Ax (87th Precinct Book 18)

The eighteenth installment of the 87th Precinct, AX is a straight-forward whodunit focusing on Carella and Cotton as they try to figure out why anyone would want to take an ax to an elderly janitor. Plenty of hostile interviews, dead ends, and much to Carella’s chagrin, mothers. McBain’s attention to the struggles and pitfalls of methodical police work is one of his strong points, and Ax is a perfect example of this.

An interesting angle to this story is how investigating the murder of an individual can dredge up all kinds of past secrets, whether or not they eventually have anything to do with the crime, and how this can complicate an already difficult investigation.

Danny the Gimp plays a role in this investigation (But why is he afraid of revolving doors?), and Carella appears to have finally disembarked from the emotional roller-coaster he was on for the last few novels.

Ed McBain can become an addiction. If you like a good old fashioned detective story, McBain is an author t follow. This is number 18 in his 87th Precinct series and as good as any that came before. An elderly janitor is found in the basement of his building, an ax buried in his head. Thus starts the hunt. An illegal crap game, the janitor’s demented wife, his afflicted son, a wood chopping employee, a crooked cop and a few more seemingly unrelated characters get thrown into the mix along the way. Oh yes, throw in several irrelevant dialogs that add some reality to the narrative, a McBain trademark.

This is a short read that should leave you satisfied.

On a bitterly cold January afternoon, the detectives of the 87th precinct are called to the basement of an apartment building where the building super is Mr. George Lasser. Lasser is eighty-six years old and a veteran of the Spanish American War. Lasser managed to survive the encounter with the Spanish and a whole host of other difficulties that beset the planet between 1898 and 1963, when this story was written. But when someone plants an ax in the middle of his skull, it’s pretty much lights out for George.

There’s no evidence pointing at the killer and all of the early suspects have what appear to be iron-clad alibis. This means that Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes and the other bulls are going to have to put in a lot of time and use up a lot of shoe leather, trying to determine who might have had it in for the old man. The guy’s wife is totally nuts; his son refuses to leave the house; his three old buddies from the war have nothing to offer, and so there’s not a lot of help there.

But Carella is nothing of not persistent, and pushing his network of snitches and other acquaintances, he finally begins to tease out a picture of the victim that may lead to the killer, though maybe not before he or she strikes again.

This is another solid entry in the 87th Precinct series and follows the formula that McBain had worked out in the previous seventeen books. Nothing wrong with that–it’s a pretty entertaining formula.

This was my first exposure to Ed McBain and the 87th precinct. In fact, I had read practically nothing for years except for scify and fantasy novels and Sherlock Holmes. A couple decades ago I had read some works by Raymond Chandler but had drifted away from the hard-boiled police and detective novels. Quite frankly I had forgotten just how much fun they could be and how quickly they read when compared to epic fantasy.

The police detectives of the 87th precinct will never be confused with Sherlock Holmes. Whereas Holmes uses brilliant deductive leaps to solve his cases, the hardworking detectives of the 87th have to grind i, out wading through the grit and grime of an unpleasant reality to arrive at their arrests. Holmes usually seems cool and unflappable; you can almost see the sweat dripping off the police of the 87th as they pursue their cases,

I am not a policeman and maybe a real cop would laugh at the relative ease with which these police solve their crimes, but for me, it worked and I hope it will work for you as well.

Like all the 87th Precinct series this book revolves around the 87th Precinct detectives solving crimes in their precinct. The cast of characters are the same and as always its enjoyable to read about them again. To me the book ended abruptly with the detectives accidentally solving the case in the psst chapter. It felt as if the author ran out of ideas and just ended the book.

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