Showing results by author "Ed McBain" in All Categories

The murder of a priest in one of the 87th Precinct’s parishes sends Detectives Carella and Hawes on a troubling investigation where everyone has a secret and the truth hides within the lies.

A bitterly cold night offers up a body turned blue - not frozen, but swinging from a rope in a dank basement. The dead teen seems like a clear case of suicide, but Detective Steve Carella and Lieutenant Peter Byrnes find a few facts out of place, and an autopsy confirms their suspicions. The boy hadn’t hung himself but OD’d on heroin before an unknown companion strung him up to hide the true cause of death.

Christmas is coming. But erudite attorney Gerry Fletcher got his present early: His wife’s body with a knife buried in it. Though he shamelessly cops to being happy she’s dead, his alibi is airtight and all signs point to a burglary gone bad. But even when detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling follow the clues to a junky punk and get a full confession, Carella can’t quit thinking there’s something about the case that’s as phony as a sidewalk Santa’s beard.

When a bodyguard is hired to protect a successful businessman’s wife, the detectives of the 87th Precinct are brought in to investigate why she has two near-fatal accidents on his watch.

When a young woman’s body is fished out of the 87th Precinct’s river, a street-wise detective is on the clock to find the con man who killed her before he strikes again.

A woman is murdered in a liquor store, hurtling the men from the 87th Precinct into an investigation of her secret lives and many possible enemies. Faced with a host of suspects—from the woman’s former mother-in-law to her ex-husband, employer, and a string of boyfriends—the detectives find themselves with a victim whose identity spurns all conventional definition.

It’s like an old-time gangster movie: A speeding car, a blazing gun…and suddenly a guy walking down the street without a care in the world is lying in the gutter without a head on his shoulders. But who pulled the high-powered trigger that turned Sy Kramer from a blackmailer into a chalk outline? Was it the politician’s wife with a pornographic past? The soda-pop tycoon desperate to keep a business-busting bungle bottled up? Or was it whoever was paying Kramer a small fortune to hide what must’ve been one very big bad?

After an aging rock starlet is murdered and her daughter kidnapped, Matthew Hope must find out who’s come to collect on the woman’s former good fortune.

An anonymous sniper on a deadly rampage has the men of the 87th Precinct on their heels and the city with tattered nerves. They must somehow find their man before he takes aim again. A gritty, relentless pressure cooker of a thriller, Ten Plus One is one of best-selling author Ed McBain’s finest, the ultimate addition to the 87th Precinct series where time threatens to stand still and murder rules the day.

These three nerve-racking stories from best-selling author Ed McBain put detectives from the 87th Precinct on the trail of different killers who take the lives of a rich woman, a rabbi, and a ski instructor.

A beat cop winds up on the trail of a deadly mugger, but when it suddenly gets personal, his own life might be the next thing to be snatched….

Finding a dead body was not unusual for an autumn night in the 87th Precinct. But this young woman's body was naked - and potentially related to the series of odd missives received at the station house. All signs point to the Deaf Man's return, this time with a plot more diabolical than even the jaded policemen could imagine. He's been sending them mysterious pictures of police equipment: nightsticks, helmets, black horses, and more. But what did they mean?

>"I will kill the Lady tonight at 8. What can you do about it?" This is the message on a pasted-up letter handed to Desk Sergeant Dave Murchison at 8:00 a.m. The detectives at the 87th Precinct have gotten these types of threats before, but there’s something different about this one. Something ominous. Problem is, the city contains millions of women—finding the right one in 12 hours is like finding a needle in a haystack.

A calypso singer fresh off a gig walks home in a downpour, when shots tear through his head like steel rain. A hooker out on the street in the same miserable weather doesn’t know her final trick will be her last. What brings these two sad ends together… the same gun.

It is stormy in the 87th Precinct and with every hour that passes, every minute the killer stays on the loose, the trail is only going to get colder.

There’s a lot going on in the 87th Precinct this spring, and none of it is good. Jumpers on building ledges, a salesman torn apart by an explosion, and to cap it all off, they find the dead, half-naked bodies of Irene Thayer and Tommy Barlow in bed together. It has all the earmarks of a double suicide: a note, empty liquor bottles, closed windows, and the gas on the stove turned up. At least this one’s open and shut. Or is it?

A babysitter and the child she is watching are murdered on New Year’s Eve — just as a gang war over drug trafficking erupts and puts one of the detectives of the 87th Precinct in mortal danger.

It’s bad enough when a warehouse goes up in flames, but when it leads to multiple murders and a slum redevelopment deal that has deadly ties running through the city’s underbelly, the 87th Precinct is back to work.

When a sniper begins gunning down cops from the 87th Precinct in cold blood, it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to solve the case. With three cops already dead, Carella delves into the city’s underworld to search for the killer.

An ax murderer has taken root in the 87th Precinct. Will Detectives Hawes and Carella be able to stop him before he kills again?

Murder is in season as a brutal winter grips the city. The detectives of the 87th Precinct must fight the elements and turn up the heat to find a ruthless killer.