Killer's Choice: Ed McBain

As the story opens, a liquor store has been robbed. The saleswoman, Annie Boone, is dead of four bullet wounds, and a lot of damage was done to the store, including most of the merchandise. The store owner is moaning about the damage and the loss of most of his stock, and seems to care little about his employee's death. As the detectives of the 87th Precinct investigate this crime, they meet many people who know Annie but each has a different picture of her. The homicide victim is just as much a mystery as who killed her.

One difference between the 87th Precinct books and other police procedural mysteries I have read is that we see and follow several of the detectives working cases, often in pairs. In many other series, the focus is on one policeman or two partners. True, in this series Steve Carella is a central character, but at least at this point in the series, everyone plays their part and we follow extraneous events in each of their lives.

In this book, the 87th Precinct loses one policeman to a freakish incident, he just sort of wanders onto the site of a robbery at the wrong time. Also a new detective, Cotton Hawes, is added to the precinct; he has a bit of trouble fitting in because he comes from a precinct set in a nicer section of the city, which had fewer homicides to deal with. Also featured in Killer's Choice are Meyer Meyer and Bert Kling.

The lovely descriptive passages that seemed to be missing in book 4, The Con Man, are back again in this book. Ed McBain also tells the story well through dialog. The policemen are believable characters, with flaws and individual personalities.

I am reading this series in order from the beginning, and this is the fifth book that I have read. The series started in 1956, and this book came out in 1957. The early books in the series are short, quick reads. (McBain says he wrote those in a month.) There were over 50 books in the series and some of the later books are quite long. I started late with this series but it is nice to know I have many more to read. It will be interesting to see how the series and the policemen change as the series evolves.

See these reviews by:

• Sergio at Tipping my Fedora,
• John Grant at Goodreads,
• and Admiral.Ironbonds at Battered, Tattered, Yellowed, & Creased.

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Publisher:   Permabooks, 1962 (orig. pub. 1957)
Length:       147 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       87th Precinct, #5
Setting:      Isola, fictional city loosely based on New York City
Genre:        Police procedural
Source:      I purchased my copy.