Ed McBain Books

First it was the strange phone calls, then the bizarre photographs. The boys of the 87th Precinct knew their arch nemesis, The Deaf Man, was back in town. Even a gruesome crucifixion and a cat burglar who leaves live kittens as his calling card could not keep Carella, Ling, Hawes, and Brown from the torment of the Deaf Man's riddles. And time was running out.

A crime novel first published in 1964, in which Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct searches for a sniper who is killing innocent victims.

A blonde woman, a living doll, is found slashed to death. Steve Carella wants Bert King on the case, a belligerent cop. When he goes missing, presumed dead, the officers of the 87th Precinct go all out to find the truth.

A murder mystery from the 87TH PRECINCT series, first published in 1972, in which a detective discovers that the odd-shaped snapshot found clutched in a dead man's hand is a piece of deadly puzzle worth a suitcase of stolen cash.

For almost 50 years, fans of crime fiction have followed the boys of the 87th Precinct, a fictional urban police department precinct created by the novelist Evan Hunter, writing under the pseudonym Ed McBain.

Sees the return of the Deaf Man - taunting the boys of the 87th Precinct with enigmatic messages and ill deeds, specially for Christmas. The author also wrote "Lightning".

Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct faces the precinct's greatest foe, the Deaf Man, when the criminal returns to a life of crime in order to murder the city's graffiti artists

With its roots in the American private-detective fiction of the 1920s but traceable back as far as Sherlock Holmes, the private-eye story remains as popular as ever. Here are thirty of the finest short novels and stories from the hardboiled world of the private eye. The characters in this collection range from the tough, cynical, hard-drinking Philip Marlowe type to hard-hitting female sleuths and the one-armed intellectual Dan Fortune. This collection features old favorites and new contributions from masters of the genre, past and present, including Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler, Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Michael Collins, Ed McBain, William Campbell Gault, and many more.

There are 186 patrolmen and a handful of detectives in the 87th Precinct, but it's never quite enough. Because between petty crimes and major felonies, between crimes of hate and crimes of passion, the city never sleeps -- and for these cops, a day never ends... The night shift has a murdered go-go dancer, a firebombed black church, a house full of ghosts, and a mother trying to get her twenty-two year-old to come home. The day shift: a naked hippie lying smashed on the concrete, two murderous armed robbers in Halloween masks, and a man beaten senseless by four guys using sawed-off broom handles. Altogether, it's a day in the life. But for a certain cop in the 87th Precinct, it could just be his last...

"Bloody palmprints. He would always remember seeing first the bloody prints, one on each side of the glass-paneled doors. And then the doors swinging open and the girl spilling into the room. Arms wide, hands imploring . . . blue dress torn open over white blood-smeared bra, she lurched toward the muster desk, beseeching Kling to help, for God's sake, help." The girl was Patricia Lowery, fifteen years old. She was the lucky one. Soon after, they found her cousin, Muriel Stark, seventeen, lying in a doorway, her body ripped with knife wounds. Hysterically, Patricia talked to Detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling of the 87th Precinct, telling her brutal story of molestation and murder. The man was tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, she said; he had a knife blade four inches long, she would never forget what he looked like, what he made them do. Immediately, Kling and Carella set out to find the killer, launching interrogations, file searches, laboratory analyses -- all the weapons of investigation at their command. The twisting, blood-spotted trail leads them deep into the warped world of the sex offender. Then, click. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes, phony alibi. And a positive identification from Patricia: "I said I'd never forget." There's only one problem. He's the wrong man.

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. McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet? even those we thought we already knew.? ?New York Times Book Review Imagine your favorite Law & Order cast solving fresh mysteries into infinity, with no re-runs, and you have some sense of McBain's grand, ongoing accomplishment.? ?Entertainment Weekly

This replica of the May 1953 MANHUNT digest magazine showcases a collection of gripping crime stories from notable authors. Featuring works like "THE GUILTY ONES" by John Ross Macdonald and "CIGARETTE GIRL" by James M. Cain, the anthology offers a diverse range of narratives, from suspenseful plots to intricate character studies. Each story presents a unique perspective on crime and morality, making it a compelling read for fans of the genre. The magazine captures the essence of mid-20th century crime fiction.

The lady looked like death personified. Dressed all in black she carried a handgun and a jar of nitro-glycerine in her handbag. She sat in the 87th Precinct squad-room, waiting for Detective Carella.

Collection of crime tales offers a vivid portrait of the criminals and the police that pursue them.

