Books by Ed McBain
Nocturne: A Novel of the 87th Precinct
by Ed McBain
In Isola, the hours between midnight and dawn are usually a quiet time. But for the 87th Precinct detectives Carella and Hawes, the murder of an old woman makes the wee hours anything but peaceful--especially when they learn she was one of the greatest concert pianists of the century long vanished. Meanwhile 88th Precinct cop Fat Ollie Weeks has his own early morning nightmare: he's on the trail of three prep school boys and a crack dealer who spent the evening carving up a hooker.
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Lullaby
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of the New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club, a cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times.
"A harrowing and hilarious glimpse into the future of civilization.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Ever heard of a culling song? It’s a lullaby sung in Africa to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of a culling song kill, whether spoken or even just thought. You can find one on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World, an anthology that is sitting on the shelves of libraries across the country, waiting to be picked up by unsuspecting readers.
Reporter Carl Streator discovers the song’s lethal nature while researching Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and before he knows it, he’s reciting the poem to anyone who bothers him. As the body count rises, Streator glimpses the potential catastrophe if someone truly malicious finds out about the song. The only answer is to find and destroy every copy of the book in the country. Accompanied by a shady real-estate agent, her Wiccan assistant, and the assistant’s truly annoying ecoterrorist boyfriend, Streator begins a desperate cross-country quest to put the culling song to rest.
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Lullaby
The squadroom at 5:15 on New Year's morning looked much as it did on any other day...
But an exceptionally heinous crime was already sending a wave of outrage through even the veteran cops of the 87th Precinct: a wealthy couple, returning home from New Year's festivities, discovered their baby -- and the infant's teenage sitter -- murdered. Parents themselves, detectives Carella and Meyer resolve to bring in the perpetrator at any cost. Meanwhile, gang warfare is overtaking the city's streets, threatening its very foundation. A sinister song of death and destruction echoes through the 87th, and it isn't "Auld Lang Syne."
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Hark!: A Novel of the 87th Precinct (87th Precinct Mysteries (Paperback))
by Ed McBain
I'm a Fathead, Men!
I Am the Deaf Man!
Unscrambling the cryptic messages -- anagrams, Detective Carella called them -- delivered to the 87th Precinct confirmed that the master criminal who has eluded them time and again is not only alive and well, but may or may not be behind a deadly revenge shooting. For that matter, the Deaf Man may or may not be deaf. But he's getting through loud and clear with clues drawn from Shakespeare's works -- taunting hints and maddening riddles pointing to his next plan of attack. It doesn't take a literary scholar to know there's no room for misinterpretation. For when the Deaf Man talks, everybody listens...or somebody gets hurt.
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Fiddlers: A Novel of the 87TH Precinct
by Ed McBain
A New York Times Bestseller
Ed McBain's latest installment in the 87th Precinct series finds Detective Steve Carella and his colleagues stumped by a serial killer who doesn't fit the profile. The seemingly random targets are shot twice in the face. But most serial killers don't use guns. Most serial killers don't strike five times in two weeks. And most serial killers' prey share something more than being over fifty years of age.
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The Gutter And the Grave
by Ed McBain
Drowning his sorrows of the past in cheap alcohol, former detective-turned-Bowery bum Matt Cordell finds himself back on the job when he is asked to investigate a double murder involving an old enemy. Reprint.
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The Gutter And the Grave
by Ed McBain
Detective Matt Cordell was happily married once, and gainfully employed, and sober. But that was before he caught his wife cheating on him with one of his operatives and took it out on the man with the butt end of a .45.
Now Matt makes his home on the streets of New York and his only companions are the city’s bartenders. But trouble still knows how to find him, and when Johnny Bridges shows up from the old neighborhood, begging for Matt’s help, Cordell finds himself drawn into a case full of beautiful women and bloody murder. It’s just like the old days – only this time, when the beatings come, he may wind up on the receiving end...
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Learning to Kill: Stories
by Ed McBain
Ed McBain made his debut in 1956. In 2004, more than a hundred books later, he personally collected twenty-five of his stories written before that time. All but five of them were first published in the detective magazine Manhunt and none of them appeared under the Ed McBain byline.
