Ed McBain's Mystery Book #1 (1960)

With the abundance of covid time on my hands, I'm (yet again) sorting and categorising my movies and books. I finally tackled the petabytes of stuff downloaded over the years and have discovered a lot of exciting content. When I came across this one, I thought it would make a fitting choice to wrap up the recent cops killing and hatings posts.

Ross Macdonald was also a significant reason to select it, and Midnight Blue is, as expected, an excellent Lew Archer story, written by the grandmaster with his distinctly elegant style and theme of messed-up middle-class families. It keeps sidetracking the reader into obvious conclusions, but concludes with a classic crime of passion. Sad and tragic, with no winners once Archer ends his investigation. It was not the most original or surprising ending, but I still liked it a lot for its fast-paced narrative and a decent ratio of pages to corpses.

I'd known Anthony Boucher only by name before reading On A Day Unknown, but this will soon change. Brilliant stuff, although I must admit that my knee-jerk reaction after reading a couple of pages was, "For fuck's sake, not one of those". British (!) true-crime (!!) police procedural (!!!) - "The case was a splendid challenge to a pathologist."

But soon, my dismay turned into curiosity, and by the fifth page, I was enjoying this immensely. It's a tender and tragic love story of two lost souls in England during the war years. The Canadian Indian soldier and a local British girl: 

"At first," said Sangret, "when I slept with Joan I used to have connexions with her sometimes two or three times a night and later on sometimes not at all." They had reached a state of intense need to be with each other even in the absence of sexual hunger - which may be one definition of love.

And you can imagine what the connextions are, don't you? If not, this will clarify things:

We started kissing and cuddling and I asked her if she would 'go with me.' I mean by this that I wanted to have connexions with her. She did not refuse in any way and I had connexions with her. I did not use a French letter and I just did it the natural way.

(Throughout, both in his long statement to the police and later on the witness stand, connexions is the normally monosyllabic Sangret's only word for sexual intercourse. One imagines that it was suggested by a police stenographer.)

There's not a single line of dialogue! The whole thing is presented as court transcripts compiled from various testimonies, complemented by the narrator's witty comments and observations (he was, however, totally and literally illiterate). Very original and very funny but also sad and poignant

The next one is Fletcher Flora. I liked his story As I Lie Dead from Masters of Noir #1, but have since read a couple of his other things and wasn't very impressed. And after It was All the Girl had to Live For Now - Somebody Else's Death, I'm even less impressed. Apart from its cool title, this is totally forgettable. Probably something Mr Fletcher put together quickly to cover his rent:

A hitman (of sorts) shoots a politician during the rally because the guy has ruined his girlfriend's father. It then finishes with some wisdom about the revenge not solving anything, and "he understood with silent and assured despair that he had killed two people from the window upstairs".

Richard S. Prather's Film Strip was no disappointment because I knew what to expect. I just cannot get into his Shell Scott. His brand of cosy crime, mixed with a hard-boiled style, doesn't work for me, and I find its juvenile humour silly, sometimes idiotic, and even offensive. A teenager could call his girlfriend "my dear little imbecile", and maybe some of his friends would find it funny and laugh at it. But coming from a grown-up with white hair?

It begins with the "little imbecile" performing a private striptease for Shell on the beach while there's a murder in progress on a nearby cliff. It will also end the same way because the ridiculous plan to trap the murderer will go wrong. Shell is cornered by the killer in an empty movie theatre, and our exhibitionist cannot think of a better way to distract him so that Shell can take him over. Enough said...

Helen Nielsen's Confession plunges the reader into the midst of an angry mob about to lynch a couple of kids accused of hit and run. They break down under pressure, and the boy signs the confession. During this riot, we get the complete picture of what had happened in flashbacks. Well written, tight, and tense. Works well on both narrative and emotional levels. But the happy ending and simplistic morality message spoiled it for me a bit. I think the girl's "betrayal" would be more effective (and shocking?) if the couple were older people, rather than teenage kids eloping to Vegas to get married.

