Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Rewind by Allison Winn Scotch

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Rewind by Allison Winn Scotch:   Reviewed by Christy             It's December 1999, and Frankie and Ezra are headed back to their old stomping grounds to celebrat...

Beneath the Stains of Time: Set in Stone: "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" (1999) by MORI Hiroshi

Beneath the Stains of Time: Set in Stone: "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Rath...: Hiroshi Mori is a Japanese engineer who reportedly started writing detective stories when he was an associate professor, at Nagoya Univ...

Beneath the Stains of Time: The Worm Tunnel (1999) by Michael Dahl

Beneath the Stains of Time: The Worm Tunnel (1999) by Michael Dahl: I began this month with a review of the fourth title in Michael Dahl's five-book Finnegan "Finn" Zwake series, The Viking C...

FFB Review: The Big Bad City by Ed McBain

Back several weeks ago, Barry Ergang offered his review of The Big Bad City by Ed McBain who was also known under his legally adopted name of Evan Hunter. I realized when I was reading Barry’s FFB review that I had not read this one. As it was available from the Dallas Public Library in hardback, I picked it up and read the majority of it while at UTD waiting for Scott. For the full list of reading suggestions for this first Friday in September 2019, head over to Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom Blog.

“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 87^th 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 87^th 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 87^th 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 87^th Precinct

Ed McBain

https://www.edmcbain.com

Simon & Schuster

https://simonandschuster.com

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

FFB Review: THE BIG BAD CITY (1999) by Ed McBain Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Barry Ergang is back on the blog today with an all new review for FFB. For the full list of reading suggestions, check out Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom blog.

THE BIG BAD CITY (1999) by Ed McBain

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

The dead woman who “lay sprawled in front of a bench in Grover Park” in the 87^th Precinct “was wearing a white blouse and pale blue slacks, white socks and scuffed Reeboks.” The detectives assigned to the case are Steve Carella and Arthur Brown. Who the woman actually is and what the detectives uncover about her and her past takes them into the pasts of other suspects and events with some surprising revelations.

Meanwhile, the man who murdered Carella’s father has been persuaded that he needs to do the same to Carella lest he wind up in prison for life or dead at the hands of other inmates, and begins to stalk his next victim.

At the same time, detectives Meyer Meyer and Bert Kling pursue the burglar who has come to be known as The Cookie Boy because he leaves a batch of home-made chocolate chip cookies at the homes of his targets. A man who prides himself on his scrupulous and considerate approach to burglary, as well as on his love for baking, he finds himself on the run when events turn catastrophic during a particular foray.

A Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, Ed McBain is probably the most well-known of the many pseudonyms of the versatile novelist Evan Hunter. The 87^th Precinct series has long ranked as one of the greatest series—perhaps the greatest—of police procedural novels, notable for its three-dimensional characterizations via internal and external dialogue, impeccable pacing, drama, suspense, and humor.

Raw language and racial slurs occur as part of some characterizations, so readers easily offended should avoid this one. To those not offended, this is an easy recommendation.

© 2019 Barry Ergang

Some of Derringer winner Barry Ergang's work is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Day the Music Died by Ed Gorman

The Day the Music Died by Ed Gorman (Carroll & Graf, 1999) is the first of 10 books about Sam McCain, a lawyer in Black River Falls, Iowa. The small town already has more lawyers than it can readily support so Sam ekes out a living as an investigator for Judge Esme Anne Whitney, who shoots rubber bands at him whenever they meet in her chambers. It’s February 1959, and Sam is stunned to hear about the death of Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, and Buddy Holly in a plane crash, just days after Sam took co-worker Pamela Forrest to what turned out to be Buddy Holly’s last concert.

Judge Whitney pulls him away from participating in the national mourning for the rock idol to look into the death of her ne’er-do-well nephew’s wife. His task is complicated by the nephew’s suicide almost immediately thereafter, which solves the case as far as Police Chief Cliff Sykes is concerned. Sykes loathes Judge Whitney and her family and is delighted for the opportunity to publicly humiliate them. When Sam takes Judge Whitney’s part in believing the nephew is innocent, Sam also incurs the police chief’s ire.