Een Amerikaanse rechercheur ziet een verband tussen de moorden op een jonge vrouw en een drugshandelaar.

Part of the NFT/BFI Film Classics series, this is the story of life in a New York slum school, where young hoodlums develop their crude ways, and their teachers fight a vain and losing battle to bring a semblance of decency and honesty into their lives.

As Detective Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes investigate the burning of a warehouse filled with carved wooden figures, their case of arson is quickly complicated by murder.

Begins with what looks like a lynching and turns out to be a race for a publicity-conscious killer with a taste for young, female sports stars, while Kling's girlfriend Eileen stalks a highly systematic rapist. The author also wrote "Eight Balck Horses"

This replica of the March 1953 issue of MANHUNT digest magazine features a collection of thrilling stories from notable authors in the crime and mystery genre. Highlights include Mickey Spillane's "EVERYBODY'S WATCHING ME" and Richard S. Prather's "THE SLEEPER CAPER," alongside works by Leslie Charteris, Craig Rice, and others. Each story offers a unique narrative filled with suspense, intrigue, and unexpected twists, showcasing the vibrant storytelling of mid-20th century crime fiction.

The detectives of the 87th Precinct pursue a desperate killer when handsome and wealthy Sy Kramer, a notorious blackmailer, is found with a bullet in his head

Detective Bert Kling has had some rough luck with women. First his fiancée Cindy Townsend was gunned down in an infamous bookstore shooting. Then there was Cindy Forrest, who informed him one day that she was in love with a doctor at work—and was gone. Now he’s finally hit the jackpot. Kling just married the beautiful model Augusta Blair, and they are about to enjoy the first night of their marriage together…until bad luck catches him again. When Kling gets out of the shower, Augusta is gone, leaving behind one shoe—and cotton soaked in chloroform. Even harder than calling Detective Steve Carella with the news is standing on the sidelines while the rest of the men do all the work. But he’ll have to—or he’ll never see her alive again. A spine-tingling race against time as the detectives of the 87th do what they do best, So Long as You Both Shall Live is an extraordinary addition to the series, an Ed McBain masterpiece that marries taut police procedure with the personal stakes of a man who stands to lose everything—again.

This crime novel describes how Florida's Matthew Hope assumes defence of a husband against circumstantial evidence that he killed his actress wife. Hope is soon on the trail to solving the mystery but the actress, meanwhile, is stashed away - naked but for her red leather boots.

When the wife of a wealthy landowner is brutally raped, the police arrest three recent immigrants, who are later found murdered. The lawyer Matthew Hope is called in to defend the landowner, but soon realizes that he is involved in a situation far more complex than he or his client had imagined.

Steamy, erotic letters are found when a beautiful young woman is murdered - stabbed 32 times in a penthouse apartment - and her elderly lover is shot four times in the head. His ex-wife, two daughters and present wife are suspects as Detective Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct investigates.

An ax murderer has taken root in the 87th Precinct…. Will Detectives Hawes and Carella be able to stop him before he kills again? “Imagine your favorite Law & Order cast solving fresh mysteries into infinity, with no re-runs, and you have some sense of McBain’s grand, ongoing accomplishment.” —Entertainment Weekly “McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet…even those we thought we already knew.” —New York Times Book Review

When Emma Bowles is pushed under a train and then run down on the street where she lives, it is clear someone wants her dead. Even after her husband hires a private investigator to protect her, something is still very wrong. This is an 87th Precinct novel.

McBain Trio is the 2nd volume of Mystery Guild's Lost Classics Omnibus Series. With a new introduction by the author, this edition show-cases Detectives Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer in three of their toughest and finest cases. ** Lullaby, Vespers, and Widows. **

Prepare to meet the most seductively female and shockingly fatal femme fatales, brought to you by seventeen of today’s finest authors of mystery and suspense fiction. Award-winning editor Otto Penzler presents a collection of short, sizzling masterpieces filled with thrilling tales that showcase how sexy and fierce the 'gentler sex' can be. In 'Third Party', a party girl takes you on a wild ride through the Paris night, while Nelson DeMille's 'Rendezvous' plunges you into a Vietnam jungle where the deadliest scourge is a woman. Elmore Leonard introduces a Depression-era teenage gun moll in 'Louly and Pretty Boy', who loves Pretty Boy Floyd more than robbing filling stations. Lorenzo Carcaterra's 'A Thousand Miles from Nowhere' features a smart blonde seeking slow-simmered vengeance, and Michael Connelly's 'Cielo Azul' reveals how a nameless woman found dead in Los Angeles can be the most lethal prey. Other riveting tales include a scorned lover claiming an old fling's heart, a mysterious woman offering a tempting suicide pact, and a she-demon rising from the grave. These and many other bad girls cast their criminal spells through the powerful voices of Joyce Carol Oates, John Connolly, Thomas H. Cook, Jeffrey Deaver, and more, in stories as irresistible as the anti-heroines that blaze through their pages.