Hard Sell from Craig Rice is great. Fuck Shell Scott, this is the kind of humour that I like:

He found himself looking at a large man with iron-gray hair, blue eyes, and a prominent chin. The man looked so healthy that Malone wanted to turn away again.

Or, if you're not convinced, this (note that von Flanagan is a cop!):

Malone agreed. "You don't seem to be taking much of an interest in this one. Something wrong?"
"Plenty," von Flanagan said. "For one thing, it's an impossible one to solve. For another, I don't want to solve it"
"Why not?"
Von Flanagan shook his head wearily. "Malone" he said, "have you ever had a run-in with a magazine salesman? Have you ever had one of those little monsters stick his foot in your door and tell you how much you needed his rotten magazines? Have you, Malone?"
Malone nodded.
"They should kill every last one of them," von Flanagan said. "I mean it, Malone. Anybody kills a magazine salesman he deserves a medal."

Great stuff. Outrageous! One cannot but like the main protagonist Malone "the little lawyer" and admire his efficiency as he solves this one by mainly drinking at the bar and making some phone calls along the way.

With two double ryes under his belt and a pair of beer chasers keeping them company, Malone felt in condition to use the phone. 

Admittedly, the "suicide" solution is a bit bonkers, and I'm not sure I really got it, but I don't care. Like Mr Boucher, Mr Rice is another one on my radar now.

Moving on. Before the main feature, there's a cool intermezzo. A "special report" on the history of forgery and counterfeit titled Reasonable Fascimile, written by Rex Lardner. Educational, I guess, but foremost funny. Quite a tongue-in-cheek stuff like this:

The earliest counterfeiters, who clipped coins and made new ones from the shavings, had their ears
clipped when caught. King Canute decreed that their hands should be cut off. The Romans deprived counterfeiters of their citizenship and then removed their ears and noses. Later, these steps not considered sufficiently discouraging, their ears, noses, hands, and feet were cut off and what was left was served to hungry lions. One presumes they were hungry.

It concludes on a resigned note that a significant amount of counterfeit merchandise is being sold these days, but little can be done to prevent this. It kind of makes you long for the days of good old King Canute.

McBain's 87th Precinct novelette The Empty Hours is the central part of this digest. I won't spend much time on it because I don't want to repeat myself when it comes to this series. It is paradoxical that the police procedural methods hinder the story and make it less plausible.

For example, as we are approaching the end, cops are still (a week or so after the crime), for some reason, interrogating the victims' neighbours and informers even though they have plenty of hard evidence and other leads to pursue. And, btw, there's a description of a line-up that is more or less copy/paste-ed from Cop Hater. Similarly, they also find the solution by fluke here.

The last story is Richard Matheson's chilling The Faces. A little psychological gem about the abuse and mental illness that (I believe) says that some people simply shouldn't have kids.

An excellent choice to conclude this intriguing collection with a hint of horror.

4.5/5

Facts:

Dames:

From Midnight Blue:
She had on a plain white blouse, which was full of her.

From the Empty Hours:

She moved with an expert femininity, a calculated unconscious fluidity of flesh that suggested availability and yet was totally respectable. She seemed to have devoted a lifetime to learning the ways and wiles of the female and now practiced them with facility and charm. 

Body count:

3 + 2 + 1 (discounting of course the spiritual dead) + 1 + 1 + 3 + 0 (discounting the counterfeiters devoured by hungry lions) + 2 + 1 = 14

References:

"On A Day Unknown" retells the story of Georg Büchner's Woyzcek (so now we also know from where the Boucher pseudonym originates). But even though I've seen Herzog's film, I must admit I didn't make the connection until this play is explicitly mentioned at the end. 

Cover:
Pretty cool. It could be portraiting a scene from either The Empty Hours or Film Strip. However, since none of the tough guys have white hair, I would lean more toward the latter.

