The book jumps between two unconnected murders. First, Annie Boone was gunned down while working the counter at a liqueur store. The detectives of the Eight-Seven track down and interview many of her friends, relatives, her ex-husband, and her six-year-old daughter. These many shades of Annie: an intellectual, a dunce, a loving wife, a homewrecker, a lush, a fun social-drinker, a polite and proper girlfriend, a loose and adulterous woman. As the investigation drags on, detectives Meyer Meyer and...

I'm pleased to have found McBain's 87th Precinct series for a number of reasons. Reading these books is like a breath of fresh air in between some of the other heavier books in the genre. McBain keeps things simple though not simplistic, down-to-earth, and with only enough details to give the reader a good picture of what's going on.His use of humor in the detectives' interactions with one another also lends itself to lightening up the atmosphere just enough to make it pleasurable.Sometimes when...

This early Ed McBain 87th Precinct entry from 1957 is a fast-flowing, incredibly intriguing read. Fans of the series get to follow Carella, Kling, Meyer Meyer and the boys around fictional Isola — which mirrored New York City — on two distinct cases. The first involves the death of a not-well-liked brother-in-arms who has been shot and killed. While none of the detectives were fond of the slain officer or his heavy-handed approach to policing, all of them understood why he’d adopted those tactic...

This is the book in which Ed McBain adds Cotton Hawes to the cast of detectives who populate the 87th Precinct. As Hawes comes on board, a young woman named Annie Boone is shot and killed while working as a clerk in a liquor store. The store is then totally trashed and the owner seems more concerned about the damage to his stock than the death of his employee.Annie, a divorced mother of a young daughter, seems to be something of a chameleon. Virtually everyone that the detectives interview has a...

And so I continue with my reading in order of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. I've barely started. This is the fifth of the books in the series which stretches all the way from the 1950s to 2005 and numbers more than fifty. At this point, I'm still in the 1950s and these early books now qualify as historical mysteries.I continue to be struck by McBain's crisp, to-the-point, just-the-facts prose and just how much information and atmosphere he's able to convey with only a few choice, spare words...

Book #5. The introduction to this one was particularly interesting. It opens a small window into what was the world of he pulp writer and the way the publishers used to thinkThe book itself is good, not too long and with a decent story at its core but there were a couple of moments where I disengaged. It may have been the author trying out new styles but suddenly mid book there was comment in the narration as to why an action was a mistake. I was not so keen on that as for a moment my disbelief

It might not be the best of the 87-th precinct novels, but the dialog is snappy, plot is enjoyable, and the atmosphere of the city of Isola (New York in disguise) is strongly felt.

Death knocked a man down. Death stole a man's dignity. A dead man didn't care whether or not his hair was parted. A dead girl didn't worry about whether or not her slip was showing. The postures of death managed to simplify a human being to an angular mound of fleshy rubble. And so looking at what had once been a woman - a woman who smiled prettily, and kissed her lover, and adjusted her stockings, and applied lipstick with utmost feminine care - looking at what had once been warm and alive, Car...

COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime BOOK 172 (of 250)So far, this series brings to me quick breaks between the heavier, darker novelists.HOOK - 4 stars: "The liquor store reeked," opens the book. A woman is on the floor, dead, surrounded by liquor and broken bottles. McBain places us immediately in the crime and to me, that's a very good hook.PACE - 2: This story is more of a novella, stretched out with padded, circular conversations. PLOT - 3: I thought the murderer obvious. This i...

Weakest of the 87th Precinct books to date. Murder of a young girl and then the death of one of thier own. Very readable but entirely predictable.

Another good read by Ed McBain. It's got two investigations going simultaneously, as is usual. One the murder of a liquor store manager who seems like a different person to everyone the detectives interview, the other the murder of one of their own.McBain's writing is crisp and to the point. The dialog is excellent and the characters are fleshed out nicely, especially so over the course of multiple books.I was disappointed not to get to the bottom of vic#1's multiple personalities and I thought

Published in '57, this crime procedural follows the investigation of a young woman's murder. The victim worked in a liquor store, and everyone the police interview paint a different picture of Annie. We struggle to find if she is bright, or a party girl, a drunkard, or sober. The suspects include her liquor store boss, his wife, Annie's ex, and her current and former boyfriends.Series favorite Steve Carella, along with Meyer Meyer, and newly engaged cop Bert Kling have a new addition to their pr...

finished this one this morning, 5:27 a.m. if it matters and it doesn't. i really liked it. 4-stars.

Cotton Hawes is introduced in this solid 87th Precinct novel. He begins as a rather arrogant, self-satisfied screw-up. Enjoy finding out how this happens and if/how he redeems himself.

Another good quick read in this good detective series.

Before The Bill there was Z Cars, and before Z Cars there was Dixon of Dock Green. Across the Atlantic, before The Wire there was the still-missed Hill Street Blues, and before Hill Street Blues there was Ed McBain's 87th Precinct, print rather than pixels but the genealogy was the same. If it is still something of a shock to discover that Killer's Choice, the fifth in the 87th Precinct series, was first published more than fifty years ago, there are clues. Not least when a young woman is innoce...

This was my favorite one so far. We get introduced to the new 'hero' Cotton Hawes, but even better than that is the introduction where the author explains WHY we get him. Then, there's the end, where one of the detectives tells us with a HUGE wink to the reader... 'George the Wino, he's the real hero'. Fantastic! I'm not usually a meta sort of guy, but McBain's intros (written long after the fact, and I'm sure subject to some entertaining revisionism) are just as good as the novels.The plot for

Killer's Choice has a couple of notable landmarks which include the last appearance by hard-as-nails cop, Detective Roger Havilland. He's found in the broken remains of a grocery store window after an apparent hold-up, fatally injured by a shard of glass. Steve Carella follows a lead to track down the killer but is joined by the newly transferred Cotton Hawes. Carella soon discovers that Hawes is having trouble adapting from the more genteel surroundings of his previous posting compared to the m...

I’m getting used to McBain’s plot structures. Long, peripherally important scenes feature suspects, witnesses, spouses. We never get too much of any one character or even of the regular cast. When the regulars appear, its usually for something important. So we have two crimes being solved in one novel, with the regulars interweaving in the solving process, but with other characters in supporting roles, in subplots that keep the dynamics of the novel moving all the time.

I love the boys of the 87th, and I love that Ed McBain wrote 50+ books about those men. I've read them out of order, so "Killer's Choice" was great fun to read because I finally got to see how Cotton Hawes (my favorite of the supporting detectives) joined the squad. The answer? Not in the classiest way. Cotton was kind of stuck up, and you know what? I enjoyed that greatly. McBain didn't do piles of character development, but he knew when to do enough, and by starting out Cotton as a bit snobbis...