Sam’s personal life isn’t going much better. His teenage sister is pregnant, afraid to tell their parents, and is wondering how to get an abortion. Sam is terrified she will fall prey to a back-street abortionist and doesn’t know what to do. The woman he loves, Pamela Forrest, is madly in love with Stu Grant, who is engaged to someone else, while Mary Travers is desperately in love with Sam, who isn’t especially interested in her, so she has accepted the local pharmacist’s proposal of marriage, although she doesn’t care about him. It is hard to understand just how so many mis-matches are possible in such a small social circle.

This series incisively captures the cultural changes of the late 1950s and 1960s and their impact on countless small towns in the heartland of the nation. In a sociological timeline it ranged from the death of Buddy Holly (“The Day the Music Died”) through the civil rights movement and burgeoning feminism to the Vietnamese conflict. Ed Gorman (1941-2016) grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which informed his on-point descriptions of small-town life. He was a well-known genre writer and short fiction anthologist and the recipient of multiple literary awards. I consider this series some of the best of his very good work.

·         Hardcover: 212 pages

·         Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub; 1st Carroll & Graf ed edition (January 1, 1999)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0786705698

·         ISBN-13: 978-0786705696

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

FFB Review: THE CROSSWORD MURDER (1999) by Nero Blanc Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Barry is back today to get your 2019 started off right. Make sure you head over to Patti Abbott’s blog for the full list of FFB suggestions today. GO COWBOYS!

THE CROSSWORD MURDER (1999) by Nero Blanc

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

As I’ve pointed out in at least one or two other book reviews, the late, great Johnny Carson frequently said about comedy routines and sketches, “If you buy the premise, you’ll buy the bit.” Published under the pseudonym Nero Blanc by the husband-and-wife team of Steve Zettler and Cordelia Frances Biddle, The Crossword Murder is the first in their series of “crossword” mysteries and, though not really a comedy, nevertheless fits into Carson’s general definition.

The very wealthy Thompson Briephs doesn’t need a regular workingman’s salary. A man who lives a kinky lifestyle, he is the crossword puzzle editor of the Newcastle Herald. He lives in a custom-designed house on an island called Windword, the house a modern replication of the royal home of the Minoan civilization, right down to Daedalus’s labyrinth, and loaded with valuable antiquities. Blackmailed and eventually murdered, his remaining crossword puzzles eventually prove essential to the murderer’s identification.

Yet despite the fact that, according to local newspapers, the demise of this nephew of federal Senator Hal Crane has been attributed to heart failure, Brieph’s mother, Sara Crane Briephs, has hired former Newcastle police detective Rosco Polycrates, now a private investigator, to investigate the death of her son, who has had “no history of coronary disease”—this in opposition to the objections of the senator’s right-hand man, one John “Bulldog” Roth.

Rosco’s investigation inevitably leads him to Annabella Graham (a.k.a. Belle), the deviled-egg loving and pretty-but-married crossword editor of the Evening Crier. Belle is immediately and enthusiastically determined to help Rosco, especially as Briephs’ puzzles surface and she solves them, certain that the decedent left vital clues to his slayer. The fact that she and Rosco are attracted to one another adds to the story’s complications and subplots.

Rosco has a number of suspects to consider, and the reader is supplied with the four crucial crosswords, as well as a bonus puzzle, to solve if he or she wants to. I correctly guessed, rather than deduced from the crosswords I solved, who the murderer was, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment.   

I remember seeing paperback editions of this and other titles in this series years ago, but despite being a long-time crossword fan, I never bought any. When I discovered they’re now available as e-books, I decided to try one, expecting—as I had previously, and thus didn’t buy—an utter lightweight populated with cardboard characters and pedestrian prose. I admit to pleasant surprise at finding a novel populated with individualized characters and situations rendered in intelligent, colorful prose. I further admit I’ll probably read some of the other titles in this series, though I seriously have to wonder how many murder mystery solutions can plausibly relate to—and/or solve—crossword puzzles. There’s a poser for you who are reading this!   

© 2019 Barry Ergang

Some of Derringer-winner’s Barry Ergang’s work can be found at Amazon and Smashwords.com.