Cool lines:
From Midnight Blue:

She touched her thin breast absently, pathetically, as if perhaps she hadn't been much needed in the past.

Cop Hater (Ed McBain, 1956)

I have read a few of McBain's books in the last couple of years and was saving this one for a special occasion. After all, it is the very first of the 87th precinct series that would go on and run for an incredible half a century, which - I guess - would make Cop Hater the mother of modern police procedurals. So, after reading Never Kill a Cop, I decided to stick with the cop-killing theme and finally picked up this one.

Despite its overly poetic tone (...dazzling galaxy of brilliant suns...) I was hooked after about 30 pages. Written exceptionally well in the flat, matter-of-fact narrative that manages to elegantly mix the intimate family parts with very gritty and realistic stuff about the police investigation mechanics. To take the latter to an extreme, several official forms are pasted into the text (see the "Bad Guy" section of the facts below).

After some initial dismay, I wasn't too bothered by them and actually found them amusing and took the time to read them instead of simply glancing over them. And I'm proud to report that I discovered an error in one: on the autopsy report, it's not explicitly stated that the measured height is actually the height of a skull. Hence, it reads like the victim was 28.9 centimetres tall (or short). Check it out yourself:

Btw - what the hell is chronological age? Or, re-phrasing it - what would be a non-chronological age?

The best part of these technicalities comes early when the team needs to create a cast of the shoe heel left imprinted in dog shit (!!). If you ever find yourself in such a predicament, here's a formula you should use.

So, yeah - it's cool, and we have a bit of everything here. Ballistics, various reports, autopsies, interviews, the line-up, and stool pigeons. Or, I should say, THE stool pigeon:

Danny Gimp is by far the best character in this one. The entire dialogue of the cops buying information from him (needless to say, taking place in a dingy bar, a.k.a. his office) is written in slang and is such a joy to read. It's about three pages long, so I have no intention of typing it here in its entirety. But it deserves at least its conclusion:

"I don't trust junkies," Bush said.
"Neither do I," Danny answered. "But this guy ain't a killer, take it from me. He don't even know how to kill time."[The Coolest!]

But I'm going too fast. Unfortunately, before I reached that part, I kind of lost interest. It simply gets bogged down too much. While I can understand the involvement of "the cynical newshawk" reporter Savage (to be honest, he actually contributes to the story development), I found that whole segment about juvenile delinquents' gang redundant and pretty silly. It just took away the momentum.

What finally spoiled it for me was the ending that felt like something hastily patched together, with the "twist" that you could see way ahead. I bet that all the police procedural fans out there felt cheated as hell with such a climax in which police work doesn't really mean shit, and the case break-through is so far-fetched. Furthermore, it felt like the author himself lost interest because (for example), towards the end, he still found time to fill two whole pages with Steve and his fiance being in a Chinese restaurant deciding on dishes they were about to order and decrypting fortune cookies...

Undeniably, this is good stuff, but it's just not my cup of tea. One of those in which the total sum of its parts amounts to much less than it should. It feels like the author put all his effort into research and his skills into creating the atmosphere but neglected the story itself. Especially the ending sucks.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
An ensemble cast, but Steve Carella is our main guy:

He was a big man, but not a heavy one. He gave an impression of great power, but the power was not a meaty one. It was, instead, a fine-honed muscular power.

It's worth mentioning that he is partnered with Hank Bush in this one, and not yet with Bert Kling. But - spoiler ahead! - he will need a new partner once the case of the cop hater is resolved.

The bad guy(s):
Check out Dizzy's record on your left. Do you think he could be our titular cop hater?

Dames:
There's Steve's fiance Terry and several soon-to-be cop widows like Alice (dynamic blonde with a magnificent figure) and May (full-breasted woman in her thirties...with good legs, very white, and a good body... who could get drunk sniffing the vermouth cork before it was passed over a martini)

And let's not forget about the prostitute La Flamenca:

"And La Flamenca?"
"She's with him, probably cleaned out his wallet by this time. She's a big red-headed job with two gold teeth in the front of her mouth, damn near blind you with them teeth of hers. She's got mean hips, a big job, real big. Don't get rough with her, less she swallow you up in one gobble."