Matthew Hope spots her on Saturday, exquisitely beautiful, strolling topless on the beach. On Monday, she shows up in his law office, beaten and bruised, ready to file for divorce. By Tuesday, she is dead--and her big, ugly husband is arrested for murder. But Matthew believes he is innocent; now, he has to prove it.

A dead man lay reeking of alcohol--no forced entry, no visible wounds, and an empty bottle of seconal. It all added up to a simple suicide. Or did it? Why would an alcoholic artist, who was terrified of drugs, have ended his life with sleeping pills? It's all up to Detective Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct to uncover the real story.

Six naked, murdered bodies on a cold January night put Detectives Carella and Kling in the middle of a full-on gang war and in a head-to-head battle with a mysterious criminal mastermind. Imagine your favorite Law & Order cast solving fresh mysteries into infinity, with no re-runs, and you have some sense of McBain's grand, ongoing accomplishment.? ? Entertainment Weekly McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet?even those we thought we already knew.? ? New York Times Book Review

When a failed painter and twice-failed husband is found dead in his sweltering apartment, everyone assumes it is suicide. But Detective Steve Carella knows that suicides leave notes, and they don't turn the air-conditioning off on the hottest night of the year. Carella is on the trail of a killer.

A comedian dies on national television in front of forty million viewers, and the detectives of the 87th Precinct must solve the puzzle of how he made someone mad enough to murder. "Imagine your favorite Law & Order cast solving fresh mysteries into infinity, with no re-runs, and you have some sense of McBain's grand, ongoing accomplishment." --Entertainment Weekly "McBain has the ability to make every character believable--which few writers these days can do." --Associated Press

A psycho has butchered a nice young couple and he's loose somewhere in the 87th Precinct. He has a name, an address and an identity. Walter Damascus is a third-rate lothario who likes his women well off, well built and dead, along with their husbands. Sooner or later he will surface.

The Oxford Bookworms Library extends the range of activities and teaching support of Oxford Bookworms and includes in each book an Activities section of Before Reading, While Reading and After Reading exercises. The six stages offer stories at different levels of ability.

The latest Ed McBain novel of the 87th Precinct. A young Catholic priest is brutally stabbed to death in his garden. A church practising satanism is not four blocks away and the cult sign of Baphomet is found scrawled on the garden gate.

The first thing you need to know about this city is that it is big. It is difficult to explain to someone who has never seen it. The next thing you need to know is that it's dangerous. Just watch the first ten minutes of the eleven o'clock news and you'll learn exactly what the people of this city are capable of doing to other people in this city. This week's city tabloids depict the face of a pretty, dead girl who lay sprawled near a park bench not seven blocks from the 87th precinct house, while the late night news reports on the latest exploits of The Cookie Boy, a professional thief who leaves a box of chocolate chip cookies behind after a score. Behind the scenes, detectives Carella and Brown soon discover that this is not your average dead girl, but one with an unusual past. As they piece together her secrets, detectives Meyer and Kling search Isola's pawnshops for items stolen by The Cookie Boy. While the detectives are investigating their cases, one of them is being stalked by the man who killed his father.

Sarah Whittaker had everything: stunning good looks, youth, money, social standing. Everything, that is, but her freedom. Sarah Whittaker was currently residing, against her will. in a luxurious private sanatorium. In the State of Florida, Sarah Whittaker was a certified paranoid schizophrenic. That's what the doctors, the courts, and her widowed mother said. It was not what Sarah said - and that was why she had called Matthew Hope. Would he act as her attorney and fight for her freedom? And would he fight for the $650,000 left to her by her father and now controlled by her mother? Hope probed the story of a mother driven by hate to confine her only child to a mental institution and decided that Sarah was telling the truth. He took the case - and in so doing was led into a hall of mirrors in which reality blurred into murder, mutilation, and the greatest danger Hope had ever known.

