Showing results by author "Ed McBain" in All Categories

It’s like an old-time gangster movie: A speeding car, a blazing gun…and suddenly a guy walking down the street without a care in the world is lying in the gutter without a head on his shoulders. But who pulled the high-powered trigger that turned Sy Kramer from a blackmailer into a chalk outline? Was it the politician’s wife with a pornographic past? The soda-pop tycoon desperate to keep a business-busting bungle bottled up? Or was it whoever was paying Kramer a small fortune to hide what must’ve been one very big bad?

It’s Christmas time and Detective Carella gets assigned three murders - including a best-selling author of ghost stories - and is soon after ghosts, mediums, and a crazed killer.

A woman is murdered in a liquor store, hurtling the men from the 87th Precinct into an investigation of her secret lives and many possible enemies. Faced with a host of suspects—from the woman’s former mother-in-law to her ex-husband, employer, and a string of boyfriends—the detectives find themselves with a victim whose identity spurns all conventional definition.

With crooks to cuff and pimps to put behind bars, detectives Carella and Meyer of the 87th Precinct simply don’t have the time or patience to deal with a prank caller - even if he has phoned murder threats to two dozen local shop owners. What they fail to realize, however, is they aren’t dealing with a heckler who’s ringing round for kicks but rather a modern-day Moriarty known only as the Deaf Man - and these phone calls are just his first move in a calculated scheme to pull off the bank robbery of the decade.

A piece of a torn picture in the hand of a dead man puts the detectives of the 87th Precinct on the trail of $750,000 missing from a six-year-old bank heist. With relentless pace and genius plotting, this installment of the 87th Precinct series weaves an unforgettable tale of greed and murder.

A beat cop winds up on the trail of a deadly mugger, but when it suddenly gets personal, his own life might be the next thing to be snatched….

When a young woman’s body is fished out of the 87th Precinct’s river, a street-wise detective is on the clock to find the con man who killed her before he strikes again.

When a blind couple is murdered, Steve Carella’s only clue is the 10-year-old dream one of the victims had. This dream will lead him to a killer whose secret is worth murder. This lastest installment in the 87th Precinct series is a labyrinthine thriller that will leave listeners breathless.

A calypso singer fresh off a gig walks home in a downpour, when shots tear through his head like steel rain. A hooker out on the street in the same miserable weather doesn’t know her final trick will be her last. What brings these two sad ends together… the same gun.

It is stormy in the 87th Precinct and with every hour that passes, every minute the killer stays on the loose, the trail is only going to get colder.

A bitterly cold night offers up a body turned blue - not frozen, but swinging from a rope in a dank basement. The dead teen seems like a clear case of suicide, but Detective Steve Carella and Lieutenant Peter Byrnes find a few facts out of place, and an autopsy confirms their suspicions. The boy hadn’t hung himself but OD’d on heroin before an unknown companion strung him up to hide the true cause of death.

>"I will kill the Lady tonight at 8. What can you do about it?" This is the message on a pasted-up letter handed to Desk Sergeant Dave Murchison at 8:00 a.m. The detectives at the 87th Precinct have gotten these types of threats before, but there’s something different about this one. Something ominous. Problem is, the city contains millions of women—finding the right one in 12 hours is like finding a needle in a haystack.

When a sniper begins gunning down cops from the 87th Precinct in cold blood, it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to solve the case. With three cops already dead, Carella delves into the city’s underworld to search for the killer.

Her name is Virginia Dodge. And she’s here to kill Detective Steve Carella. An ordinary day at the 87th Precinct is about to take a turn for the worse when Dodge shows up to put a bullet in Carella’s head. And she doesn’t care if she has to take all the men in the 87th with her to do it. Armed with a homemade bomb, a handgun, and a bottle of nitroglycerine hidden in her purse, Virginia holds the entire squad room hostage as she waits for Carella. And no one is leaving until he shows up to meet his maker.

A killer is out for blood, and it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to bring him in. But a shocking surprise awaits when a survivor fingers the suspect in a lineup.

The murder of a priest in one of the 87th Precinct’s parishes sends Detectives Carella and Hawes on a troubling investigation where everyone has a secret and the truth hides within the lies.

The book behind the major motion picture High and Low, King's Ransom is the tenth book in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. Here, McBain delivers the full-throttle action and suspense we have come to expect. When a wealthy businessman is faced with a kidnapping, the ransom could ruin his biggest deal ever—unless Detective Steve Carella can find the culprits before the kidnapping turns to murder.

During a sweltering heat wave, Detectives Carella and Kling try to make sense of an artist who turned off his air conditioning to commit suicide - but Kling has an even deadlier problem on his hands.

Two perps - one a serial killer and the other a rapist who revisits his victims - test the limits of the 87th Precinct’s detectives as they race to catch these maniacs loose on the city’s streets.

The only person Detective Bert Kling cares about in this world is his fiancée, Claire Townsend. And when her body is found slain at the infamous “bookstore massacre,” Bert and every detective in the precinct is determined to get the man responsible. To do so, they’re going to have to figure out the connection between a junkie, a professor, a bookstore owner, and the beautiful fiancée of a cop. When they do, there will be nowhere for the killer to hide. This is a devastating look at the personal side of a hardened detective.

At midnight, one day dies as another comes to life. For the men of the 87th Precinct, they all bleed together in a never-ending cycle of crime and punishment. But every now and then, a day stands out as more unusual than the others. This is one of those days. Carella and Hawes investigate a murder; Kling delves into a store-front church bombing; Meyer checks out a house haunted by larcenous ghosts; Willis and Genero look into a naked hippie’s four-story death fall; Delgado takes an assault case in the Puerto Rican barrio; and Kapek hunts a man and woman mugging team.