Nice! This girl should have been a part of John Waters' Dreamlanders misfits. What a great pair she would have made with Edith Massey.

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:
3 dead cops and 2 persons on death row, so it's safe to sum it up to 5.

There's also one unrelated death in an episode in which a housewife snaps and kills her asshole husband with a hatchet! This sad (and funny?) story is definitely one of the novel's high points and a great example of McBain's brilliant writing.

Blackouts:
none

References:
There's a reference to Joyce's Ulysses, but its inclusion seemed forced. Never read it but would still somehow agree with "Christ, that had been one hell of a book to get through."

Plus, when some suspect gets interrogated, he establishes his alibi by watching the following movies in the local cinema: The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Body and Soul, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Violent Saturday.

And what an incredible coincidence this was, because I had seen Body and Soul just the night before reading this! And a terrific movie it is. Hazel Brooks is great, even though her role is pretty minor.

Title: 

Somebody is killing cops, so police assume they are dealing with the cop hater.

Dedicated to:
This is for Dodie and Ray

Edition:
Permabooks M-3037, 2dn printing - April 1956

Cover:
Instead of the usual illustration, this one is a collage of photographs by Daniel Rubin. And it makes sense since they were going for realism so hard.

Cool lines:

"We didn't mean to disturb your beauty sleep," Bush said nastily.
The girl raised one eyebrow. Then why did you" She blew out a cloud of smoke, the way she had seen movie sirens do.

"Do I detect sarcasm in your voice, Lieutenant?" Savage asked.
"Sarcasm is a weapon of the intellectual, Savage. Everybody, especially your newspaper, knows that cops are just stupid, plodding beasts of burden."

Masters of Noir - Volume 1 (1953-1959, published in 2010)

A great collection that starts slowly but gets better with each story.

Identity Unknown (Jonathan Craig, first published in Manhunt, August 1954)

Nice police procedural. All it takes for our detective is a pair of the victim's expensive shoes to establish her identity and, consequently, her killer. I liked its sharp style. There is no need for (too much) drama and emotions in a short story, right?

The Girl behind the Hedge (Mickey Spillane, first published in Manhunt, October 1953)

It seems like a logical decision for the editors of this compilation to shift gears with Spillane to follow up on the fairly plain opening story. You know - throw in a bit of sex and violence. No, sir.

I don't like writing this, and it's slowly beginning to look like I have something against good old Mickey, but this one is truly horrible. Instead of private eyes, cops, gangsters, dolls etc., we have a moral story about a couple of Wall Street brokers. One is good (?), and the other (surprise, surprise) is not so good. A real asshole, in fact, who some time ago stole the good one's fiancé. Hence, the poor sucker masterminded a diabolical revenge plan by making the asshole desperately fall in love with a mentally disabled girl and kill himself upon realising this.

And yes, that's it. Does it ring a bell? I forgot most about the classical adventures I read back in my primary school days, but this resembles one of those Count of Monte Cristo romantic revenge plots. I hope this is the case and that Spillane was fooling around and/or paying homage to some old master. But at least he stayed the classical Spillane as we know - one of his two protagonists calls this unfortunate girl a "hopeless imbecile". Fucking hell, what was this guy's problem??

Carrera's Woman (Ed McBain writing as Richard Marsten, first published in Manhunt, February 1953)

More like a Western, but still pretty cool. A bad guy vs. a good guy, and a woman playing a cat-and-mouse game in the scorching Mexican sun. Memorable for avoiding the obvious twist at the end.

