Lady Killer

This novel, which chronicles the better part of one day in the 87th Precinct, contains three critical elements juxtaposed with the well-known Detectives Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer, Hal Willis, Bert Kling, Lieutenant Pete Byrnes and Sergeant Dave Murchison. Element one is time. The cops of the 87th receive a note in the morning saying,”I will kill ‘The Lady’ at eight tonight. What can you do about it?” From then on the detectives are fighting the clock to save a life by stopping a self-proclaimed killer. Element two is legwork. Always well-represented in this series, the legwork is critically important in determining both the intended victim and the killer and any clues to their respective identities. The execution of running down this information can be repetitive, mundane, humorous or downright dangerous, but it is always interesting and entertaining. Even the results gleaned by Lieutenant Sam Grossman and his people in the lab at headquarters is enlightening. Element three is the introduction of Detective Cotton Hawes. Although Lt. Pete Byrnes considers Carella almost like a son, this novel allows, Hawes, a transferee from the 30th Precinct, to shine. Still learning the ropes at the 87th, Hawes definitely leaves his stamp on this case by dealing with Fats Donner, the U.S. Navy, Mama Ida, Christine Maxwell, Lady Astor and eventually the killer himself, all while answering questions about the white streak of hair above his left temple which contrasts the original red. This is indeed a police procedural but Mr. McBain again delivers a properly surprising twist at the ending of this thoroughly enjoyable reading journey. I highly recommend it.

Written in 1957 as a paperback, the author was strictly limited to 180 pages, no more and no less per Mr. McBain so this is a quick read, but an entertaining one. A kid walks into the 87th Precinct station house with a note threatening a murder at 8pm that night and so begins the chase. Who is the intended victim? Who is the kid? And, of course, who is the Perp? All in the space of eight hours, or more to the point, 180 pages. No time for the usual McBain tangents, although he does manage to sneak a few short dalliances into the investigation. Not a clue as to the outcome until the very end.

If you like a shorter story for a long flight, this will suit you just fine or if you enjoy McBain you won’t be disappointed.

First published in 1958, this is the eighth entry in Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series. By this point, the main characters were fairly well-established and needed no introduction, but the book itself is something of an oddity in the series in that most of the books have the detectives of the 87th working at least a couple of cases. This book focuses on a single case, worked by all of the detectives over a the course of a long and frustrating twelve-hour day.

As the team assembles in the morning, a young boy delivers a printed message to the desk sergeant. The man who wrote the message announces that he is going to kill “the Lady” at 8:00 that evening. The detectives have no idea if this is a practical joke or not, but naturally, they have to take the threat seriously.

In a desperate race against time the detectives work along parallel tracks, trying to determine the identity of the victim and that of the man who intends to kill her. As always, McBain provides an interesting and entertaining ride, although this would not rank among the better books in the series.

In a new introduction, McBain explains that he wrote the book under a deadline, in just nine days. His contract provided that he had to produce a manuscript of 180 pages–no more, no less–and that is exactly what he did. In order to do so, though, he added a lot of filler to what otherwise could have been a fairly short novella. There are a lot of extended descriptions of the weather and of various characters where McBain is obviously just attempting to fill space in an effort to hit his 180-page target and to get the book done as quickly as possible.

In less capable hands, this schedule would have almost certainly produced a book that would hardly be worth reading. But McBain is so good that even a book written under this kind of pressure turns out to be very entertaining and demonstrates what a talented and prolific writer could do “back in the day” when pulp novelists regularly produced several books a year. I wouldn’t recommend that someone new to the series start with this book, but fans of the series will want to seek it out.

I have downloaded 37 books by Ed McBain and have read 34 of them. Lady Killer is a crime fiction about the law enforcement officers at the 87TH precinct in some fictitious city. The books are all quick reads that serve as good filler material in between longer novels. All the books are good, nothing exceptional, but the reader develops a familiarity with the police personnel. Written at a time when crime novels were an attraction, as were westerns in their day. It is easy to picture the places and the people in the stories. The writing is clean and quickly draws the reader into the observer mode.

I have read this series before and usually like the character development and interaction between Meyer Meyer and Steve Carella and the rest of the detectives but somehow, this one seemed very old and dated.

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