Here are kids in trouble and women in jeopardy. Here are private eyes and gangs. Here are loose cannons and innocent bystanders. Here, too, are cops and robbers. These are the stories that prepared Ed McBain to write the beloved 87th Precinct novels. In individual introductions, McBain tells how and why he wrote these stories that were the start of his legendary career.
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Fiddlers: A Novel of the 87th Precinct (87th Precinct Mysteries (Paperback))
by Ed McBain
This installment in the 87th Precinct series finds the detectives stumped by a serial killer who doesn't fit the profile. A blind violinist taking a smoke break, a cosmetics sales rep cooking an omelet in her own kitchen, a college professor trudging home from class, a priest contemplating retirement in the rectory garden, an old woman out walking her dog—these are the seemingly random targets shot twice in the face. But most serial killers don't use guns. Most serial killers don't strike five times in two weeks. And most serial killers' prey share something more than being over fifty years of age. Now it falls to Detective Steve Carella and his colleagues in the 87th Precinct to find out what-or whom-the victims had in common before another body is found.
With trademark wit and sizzling dialogue, McBain unravels a mystery and examines the dreams we chase in the darkening hours before the fiddlers have fled.
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Fiddlers: A Novel of the 87th Precinct (87th Precinct Mysteries)
by Ed McBain
Ed McBain's latest installment in the 87th Precinct series finds the detectives stumped by a serial killer who doesn't fit the profile. A blind violinist taking a smoke break, a cosmetics sales rep cooking an omelet in her own kitchen, a college professor trudging home from class, a priest contemplating retirement in the rectory garden, an old woman out walking her dog--these are the seemingly random targets shot twice in the face. But most serial killers don't use guns. Most serial killers don't strike five times in two weeks. And most serial killers' prey share something more than being over fifty years of age. Now it falls to Detective Steve Carella and his colleagues in the 87th Precinct to find out what-or whom-the victims had in common before another body is found.
With trademark wit and sizzling dialogue, McBain unravels a mystery and examines the dreams we chase in the darkening hours before the fiddlers have fled.
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The Frumious Bandersnatch
by Ed McBain
The disappearance of singer Tamar Valparaiso, a young woman on the verge of launching a successful career in hip hop music, draws Steve Carella into the middle of a kidnapping case as he searches for the missing woman as well as for someone who wants to destroy her chances for a bright future. 100,000 first printing.
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Widows
by Ed McBain
The beautiful blonde in the penthouse apartment was dead,
her face and body laced with slashes from a paring knife -- grisly evidence of the terrible things the city can do to pretty young women. What sordid web of money, sex, and greed had ensnared Susan Brauer? The stack of unsigned erotic letters in her possession was the first clue. Then the murder of Susan's lover, a married lawyer in his sixties, leads the cops of the 87th to the women left behind: the lawyer's wife, his ex, his daughters. And for Detective Carella, his own father's senseless death in a bakery holdup sears through the intense summer heat -- and sends him on a fevered hunt for the one who made his mother a widow and shrouded his family in grief.
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The Frumious Bandersnatch: A Novel of the 87th Precinct
by Ed McBain
The kidnapping was audacious,
and there were plenty of witnesses...
But no one attending the dazzling launch party for up-and-coming pop idol Tamar Valparaiso knew what they were seeing when, halfway through her performance, masked men whisked the sexy young singer off a luxury yacht and into a waiting speedboat. Now, the evening that was supposed to send Tamar's debut album, Bandersnatch, skyrocketing with a million-dollar promotional campaign has instead kicked off a terrifying countdown for Steve Carella and the detectives of the 87th Precinct. Time is their enemy in the race to find Tamar's abductors -- before the rising star is extinguished forever.
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Vespers: A Novel of the 87th Precinct
by Ed McBain
The priest lay on the bloodstained stones, his life drained from the wounds in his back....