Butcher (Richard S. Prather, first published in Manhunt, June 1954)

Can a good serial killer hunt story be squeezed into a short story? Probably not. But can a mediocre serial killer hunt story full of incredible coincidences be squeezed into a short story? Yes, definitely - this one is living proof. It's not all bad, and there are some okay moments and a decent twist at the end. Also good to see Shell Scott being a tough guy and not just some douchebag babbling about women.

Look Death in the Eye (Lawrence Block, first published in Saturn Web Detective Story Magazine, April 1959)

Another serial killer story! And it took exactly ten minutes to answer the above question and reject my hypothesis. Yes, writing a compelling short story about a serial killer is definitely possible. Although this one is not about the hunt, it is about the hunter instead.

It's Lawrence Block doing his Jill Emerson-ish erotic thing. But this time I was prepared and knew what to expect... and surprisingly I liked it. Liked it a lot, to be honest. Hot, a bit crazy, and also a little nasty! His recent one, The Girl with the deep Blue Eyes is now on my to-do list.

On a Sunday Afternoon (Gil Brewer, first published in Manhunt, January 1957)

A sexually repressed wife and her cowardly (impotent?) husband go to a family picnic after the Sunday mass, where they are attacked by a gang of juvenile delinquents. Cool stuff by the master.

Frame (Frank Kane, first published in Manhunt, December 1954)

Now we are getting somewhere! This one is a proper P.I. mystery with mobsters, dames, stolen loot, and even a decent body count. Great story, too. It kept me guessing right until the end.

Double (Bruno Fischer, first published in Manhunt, June 1954)

My favourite one in the collection. The bitter and woman-hating cop is fixated on the idea that the killer is his cheating ex-wife lookalike. Savage stuff, my only minor complaint would be that the apologies at the end are needless!

As I Lie Dead (Fletcher Flora, first published in Manhunt, February 1953)

It's hot, and two young lovers sit by the lake. She's dreaming about Acapulco, but his mind is elsewhere:

I saw that Grandfather had reached the raft. He was sitting on the far side, his back to us, legs dangling in the water. He’d made it out there in good time. For an old man, damn good time. He was strong, in spite of his fat belly. It didn’t look like he was ever going to die.

Guess what happens next?  You are right - grandfather won't be swimming much in the future. But that is just the beginning of the story. There will be blackmail, and murder, and betrayal. Excellent stuff, a bit depressing, but a great choice for a closing story.

3.5/5

Facts:

Body count: 

1 + 1 (added reluctantly since Wall Street yuppies shouldn't really count, right?) + 1 + 1 with at least 3 victims + 1 with a bunch of other victims (unfortunately, those eyeballs count is not specified) + 0 + 3 + 2 + 4 = 17

Dames:
Linda from "Carrera's Woman" is pretty cool (or should I say hot?):

There was sweetness in her kiss, and an undercurrent of danger, a pulsing emotion that knifed through me like an electric shock. She pressed against me, and her body was soft and womanly, and I forgot the marks of her nails on my arms and face, forgot that she could be as deadly as a grizzly. She was a kitten now, soft and caressing, and her breath was in my ears, and the movement of her body was quick and urgent. I lifted her, the .45 still in my hand, and carried her to the deep shadows of the rocks.

And cousin Cindy from "As I Lie Dead":

She was gold all over in the various shades that gold can take. Even her brown eyes, behind dark glass in white harlequin frames, were flecked with gold.

Edition: eBook

Cool lines: 

From "Carrera's Woman":

I hesitated before answering. “Ten G’s is a lot of money, baby.”
“I’m a lot of woman,” she answered.[Fatale]

From "Frame:

He debated the advisability of walking around back, decided to knock.

He slammed his fist against the big man’s mouth. There was the sound of crunching teeth. The big man went staggering backward and fell across a table.
“You won’t be needing teeth where you’re going.”