This mugger is special. He preys on women, waiting in the darkness…then comes from behind, attacks them, and snatches their purses. He tells them not to scream and as they're on the ground, reeling with pain and fear, he bows and nonchalantly says, “Clifford thanks you, madam.” But when he puts one victim in the hospital and the next in the morgue, the detectives of the 87th Precinct are not amused and will stop at nothing to bring him to justice. Dashing young patrolman Bert Kling is always there to help a friend. And when a friend's sister-in-law is the mugger's murder victim, Bert's personal reasons to find the maniacal killer soon become a burning obsession…and it could easily get him killed. The second book in the 87th Precinct series, The Mugger is an Ed McBain classic, a nuanced portrayal of justice and vengeance hailed by the Daily Mirror as “a masterpiece of crime writing…and there's nobody who does it better.”

Matthew Hope embarks on the seemingly impossible case of defending one Ralph Parrish, brother of gay dissolute Jonathan who has been savagely murdered after a no-holds-barred gay party. Ralph is prime suspect as he has never seen eye-to-eye with Jonathan.

A young girl jumps to her death, a salesman gets blown apart, and two semi-nude bodies are found dead on a bed with all the carmarks of a love pact. Spring was really here for the 87th Precinct. Carella and Hawes thought the double suicide stank of homicide, but the couldn't get a break. Fortunately, Hawes had something going with Christine - like love...

The third Matthew Hope mystery novel from the acclaimed author of the popular 87th Precinct series. What begins as an ordinary one-night-stand for attorney Matthew Hope turns into a deadly mystery when the woman--a 60's rock star trying for a comeback--is brutally murdered, and her daughter turns up missing.

Follows the story of Colley Donato who holds up a liquor store and kills a policeman in the process. Being on the run he is helped by a few dubious friends but it is all down to him in ord

Ben Smoke is an ex-cop, a tough-guy bachelor who never had a case he couldn't crack--that is, until someone starts snatching bodies from a funeral home. This is the kind of challenge Smoke loves--only this time, the case leads him on a bizarre and dangerous journey, leading to a crazy, kinky lady, a twisted killer, black magic, and ancient Egyptian rites. It's a devilish--and deadly--business. This is a case that might just be too hot for Smoke to handle.

See Them Die : "Kill me if you can" was Pepe Miranda's challenge. Murderer, two-bit hero of the street gangs, he was holed up somewhere in the 87th Precinct, making the cops look like fools and cheered on by every neighbourhood punk. Not a challenge the detectives in the squadroom could leave alone.

The Navy brass is satisfied when a yeoman, the prime suspect in the murder of beautiful, dedicated Navy nurse, dies, but Lieutenant Chuck Masters disagrees. Reissue.

By day the city works. By night it plays, and everyone is invited to the game: the rich the poor, the adventurous and the tame. Sometimes, the playground turns deadly. Sometimes, the homicide detectives from the 87th Precinct are invited, too... Sadie When She Died The victim had a knife plunged in her chest. The husband was glad, and didn't hide it. From the beginning, Detective Carella is sure someone was hired to make the murder look like an interrupted robbery. Then the dead woman's secrets begin to come out of the closet. Now happily married, Steve Carella and unhappily single Bert Kling are entering a city's sexual underground to find out which is more dangerous: a world where anything goes or a husband with secrets of his own. Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1477805613

Set against the backdrop of westward expansion, this story follows a resilient family leaving their Virginia farm in search of a new life. As they traverse the perilous American landscape, they confront unimaginable challenges that test their strength and resolve. The narrative explores themes of survival and the indomitable human spirit, highlighting their journey not just across the land, but also toward self-discovery and triumph.

They never saw their executioner. Because each victim had this in common: they were blind. Steve Carella, a weary detective very much in love with his deaf wife, is stymied in a hunt that began when a Vietnam veteran, his sight taken in war, was found with his head nearly separated from his body. But as the bizarre killing spree goes on, Carella begins to look into the first victim's dreams. And what he sees is a panorama of war, sexuality, secrets, and torment -- and one man's pure, blind rage...

Soft-hearted attorney Matthew Hope has never been known for taking easy cases, and this is no exception. A mother and her two little girls are brutally murdered on Florida's steamy west coast, and the only person who doesn't have a motive is confessing--and insists that Hope defend him.

The brand new 87th Precinct Novel from the master himself - Ed McBain.

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."

Contents: The interview--The fallen angel--The prisoner--Terminal misunderstanding--The sharers-- The couple next door--The victim--But you know us--Running from Legs--Happy New Year, Herbie--The last spin.

