Ghosts

First Sentence: They might have been ghosts themselves, the detectives who stood in the falling snow around the body of the woman on the sidewalk.

The body of a woman is found in front of her apartment building. Very quickly, a second call comes to the police from a woman who has found ghost-story author Gregory Craig murdered in his apartment in the same building. The case leads Detective Steve Carella, with the help of psychic Hillary Scott, to a summer cottage in Massachusetts and an experience unlike any Carella has ever known.

McBain creates the perfect opening. It’s visual and evocative, yet with writing which is spare and tight. It’s classic McBain. The dialogue has the same crispness, but it never sounds stilted. Although the story starts off quite simply, it takes several twists almost immediately, including the introduction of a doppelganger.

Remembering that the story was both written and set in 1980, reading it now reminds us how much has changed. Many will never have heard of comedian Henny Youngman, yet his humor remains timeless such as”the joke about the man who wants to buy a new car and his wife who wants to buy a mink coat. The compromise. The wife buys a mink coat and keeps it in the garage.” The difference in technology, or lack thereof, is marked, yet the forensic and crime-scene details give the story a present-day realism which hasn’t changed.

McBain does a very good middle section describing other members of the 87th and how the team works together, such as deciding on coverage over the holidays. He provides a good sense of realism in that no police department works only one case, and so includes secondary cases such as the theft of an actual street. Even the series location is interesting in that Isola is essentially New York City turned on its side.

The link between the murders in Isola and a death in Massachusetts provides an opportunity not only to introduce a new location”The town seemed to have crawled up out of the Atlantic like some prehistoric thing seeking the sun, finding instead a rocky, inhospitable coastline and collapsing upon it in disappointment and exhaustion.”– but add weather almost as a new character, and address the issue of fidelity. The introduction of the very un-McBain-like scene of the paranormal works incredibly well when set against the normalcy and matter-of-factness of that which preceded it.

McBain created an interesting motive; one that seems very timely”Adolf Hitler must have thought of himself as a hero; Richard Nixon probably still thinks of himself as one; every man and woman in the world is the hero or heroine of a personal scenario.” The takedown of the bad buy is a final, brilliant twist.

“Ghosts” isn’t usual McBain, in terms of its plot, but all the classic elements are there in a completely engrossing, brilliantly crafted 212-page story. Starting with his first book “Cop Hater,” McBain should be required reading for anyone who loves detective fiction.

GHOSTS (PolProd-87th Precinct-FicCity of Isola-Contemp) – EX
McBain, Ed 34th in series
Viking Press May 1980

One of the best things about Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels is the way he utilized an ensemble cast of regular characters so each book was unique. This one features detectives Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes and includes a supernatural element. The plot involves the murder of a best selling writer of non-fiction ghost stories and what Carella and Hawes suspect is a related killing on the sidewalk in front of the writer’s apartment building.

While the cops close in on the killer, McBain finds the opportunity to insert discourses on marital infidelity, the legitimacy of psychics and how we are all the heroes of our own stories. I’m a huge fan of the 87th Precinct novels and thought this was one of the best. Its well written, cleverly plotted and should appeal to any modern fan of crime novels. I highly recommend it.

This is #34 of a series of 54 police procedurals written by EdMcBain. They were written over a 50 year period(1956-2005) and it is interesting to watch society, crime, style of writing change over that period. Not necessary to read in order, though there are some series-long characters. The books all take place in a fictionalized New York City with different names for the boroughs,etc. For a police procedural buff a must have series.
Very consistent writing quality throughout the series.

Written in true McBain style, short and choppy dialogue, interesting characters, murder, mayhem and, oh yes, ghosts, real, honest-to-goodness ghosts. As usual, the story begins with acts of violence. One of the victims has written a book about, what else, ghosts. Detectives Carella and Hawes follow the case through the twists and turns that are inherent in all murder mysteries. And, oh yes, Carella actually encounters ghosts, real, live(?), ghosts, not something I expect to see in a McBain novel. This is another fun read; it’s not Pulitzer prize-winning material; just kick back and enjoy.

There are about 10 pages in the third act of this novel that swerve away completely from anything done in the rest of the 87th Precinct series, and I suspect it will put some fans completely off the book as a whole. But for me, McBain pulls the change of with a great deal of skill, fitting well with the overall mood of the series.

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