From "Double":

I growled, “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Shouldn’t I?” She got off the chaise longue and ran her hands sensuously over her half-naked body. “Look at me, Gus. Don’t you think I have a right to flatter myself?[Fatale]

From "As I Lie Dead":

I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him, and then I saw what I’d been living to see. I saw the smooth assurance go sick in his eyes and fear come flooding in. When I’d seen that, I’d had everything from him I’d ever want, so I shot him. I shot him where I hated him most. Right in his pretty face. 

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll go away together, honey. I’ve got our tickets right here in the gun. One way and a long way.”[The Coolest!]

Cut Me In aka The Proposition (Hunt Collins aka Ed McBain, 1954)

Routine stuff, I don't have much to write about. I don't know whether it qualifies as a 'proper' mystery novel. I mean, it does have all the required ingredients, like corpses, beautiful women, cops, and a showbiz background, etc., but our hero is more or less completely oblivious to all this. Josh Blake has lost an ultra-lucrative contract that would launch him and his publishing company into the big time, and now his sole interest is in getting the damn paperback.

It does start a bit more promising. We find our hero hungover in the opening scene and just waking up next to a beautiful girl. One night stand it was, and he cannot even remember her name. A bit predictable but still cool, as this can mean nothing else but that sooner or later, he will need her to confirm his alibi for the last night. The next scene is a nice nod to the Maltese Falcon - Blake's partner was killed, and now his freshly widowed wife tries to seduce Blake. But he doesn't care much about Gilbert's demise or his horny wife. So, everything is set for an "innocent man without an alibi on the run" type of story... which, unfortunately, never materialises.

Instead, it turns into a very simplistic and rather dull affair that loses its suspense with every chapter you read. I would say that the most ridiculous one is the 9th, in which Blake gets abducted by two thugs. But don't expect some hard-boiled beatings and/or interrogations and/or spectacular shootout escape because our trio soon starts drinking and playing cards!

With lots of dialogue, simple language, a flat storyline and some sexy bits thrown in for good measure, it at least isn't boring. A quick read, but unfortunately, I didn't particularly enjoy this one. McBain or no McBain...

2.5/5
(like for So Nude, So Dead, I'm adding an extra half point for the included excellent short story Now Die In It)

Facts:

Hero: 
Josh Blake, a surviving half of the Gilbert & Blake literary agency

Location:
New York

Body count: 3

Dames: 
A bunch of them: Lydia the secretary ("a shrewd, talented bitch"), Mr Becker's secretary (with just a single appearance and without any role whatsoever but still "one of the most thriving creatures I had ever seen") and of course "cleanly built, with full, flowing curves" Cal Stewart.

Shrewd, thriving, cleanly built???

The object of desire:  
Don't misunderstand me. I wasn't playing cop. I'd never played cop in my life, and I certainly wasn't starting now. I was, I suppose, primarily interested in the deal, and what the murders could do to kill the deal. 

Blackouts: 
My cheek exploded in a yellow burst of pain, and then little yellow bubbles drifted across the top of my skull, turned to purple, brown, black. They all flooded together, like black pebbles being sucked down a drain, and the blackness swirled faster and faster until my consciousness went down the drain with the pebbles.

Hardly surprisingly, he loses consciousness again after drinking a shitload of vodka and gin. But what is weird and doesn't exactly make sense is that less than two hours later, he manages not only to wake up but also to drive to Miss Stewart's house, where they have sex. Strange brand of Vodka indeed...
 

Title: 
I'm unsure how to interpret either the original or the revised one. In both cases, it has something to do with that copyright contract. Were those TV rights proposed to Blake? Was he cut in on the deal? Does it even matter?

Edition:  
Hard Case Crime #122

Cover: 
By McGinnis, one of his trademark long-legged beauties. With a little exception... why the sore knees?

Cool lines:

/

So Nude, So Dead aka The Evil Sleep! (Ed McBain, 1952)

Wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time mystery. Of the amnesiac-awakened-by-the-corpse sub-genre. With a touch of a particular flavour because our hero is a junkie in this one. Which is cool - I prefer that the leading character in this average-guy-turns-amateur-detective type be some sort of societal reject rather than the usual doctor, schoolteacher, priest, etc.