Ralph Parrish is a middle-aged, hard-working Indiana farmer who visits his gay brother in Florida, even though he does not approve of his brother's lifestyle. From the moment he arrives, Ralph and his brother argue heatedly--until the next morning when his brother is found dead . . . and Ralph becomes suspect number one!

When Detective Steve Carella, investigating two baffling murders, discovers that his major leads are coming from a beautiful psychic, he abandons standard police procedures for the eerie world of the occult

This classical work, significant throughout human history, has been meticulously reformatted and retyped for modern readers by Alpha Editions. The effort ensures that the text is clear and readable, preserving the original's essence without relying on scanned copies. This edition aims to keep the book accessible for both present and future generations, highlighting its enduring importance.

Someone killed Annie Boone, but was she an innocent victim or the target of a hit? As Detectives Carella and Kling of the 87th precinct pick up the pieces of her interupted life, they move relentlessly closer to some answers yet farther from others. Struggling to find the weak link, the detectives find themselves facing a cold, hard truth they'd prefer not to know.

October at the 87th Precinct. During an Indian summer it took a multiple murder in a downtown bookshop to shatter the calm. Four people are dead - and one of them is Detective Bert Kling's fiancee. From the author of "Hail to the Chief" and "The Blackboard Jungle".

The lives of two New York toughs spin out of control when a routine burglary spirals into a cop killing in this thriller by the author of the 87th Precinct series.   Robbing the cars is Jobbo’s idea. Frankie just goes along because it’s too hot to do anything else, and he can’t resist easy money. They walk along the East River, reaching into open windows and taking whatever they find. Mostly, it’s just junk, until Jobbo picks up the .45. It’s fully loaded, with the safety off, and Frankie is holding it when the cops come around the corner.   The police open fire, and Frankie shoots back. What else is he supposed to do? Before he knows it, both cops are down, and he and Jobbo are running to meet their connection: the Big Man. With the gun in his hand and two fallen cops at his back, Frankie has a shot at becoming a “big man” himself, unless the law catches up with him first.   A stunning portrait of urban crime, Big Man is vintage Ed McBain. A Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and the creator of the 87th Precinct series, McBain knew the dark side of New York better than anyone else, and in the city’s shadows, there’s no creature more terrifying than the Big Man.  

The first in a brand new series from the crime master himself, Ed McBain.

Florida criminal lawyer Matthew Hope never takes a case unless he knows for sure his client is innocent. But retired schoolteacher Mary Barton - known as, "Mary, Mary, quite contrary" to her neighbors - isn't as easy woman to believe in. In fact, Mary doesn't appear interested in hiring Matthew, only in bad mouthing those she feels have done her wrong. But due to the efforts of Mary's former student, Melissa Lowndes, Matthew agrees to try to prove Mary innocent of the charges filed against her: sexually mutilating, murdering, and burying three little girls in her garden. Making the case tougher, the State Attorney's "killer" prosecutor is assigned Mary's case. Max the Ax brings forth witnesses that swear to seeing Mary with each of the girls; Mary carrying bloody clothes to the cleaners; and Mary digging small graves late at night. But Hope's biggest problem is Mary herself, a difficult woman swept up in horrible circumstances - a woman with secrets so terrible she can't tell them - even to save her own life.

The mystery man wore black, and he was a real cut-up king. Why else was he leaving blood-red severed hands all over the city? Was he an everyday maniac with a meat cleaver, or did he have a special grudge against the 87th Precinct? Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes went along with the grudge theory, because the black-cloaked killer didn't leave any clues to go on - the grisly hands even had the fingertips sliced off. And how do you nail a murderer when you can't identity or unearth most of his victims? That's what the boys of the 87th Precinct have to do: find a killer before he carves up any more corpseless hands!

On Halloween the quiet of early evening is shattered by a series of sudden, violent incidents which take place during a shift at the 87th Precinct ..

The eyes of the neighborhood are on the detectives of the 87th and the criminal who challenged them as the city simmers with escalating gang violence. “The 87th Precinct [is] one of the great literary accomplishments of the last half-century.” —Pete Hamill, Newsday “McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet…even those we thought we already knew.” —New York Times Book Review

Most suicides don't realize the headaches they cause....Two a.m. in the bitter cold of winter: the young Hispanic man's body was found in a tenement basement. The rope around his neck suggested a clear case of suicide -- until the autopsy revealed he'd overdosed on heroin. He was a pusher, and now a thousand questions pressed down on the detectives of the 87th Precinct: Who set up the phony hanging? Whose fingerprints were on the syringe found at the scene? Who was making threatening phone calls, attempting to implicate Lieutenant Byrnes' teenage son? Somebody was pushing the 87th Precinct hard, and Detective Steve Carella and Lieutenant Pete Byrnes have to push back harder -- before a frightening and deadly chain tightens its grip.

