The Big Bad City [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Ed McBain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1998

You don't kill a nun in the 87th... not and get away with it.

One thing you have to understand about this city is: it's dangerous. Never mind the reassuring bulletins from the mayor's office. Just watch the first ten minutes of the 11:00 o'clock news every night and you'll learn in the wink of an eye exactly what the people of this city are capable of doing to each other. And 11:00 is when the city learned about a nun strangled in the park.

Detectives Carella and Brown of the 87th Precinct catch the case. Who'd kill a nun? Why? Their search for answers will lead them far from the big bad city, into the South, into the past --- into a dark moment in the nun's life when she wasn't Sister Mary Vincent. It was a moment when she bore witness to evil.

But Sister Mary's murder isn't the only think concerning the men of the 87th. They're also hunting for the Cookie Boy, a burglar who may have graduated from taking people's property to taking their lives. And sliding through the city's shadows is Sonny Cole, a thug with murder on his hands and the murder of detective Stephen Louis Carella on his mind.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ed McBain is the only American winner of the coveted Diamond Dagger Award, and he is also a past recipient of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. So, when a reader picks up the latest installment of McBain's 87th Precinct series, the bar is set pretty high. But with The Big Bad City, McBain meets expectations.

In the opening pages, Steve Carella and Artie Brown return to the department with 9 basketball players (the 10th player was murdered) only to discover a knife fight erupting in a holding cell. It's a steamy August night, and Carella and Detective Parker end up having to shoot one of the fighters to cool things down. Then Meyer and Kling enter the scene; they're hot in pursuit of the Cookie Boy, a thief who leaves chocolate-chip cookies at every crime sight. Before the interminable day is done, Carella and Brown are called out to Grover Park to investigate a homicide. A nun has been strangled to death, but she's no ordinary Sister. She's got signs of a breast augmentation operation that hint at a sordid past. Finally, readers are privy to a conversation between Juju and Sonny. Sonny killed a cop's dad, and Juju is convinced that the police will bend the rules to see that Sonny winds up dead. Juju insists that the only way out of the death trap is to kill the cop first. The officer's name is Steve Carella. And all of this happens in the first 15 pages.

McBain is one of the artists of the police procedural. Though his city is fictional, it breathes with the darkness and gritty reality of many American cities. He enters the minds and hearts of his characters to uncover the daily insecurities that accompany the work of policemen. Readers new to the 87th Precinct will want to venture back to such tales as 1956's Cop Hater, 1964's Ax, and 1965's Doll, among the 47 installments in this series. Those who've been along for the ride will be happy they did not give up their seat. --Patrick O'Kelley --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

McBain has been writing his 87th Precinct stories since 1956, but Isola's cops and crooks remain as fresh as rain. In the 49th book in the series, detectives Steve Carella and Artie Brown are searching for the killer of a nun. An autopsy reveals that the strangled woman had breast implants and an unconventional background, moving between her pious, charitable order and a freewheeling secular life. Other oddities are plaguing the 87th, too. The hood who recently murdered Carella's father is walking around loose because an inept prosecutor blew the case. Now the thug is stalking Carella, and Carella's sister wants to marry the prosecutor. Meanwhile, detectives Meyer Meyer and Bert King are tracking the Cookie Boy, a burglar who leaves a little box of home-baked chocolate chip cookies at his victims' homes. His crimes escalate to felony murder when he interrupts a tryst and things go very bad, very quickly. As always, McBain invests the many story lines with off-the-wall humor (nun jokes abound), a startlingly real cast of suspects and witnesses and a terrifically entertaining mix of cop dialogue, gritty city atmosphere and action. McBain is so good, he ought to be arrested.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio; Abridged edition (December 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559275367
• ISBN-13: 978-1559275361
• Product Dimensions: 16.4 x 11 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,074,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ed McBain was one of the many pen names of the successful and prolific crime fiction author Evan Hunter (1926 - 2005). Born Salvatore Lambino in New York, McBain served aboard a destroyer in the US Navy during World War II and then earned a degree from Hunter College in English and Psychology. After a short stint teaching in a high school, McBain went to work for a literary agency in New York, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and P.G. Wodehouse all the while working on his own writing on nights and weekends. He had his first breakthrough in 1954 with the novel The Blackboard Jungle, which was published under his newly legal name Evan Hunter and based on his time teaching in the Bronx.

Perhaps his most popular work, the 87th Precinct series (released mainly under the name Ed McBain) is one of the longest running crime series ever published, debuting in 1956 with Cop Hater and featuring over fifty novels. The series is set in a fictional locale called Isola and features a wide cast of detectives including the prevalent Detective Steve Carella.

McBain was also known as a screenwriter. Most famously he adapted a short story from Daphne Du Maurier into the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). In addition to writing for the silver screen, he wrote for many television series, including Columbo and the NBC series 87th Precinct (1961-1962), based on his popular novels.

McBain was awarded the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986 by the Mystery Writers of America and was the first American to receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. He passed away in 2005 in his home in Connecticut after a battle with larynx cancer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ed McBain is a masterful suspense writer, March 15, 2000

By 

Tomitra Latimer (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big Bad City (87th Precinct Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book was the first book I read by Mr. McBain. And after Icompleted this novel, it was not my last. This book was fabulous,decriptive, well written prose, engaging, humane protagonists, fast moving and gripping plots--a myriad of plots! I could not put this book down. This is one of my favorite books ever. I really came to know and like many of McBain's characters... so much so, after I completed the novel--in record breaking time--I immediately went out and purchased McBain's other novels of the 87th precinct. Read this and then rush out to read his others--you will not be disappointed.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A New Classic From the Master, August 14, 2000

By 

Larry Eischen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big Bad City (87th Precinct Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

One can't pick up an 87th Precinct novel without reflecting that it's been written by the man who is generally considered the master of the police procedural. Yes, there's the nun murder and the "cookie boy" burglar, but the heart of this novel is a small time hood's stalking of Steve Carella. The only reason the punk gives is that Carella may some day come looking for him and Carella's death will take care of that. In the meanwhile, we get Carella reflecting on aging and recalling great moments in 87th Precinct history (at one point, the reverie goes back to 'Cop Hater', the 1st 87th novel). While reliving these moments, I realized that I was again at the feet of the Master. Loved this book and I hope to see a bangup 50th novel for the boys at the 87th.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Confirmed excellence in the genre, August 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The BIG BAD CITY (87th Precinct Mysteries) (Hardcover)

All of Ed McBain/Evan Hunter's production is on my shelves. Not only is he a master in the development of plots and in the description of police operational methods, he also keeps me updated in modern English. I think the town of the 87th Precinct is a New York rotated clockwise of 90°. Mr McBain/Evan Hunter is one of the most entertaining writers I ever found and I always look for new production of his whenever I enter a bookstore.