In a walled garden surrounded by skyscrapers, Father Michael Birney met an unholy end, stabbed by an assailant who invaded his vespers prayers and then vanished as twilight overtook the big city. A stone's throw from the crime scene, a congregation of Satan worshipers chants its disturbing incantations -- an irony not lost on Detectives Carella and Hawes, who search among the cultists for a killer. But it will take more than a leap of faith for the cops of the 87th Precinct to expose the truth behind the deadliest -- and bloodiest -- of sins.
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The Pusher: A Novel of the 87th Precinct
by Ed McBain
Detective Carella, Lieutenant Byrnes, and the officers of the 87th Precinct investigate the hanging of a young dope peddler who died from an overdose of heroin. Reissue.
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Mischief
by Ed McBain
Investigating a series of cryptic murders in the worst section of the city, detective Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct uncovers the trail of the returned Deaf Man, an elusive stalker of vandals and other mischievous outlaws. Reprint.
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Alice in Jeopardy: A Novel
by Ed McBain
"I have your children.
Don't call the police, or they'll die."
It's a nightmare no parent should ever endure. Especially Alice Glendenning, a South Florida real estate agent who hasn't managed to sell a single home -- or collect any insurance money -- after her husband's fatal boating accident. Her daughter and son's kidnappers demand $250,000, the exact amount she's supposed to receive from the insurance company. To complicate matters, her housekeeper has contacted the police -- a glaring error in judgment that puts a spotlight on the crime, the children's lives at risk...and Alice in jeopardy.
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Fat Ollie's Book: A Novel of the 87th Precinct (Paperback)
by Ed McBain
All at once, Fat Ollie Weeks had a truly brilliant idea...
But as any real writer could tell you, that's how inspiration strikes -- with the sudden force of a violent crime. Known more for his foul mouth and short temper than his way with words, Detective Weeks has written a novel. But just as Isola is rocked by the murder of a mayoral candidate, the only copy of Ollie's manuscript is stolen -- and an all-too-real adventure begins as a thief follows Ollie's fictional blueprint to find a $2 million cache of nonexistent diamonds. Now, the 87th Precinct races to bring poetic justice to a cold-blooded assassin -- and someone's about to add another chapter to the colorful career of Ollie Weeks, a cop who's never played by the book....
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Transgressions
by Walter Mosley, Donald E. Westlake, Ed McBain, Sarah Dunant
New York Times bestsellers Ed McBain, Walter Mosely, and Donald Westlake each provided a brand-new, never-before-published tale for this unique collection of stories edited by bestselling author and mystery legend Ed McBain.
"Merely Hate" by Ed McBain: When a string of Muslim cabdrivers are killed, and the evidence points to another ethnic group, the detectives of the 87th Precinct must hunt down a killer before the city explodes in violence.
"Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large: Walking the Line" by Walter Mosley: Felix Orlean is a New York City journalism student who needs a job to cover his rent. An ad in the paper leads him to Archibald Lawless, and a descent into a shadow world where no one and nothing is as it first seems.
"Walking Around Money" by Donald E. Westlake: The master of the comic mystery is back with an all-new novella featuring hapless crook John Dortmunder, who gets involved in a crime that supposedly no one will ever know happened. Naturally, when something it too good to be true, it usually is, and Dortmunder is going to get to the bottom of this caper before he's left holding the bag.
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Transgressions
by Walter Mosley, Donald E. Westlake, Ed McBain, Sarah Dunant
Elizabeth is a modern woman. Smart. Independent. As sexual as she wants to be–with whomever she wants to be. But a breakup with her academic boyfriend has hit her harder than she cares to admit. And while her latest gig, translating a glitzy Czech thriller into English, offends her literary sensibilities, it arouses others with its steamy scenes of eroticism, violence, submission, and dominance.
Then, when her favorite Van Morrison CD disappears from its rack and her house is inexplicably violated, Elizabeth is afraid she’s starting to lose it–she even consults a local vicar about the possibility of poltergeists.
But what this woman in the lovely Victorian is experiencing is not supernatural. Nor is it madness. For in the dead of night, she will suddenly come face-to-face with her tormentor. She will smell him, she will touch him, and she will make a choice. Then the real haunting will begin.