It works well for a while. But then it slowly drifts into unreal or even surreal. Stuff like our poor Ray being totally strung out on heroin, disguising himself by painting his hair with shoe polish (!?) and then impersonating a police inspector (he is only 26 btw) to interrogate the husband of a woman he's wanted for the murder of. Sure enough, his pathetic "cover" gets blown, but that doesn't discourage him. He goes straight to the club where he picked up the victim the night before and starts interviewing the barman. In the middle of this charade, a beautiful woman approaches him and takes him to her luxurious home, where she tries to seduce him. Eventually (pretty soon, in fact), she will fuck him, but you could see the final 'surprise' twist miles away, couldn't you?

There's more of such stuff, and it's pointless to go through the entire list. Let's just say it culminates on the third day of his cold turkey. Instead of banging his head against the wall of some cheap Harlem hotel and slicing himself with razors, Rey is still vital enough to escape from cops by running eleven floors up the staircase (beating and disarming one cop in the process) and then jumping to several rooftops to complete his escape.

During all this time, his investigation doesn't progress much, and he resignedly concludes towards the end that:

"It's one hell of a rat race, " he went on. "There are so many loose ends, so many blind alleys. I keep asking people questions, but I'm not sure I'm asking the right ones - and I'm not sure the answers mean anything. All I know is that I've got to find the real answer before it's too late."

So the whole thing is a bit amateurish. However, it also has some nice touches. I liked the idea of running against the clock, which is simply trying to stay sane without a fix in Ray's case. And his character is superbly developed. At first, I found flashbacks to his past distracting, but they don't really slow down the pace. And they do help us understand our hero and make him human, so we don't judge him too hard and simply feel sorry for him. For fuck's sake, in a city as huge as New York, he doesn't have a single friend (not even among junkies), and he calls his father when he gets into this mess.

The plot is okay, and its development becomes quite enjoyable once you stop paying too much attention to the story holes (like where are the cops?!?), loose ends and coincidences. The final whodunit is decent, although far from shocking. All in all, it's good, honest and unpretentious writing without moralising or preaching on the complex subject of drug addiction. I imagine it was pretty ground-breaking 60 years ago.

3.5/5 (adding an extra half point for the included excellent short story Die Hard)

Facts:

Hero: 
Ray Stone - ex-pianist, these days a heroin addict

Location: 
New York

Body count:  

2

The second one is pretty funny:

There was a neat little hole right between his eyes, and it dribbled blood down along the side of his nose and over his mouth.
Ray stared at the drummer.
"Massine? Mass-"
He was dead.

Well, people with little holes between their eyes tend to be dead. Elementary, Watson...

Object of desire: 
The answer seemed logical and simple to him: find that bastard. Find him, and the pressure would be off. The cops would have a new sucker to toy with. And then Ray Stone could contact Louie or any other damned pusher in the city.
 

Dames: 
Besides Eileen (lady on the cover), there is Barbara 'Barbs' Cole - "The warmest pair of brown eyes he'd ever seen" and (unfortunately, too) briefly Chinese/Irish cutie Rusty O'Donnell ("They bill her as an artistic dancer. That means strip artist in English.")

Blackouts: 
Yes, he blacks out during the beatings that bad guys give him:

His eyes opened as he saw the gun butt reaching out for him. There was an explosion alongside his left ear, a fiery display of screaming stars. He struggled to keep his head up, felt the next solid blow crush into the base of his skull. He stopped struggling then.
 

Title: 
Pretty cool sounding, but not very profound - Eileen was simply nude when he found her dead. But I think it's still better than the original The Evil Sleep.

