McBain, 1973)

A nostalgic one. My father used to be a big admirer of McBain, but I just couldn't get into his writing when I was in my teens. Too formulaic, not enough action, no femme fatales, detailed police procedures descriptions instead of snappy dialogues, etc. I preferred (and still do) the more vivid world of PIs.

I have learned to appreciate good writing and intelligent storytelling (I hope) since then, but I still couldn't enjoy this one. Its subject is juvenile gang violence, which isn't exactly my cup of tea, although (like any other subject) it can be done decently or even brilliantly. The whole setup in this one didn't work for me. How can you take seriously a bunch of kids who still live with their parents? And at the same time, they organise their gangs (they call them cliques) into mob-like hierarchies with counsellors, secretaries, war chiefs, etc. Sounded a bit silly to me...

There's no mystery, and it is a good example of content being sacrificed to the form. Our detectives' investigation runs in parallel with the reading of the gang leader's confession statement in flashbacks after being arrested. So, the whole narration boils down to this: a guy explaining what happened, followed by Ed McBain describing how our heroes reached the same conclusion using police procedures. It's an interesting concept, but it quickly wears off and becomes increasingly annoying. This approach would function much more effectively if the guy were interrogated instead. There are pages and pages without any dialogue, and the whole thing is, at times, really hard to digest.

Far from being bad, but it's just not for me. Still isn't, even after all those years.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Detectives Steve Carella and Bertram Kling of the 87th precinct

Location:
The city in these pages is imaginary.
The people, the places, are all fictitious.
Only the police routine is based on
established investigatory technique. 

Body count: 
Let's round it to 10. It starts with three man, two girls and a baby in the ditch  (Nice racial and ethnic balance. Three of them were black, two of them were Hispanic and one of them was white), then two more during the story development and at least two in the final shootout. But probably much more since three gangs with approximately 50 members are fighting the third world war (they even have hand grenades!).

Title: 
Don't get it. It probably refers to Nesbitt, a chief of Yankee Rebels, but I can't remember anyone hailing him.

Cover: 
A pretty unimaginative human face constructed using the gang's colours and weapons. I doubt Carpenter considered this for a poster of his masterpiece, Assault on Precinct 13

Cool lines:

There was another color staining the ice. The color was blood. The bodies were naked. The nakedness made the night seem even colder than it was. 

I don't know any rich man's sons who got killed in that war over there, do you? And I don't know any rich man's sons who get killed in the street in the middle of the night. If there's a God, mister, he doesn't know about poor people.

I knew this was a drastic measure, but I reasoned with the council that if there is nobody left to fight a war, then the war automatically stops.