Once again, we welcome back Kevin Tipple with a review. Catch up with more reviews, book news, and interesting links at his blog, Kevin's Corner.
“So if you came
here thinking, Gee, there’s going to be a neat little murder takes place in a
town house and some blue-haired lady will solve it in her spare time when she
isn’t tending her rose garden, then you came to the wrong city at the wrong
time of the year. In this city, things were happening all the time, all over
the place, and you didn’t have to be a detective to smell evil in the wind."
(The Big Bad City, Page 32)
The detectives of the 87th precinct, let
alone the other precincts of New York City have their hands full. That was
before a suspect in the precinct cage knifed a fellow suspect before being shot
by Detective Carella. That resulted in two teams of paramedics being brought in
and the obligatory visit from Internal Affairs Detectives on a mission to
determine what the heck happened. It doesn’t help that it is August and the air
conditioning in the precinct house is seriously on the fritz.
Then there are the murders.
One murder is the dead young lady found in Grover Park in
front of a park bench. One could tell by looking at her throat she had been
strangled. Detectives Brown and Carella had been ready to call it a day and go
home when their boss, Lieutenant Brynes sent them out on the case. A case that
is going to become incredibly complex.
The burglar nicknamed “The Cookie Boy” continues to do his deal
of breaking into places and stealing stuff before leaving a container of homemade
chocolate chip cookies behind. Detectives Mayer and Kling have been on that
case quite a while. A case that may now involve two murders.
The detectives are not the only ones on the hunt in the
city. So too is a man bent on revenge. His target is one of the detectives of
the 87th precinct. Like some of the other two legged predators
that travel through New York City, murder is on his mind.
The Big Bad City: A Novel Of The 87th Precinct is a complicated police procedural with many moving parts.
Like others in the series, it is a solidly good read. As noted in the above
quote, this is not a read for cozy readers who prefer sanitized language and
situations.
The Big Bad
City: A Novel Of The 87th Precinct
Ed McBain
Simon &
Schuster
January 1999
ISBN#
0-684-85512-7
Hardback (also
available in various formats including paperback and digital)
272 Pages
$25.00
My reading copy came from the downtown branch of the Dallas
Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2019
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