Edition:  
Hard Case Crime #120, July 2015

Cover: 
Love it! I think it's so good it qualifies for a painting and not "just" an illustration. Great perspective from above, and the light bulb (although it could be placed a bit over to the left) casts cool shadows and creates nice shades of red and scarlet. Very noir-ish, very stylish.  But not 100% accurate - the murdered girl is blonde, her arm is supposed to have lots of needle marks, and there should be two bullet holes in her belly.

By Gregory Manchess. Who, btw, ought to do some work on his website.

Notable cover blurbs: 
New York Times Book Review blabs the usual nonsense but finishes really cool: "Ed McBain owns this turf."
  

Cool lines:  
Can't think of any really memorable in So Nude, So Dead, but I found this one from Die Hard pretty funny:

"Give me the police."
"Do you wish to report a crime?"
"No, a strawberry festival."
"What?"
"For Pete's sake, get me the police." [The Coolest!]

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.

Vanishing Ladies (Ed McBain,1957)

I was never really a big fan of McBain, but I had read recently The Gutter and the Grave and really liked it. So I was hoping for some more of that and gave a try to Vanishing Ladies that I’ve found second-hand in a local bookstore for a couple of Euros. Must admit that it being pretty short and not taking place in that damn 87^th Precinct also helped to decide a bit.

And I wasn’t lucky this time, unfortunately, because it is just an average mystery not worthy of a great master’s signature. It feels like he did it quickly for fun or maybe in an urge to fulfil some contract or shit like that.

Plot is somehow a familiar Frantic variation. There’s a couple on their vacation visiting an unfamiliar location/environment, and she gets abducted while everyone surrounding her, confused hubby, pretends she didn’t exist in the first place. In this case, our unfortunate hero is a tough NYC policeman, which makes his confusion and lack of ability to control the situation even worse. The plot soon thickens, of course. There’s a mysterious prostitute, corrupted police, a dodgy brothel at the town’s outskirts, our hero gets help from his cop friends, and also another sidekick, and we naturally get some corpses.

It sounds better than it actually is. The major problem I had was that it didn’t really hold water. Without giving away too much, let’s just say – in economic jargon - that reasons for all the committed crimes and efforts for covering them simply don’t outweigh their potential financial gains. Maybe it the whole setup would be staged in the big city and would be controlled by some almighty mafia I would find it believable.

Also didn’t like the narration. The whole story is told in a flashback as a court testimony, which is just ridiculous when you think about it. Maybe McBain considered this approach inspiring or tried to add a new touch to the classical detective first-person telling style, but it just doesn’t work. There are too many dialogues (and good ones, it needs to be said!) and personal observations to make it consistent and narration fluid. Plus, there’s another testimony in the middle of the book from the hero’s cop friend, and it just adds to the overall confusion. 

So it’s not bad, but also not very good. Will give good old Ed a few more chances for sure.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
NYC policeman on vacation, Phillip Colby. For several chapters, his role as a narrator is taken over by his friend, cop Anthony Mitchell, so I guess it has two heroes.

Location: 
Sullivan’s Corner near Davistown, 4 hours of driving from NYC. Place that “did not laugh very much.” Present time, which would be late 50s

Body count: 
The victim, her lover and her pimp’s helper. Added bonus is a couple of wounded cops.

Dames: 
His girlfriend/fiancée Ann and hooker Lois are pivotal for the story, but we never really get to meet them. There’s also hooker Blanche and her madam, Stephanie.

Cover: 
My edition was published in 1982 by Penguin, and the cover is totally 80-ish. The upper third is occupied with the author’s name along with the title (name having a larger font than the title) and a smaller tagline, and below is a photograph of a beautiful, half-naked woman. But it is accurate because there is a moment in the book when he walks into his room and a redheaded prostitute dressed in pink underwear is lying on his bed.

Blackouts: 
I felt like a private eye. Only private eyes get hit on the head. 

Cool lines:
“The minute that hits the floor, I dial the local cops,” I said.

The dress hit the floor, and she stepped out of it, grinning. “Ain’t no phone,” she told me.