Killer’s Choice

Amazon had a deal around Christmas time, twenty 87th Precinct novels for some stupid cheap number like 99 cents, so I bought all twenty of them to parcel out over a period of time. Killers Choice is from the late Fifties, and introduces Cotton Hawes, whom no one can stand going in. Carella is married, but he and Teddy have no kids. As usual, there is more than one crime to be solved, and, also as usual, theres no weird twist. Just solid investigations of realistic events by people any of us might know, who happen to be cops. McBain was still using graphics of forms and paperwork as part of the story at this time. Ive never read an 87th Precinct novel I couldnt recommend, some more enthusiastically than others. This rates about a 6.5 on the ten-point McBain scale, which means its better than two-thirds of all the other books youre likely to read this year. Whats amazing about McBain is how his voice and style remained consistent, yet evolved over time. Note: the opening, where McBain describes the struggles with his publisher over the directions the characters were to take, is hilarious.

This is the book in which Ed McBain adds Cotton Hawes to the cast of detectives who populate the 87th Precinct. As Hawes comes on board, a young woman named Annie Boone is shot and killed while working as a clerk in a liquor store. The store is then totally trashed and the owner seems more concerned about the damage to his stock than the death of his employee.

Annie, a divorced mother of a young daughter, seems to be something of a chameleon. Virtually everyone that the detectives interview has a radically different impression of the woman, and without knowing exactly who she was, it’s going to be awfully difficult to catch her killer. Then, as the investigation progresses, Roger Havilland, one of the detectives, is also murdered. This increases the pressure to find the killer or killers and Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer, Bert Kling and Hawes, the new addition to the team must follow a very slim trail of evidence in their effort to find a solution to the crimes.

This is a quick, fun read, one of the better of the earlier books in the series. It’s fun to watch the interaction with Hawes, the new guy, especially as he makes a nearly catastrophic mistake early on in the investigation. Any fan of the 87th Precinct will want to find this one.

By the time of Killer’s Choice, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series has achieved a comfortable level of quality. While each individual novel is a decent story, the overall series became a pioneering work in not just the police procedural, but also the ensemble series (later done at its best by the TV show Hill Street Blues).

With the main “character” in this series being a police department, not a standard hero, it is not surprising that in this novel, one previously recurring character will die and another will join the cast. I won’t spoil things by saying who dies (though his murder will be a major subplot), but the new guy is Cotton Hawes, a slightly naive detective brought from a ritzy, generally low-crime precinct into the more challenging 87th Precinct.

Hawes and detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling will be involved in two investigations: the “A” plot involving a woman killed in a liquor store and the “B” plot regarding the dead cop mentioned above (many of these novels have two storylines).

As is typical of crime fiction from the 1950s – especially the pulpier novels – this novel is rather short. It is, however, another fun read, with a good mix of humor (usually dark) and grim violence.

An early classic from one of the best. This is how police procedural came to be. Plot, dialogue, characterization are all flawless. The deeper you venture into Evan Hunters catalogue the more impressed you will be.

Did not expect to enjoy this series simply due to the setting (specifically the time/era). However, after reading one novel in the series, I went back to the first book of the series and have been reading each subsequent novel in order. Killers Choice is yet another excellent police procedural by the master McBain. Think old school….walking a beat…pre- NYPD Blue and CSI….. and you have the original police procedural genre. And McBain is definitely the best at this craft. Killers Choice continues some characters developments and introduces some new ones. Both continue to hold my interest. Looking forward to reading the next story in this series.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member