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Crime Novels: Four Classic Thrillers 1964-1969 (LOA #371): The Fiend / Doll / Run Man Run / The Tremor of Forgery (Library of America, 371)
by Patricia Highsmith, Ed McBain, Chester Himes, Margaret Millar
In the 1960s the masters of crime fiction expanded the genre’s literary and psychological possibilities with audacious new themes, forms, and subject matter—here are four of their finest works
This is the second of two volumes gathering the best American crime fiction of the 1960s, nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade.
In Margaret Millar’s The Fiend (1964) a nine-year-old girl disappears and a local sex offender comes under suspicion. So begins a suspenseful investigation of an apparently tranquil California suburb which will expose a hidden tangle of fear and animosity, jealousy and desperation.
Ed McBain (a pen name of Evan Hunter) pioneered the multi-protagonist police procedural in his long-running series of 87th Precinct novels, set in a parallel Manhattan called Isola. Doll (1965) opens at a pitch of extreme violence and careens with breakneck speed through a tale that mixes murder, drugs, the modeling business, and psychotherapy with the everyday professionalism of McBain’s harried cops.
The racial paranoia of a drunken police detective in Run Man Run(1966) leads to a double murder and the relentless pursuit of the young Black college student who witnessed it. In Chester Himes’s breathless narrative, New York City is a place with no safe havens for a fugitive whom no one wants to believe.
In Patricia Highsmith’s The Tremor of Forgery (1969) a man whose personality is disintegrating is writing a book called The Tremor of Forgery about a man whose personality is disintegrating, “like a mountain collapsing from within.” Stranded unexpectedly in Tunisia, Howard Ingham struggles to hold on to himself in a strange locale, while a slightly damaged typewriter may be the only trace of a killing committed almost by accident.
Volume features include an introduction by editor Geoffrey O'Brien (Hardboiled America), newly researched biographies of the writers and helpful notes, and an essay on textual selection.
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The Gutter and the Grave (Hard Case Crime)
by Ed McBain
Detective Matt Cordell was happily married once, and gainfully employed, and sober. But that was before he caught his wife cheating on him with one of his operatives and took it out on the man with the butt end of a .45.
Now Matt makes his home on the streets of New York and his only companions are the city’s bartenders. But trouble still knows how to find him, and when Johnny Bridges shows up from the old neighborhood, begging for Matt’s help, Cordell finds himself drawn into a case full of beautiful women and bloody murder. It’s just like the old days – only this time, when the beatings come, he may wind up on the receiving end...
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So Nude, So Dead (Hard Case Crime, 120)
by Ed McBain
He’d been a promising piano prodigy, once. Now he was just an addict, scraping to get by, letting his hunger for drugs consume him. But a man’s life can always get worse - as Ray Stone discovers when he wakes up beside a beautiful nightclub singer only to find her dead... and 16 ounces of pure heroin missing. On the run from the law, desperate to prove his innocence and find a killer, Ray also faces another foe, merciless and unforgiving: his growing craving for a fix...
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Cut Me In (Hard Case Crime, 122)
by Ed McBain
When a Man’s Partner is Killed,
He’s Supposed to Do Something About It.
Maybe no one liked Del Gilbert a whole lot, not the men he ruthlessly did business with, not the women who discovered his other lovers, not even his partner in the Gilbert and Blake literary agency – me. But when I found him shot to death on the floor of his office, I had no choice. I had to track down the person responsible. And not just to lay Del to rest, either. Next to his body, the office safe was wide open, and a contract worth millions was missing...
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King’s Ransom (87th Precinct)
by Ed McBain
For a wealthy businessman, a kidnapping puts him in a predicament as troubling as any he has ever experienced. For Detective Steve Carella and the men at the 87th Precinct, their troubles are even worse. Their only hope is that he will play ball―at least long enough for them to catch the perps before the kidnapping turns into a homicide.
Ed McBain delivers another rapid-fire nail-biter in his 87th Precinct series with King’s Ransom, a morally complex weaving of friendship, personal responsibility, and the nature of man hailed by the Daily Mirror: “McBain spins the tightest tale in town…there’s nobody who does it better.” King’s Ransom was made into the major motion picture High and Low by acclaimed director Akira Kurasawa.
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