Kiss

This book was written much later than the early 87th Precinct series, written in the late 70’s or early 80’s, but it’s still about the detectives of the 87th squad solving crimes. In this case a woman comes to the precinct and tells the detectives someone is trying to kill her. As the detectives start investigating they run into one problem, someone has killed the man trying to kill the woman. As they also try to solve that murder they suspect the husband of first hiring the man to kill his wife then killing the man. Unfortunately the husband has a good alibi and now he has hired a private detective to protect his wife. To protect her or kill her Carella and the other detectives wonder, and who did kill the first man and why. Another great book in this series. Maybe a little grittier than the earlier ones.

Two plots thread their way through this novel of the 87th Precinct. In the first, a beautiful woman named Emma Bowles appears at the station house to report that a man has attempted to kill her. Twice.

Emma recognizes the attacker as a man who used to drive for the limo service that her husband uses. Detectives Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer go looking for the man Emma has accused only to find him shot to death and hanged, apparently for good measure, in the basement of the apartment house where he lived.

Emma’s husband, a wealthy stockbroker, professes to be horrified by the attempts on his wife’s life and he insists on hiring a private detective from out of town to protect his wife, even though the man who attempted to kill her is now dead. All of this seems pretty strange to Steve Carella and as he and Meyer investigate the case, it becomes even more convoluted.

Meanwhile, in a plot line carried over from the previous McBain novel, Widows, the man accused of killing Carella’s father goes on trial. Against Carella’s advice, his mother insists on attending the trial and the chapters detailing the trial are interspersed with the chapters describing the investigation. Both take a toll on Carella, but both are interesting and this is a very good entry in the 87th Precinct series.

I’m an Ed McBain freak. I can recall only one book in this series I didn’t care for and finally skimmed through. In this one, McBain weaves several threads. Carella attends the trial of his father’s killer (the one he didn’t kill when he had the chance), there are hints of trouble in his sister’s marriage, and a woman has so far escaped several attempts on her life. You’d think these novels would be a natural for Hollywood, since they’re structured cinematically, with jump cuts and fades, but so far the films have been few and, at best, okay. McBain often goes for larger themes, not always successfully, and here it’s the provisional nature of justice. McBain pulls it off. Snappy prose, a great talent for dialogue and narrative pace, and a feel for the ways cops cope with job, friends, and family.

Well, I know he wanted to be surprising, but he wasn’t. Each twist and turn was announced well beforehand.

That said, the character development was OK. You really need to read Widows beforehand to understand one of the storylines more fully.

I don’t know why ever encounter between men and women need to get graphic. I’d sacrifice a few pages in exchange for slightly less explicit sexuality.

Ed McBain wrote dozens of 87th Precinct books and all of them are enjoyed by his fans. Many of them are just so-so. Some are very good, including “Kiss”. Unlike most McBain books, the crime to be solved does not happen at the beginning of the book, it happens at the end. The detectives know a murder will happen. They know who the killer will be. Cops and killer play a chess game with a life in the balance.

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