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...

25 crime stories published between 1952-1957 written by Ed McBain under various pseudonyms.

Lainie Commins, a freelance designer of children's toys, hires attorney Matthew Hope for a lawsuit against her old employers, Brett and Etta Toland. At stake are the lucrative rights to Gladly, a teddy bear with crossed eyes and corrective lenses. It's a straightforward case--until Brett Toland is shot in the throat aboard his luxury yacht and Lainie becomes the chief suspect.

From the author of the popular and highly acclaimed 87th Precinct series, Another Part of the City is a brilliant, hard-hitting foray into Manhattan's tangled web of twisting downtown streets and crooked uptown lives.

Kriminalroman fra Florida med baggrund i cirkusmiljø. Advokaten Matthew Hope er skudt ned, og under opklaringen af mordforsøget møder hans kolleger vold, grådighed og forræderi

Jerome McKennon's last phone call before he died had been to a woman called Marilyn. On the evidence of her answer phone, a very popular woman and a prime suspect in the case. For Hal Willis of the 87th Precinct, this would be far more than just another crime investigation.

87th Precinct detectives Carella and Hawes investigate the murder of an old woman who had once graced the great stages of Europe as a concert pianist, while elsewhere in Isola another woman is dying for the price of a song. Reprint.

Here are excerpts from more than 30 years of Grand Master Ed McBain's bestselling 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, featuring some of his most lovable female characters. "If you are already a fan, here is a reunion of some old friends".--St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Detective Hawes is on the trail of the man who wrote he was going to kill the lady at 8 that night.

In this city, you have to pay attention. In this city, things are happening all the time, all over the place, and you don't have to be a detective to smell evil in the wind. Take this week's tabloids: the face of a dead girl is splashed across the front page. She was found sprawled near a park bench not seven blocks from the police station. Detectives Carella and Brown soon discover the girl has a most unusual past. Meanwhile, the late-night news tracks the exploits of The Cookie Boy, a professional thief who leaves his calling card -- a box of chocolate chip cookies -- at the scene of each score. And while the detectives of the 87th Precinct are investigating these cases, one of them is being stalked by the man who killed his father. Welcome to the Big Bad City.

It started with the blind violinist - shot twice through the head at point-blank range in the alley outside his dingy restaurant. But it's only when the omelette lady gets shot with the same gun in the same way twenty-four hours later that the police really start to take notice. But Steve Carella and the boys at the 87th Precinct always seem to be one step behind the killer, for while the gun is the same, none of the victims seem to be related in any way. And why is the killer heard to introduce himself as 'Chuck' before pumping bullets into their bodies? Fiddlers is Ed McBain at his best - a twisting, turning puzzle book where nothing is as it seems and the pace never lets up. It once again proves McBain to be one of the true greats of modern crime writing.

Swift, silent and deadly, soneone is killing the 87th Precinct's finest . . . When Detective Reardon is found dead, motive is a big question mark. But when his partner becomes victim number two, it looks like open-and-shut grudge killings. That is until a third detective is murdered.With one meagre clue, Detective Steve Carella beginshis grim search for the killer, a search that takes him into the city's underworld to a notorious brothel, the the apartment of a beutiful and dangerous widow and, finally, to a .45 automatic aimed straight at his head . . .

Cassandra Lee Ridley is an ex-airforce pilot who now scrapes a living flying low level contraband over the border to Mexico. But when she gets offered a $200,000 contract to fly what she assumes are drugs, she takes a deep breath and agrees to do it. The job goes perfectly, the deliveries are made and the money paid to the Mexican drug lords. One problem though. All $1.7 million dollars of the payment are fake, the Mexicans soon want their money - and Cassandra is their first stop and first fatality. When her naked body is thrown to the lions in a zoo in the 87th Precinct, New York, it becomes Detective Steve Carella's problem . . .

A collection of stories about some of the female characters featured in the novels about the 87th Precinct. Included are the terrifying Fat Lady who rules the streets with her trusty razor, and Virginia Hodge, who held the squad room to ransom with a bottle of nitroglycerine.

"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 show 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..." -- From back cover