Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear [Mass Market Paperback]

Ed McBain (Author)

Book Description

Series: Matthew Hope Mysteries | Publication Date: July 1, 1998

Lainie Commins, a freelance designer of children's toys, hires attorney Matthew Hope for a lawsuit against her old employers, Brett and Etta Toland. At stake are the lucrative rights to Gladly, a teddy bear with crossed eyes and corrective lenses. It's a straightforward case -- until Brett Toland is shot in the throat aboard his luxury yacht and Lainie becomes the chief suspect. From elegant canals to sunbaked ghettos, McBain has done for Florida's Gulf Coast what he did for the 87th Precinct -- created a teeming world where justice is elusive and where the saints and sinners are often one and the same.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This time around Matthew Hope finds himself in southern Florida and in a mess. A woman he's representing is suing a toy manufacturer she says stole her idea. The problem is, the president of the toy company was murdered, and guess who's the prime suspect? The other problem--or problems--is that Hope's primary private investigator winds up on a boat kidnapped by drug runners leaving Hope, who is still smarting from gunshot wounds he collected in other adventures, to contact by himself the subjects for the investigation, all of whom reside on boats. Got that? He does get some help, in the form of an old-school PI named Guthrie Lamb, who throws in his techniques to try to crack this rather nutty case. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Hero/narrator Matthew Hope, recovered from gunshots and a coma (There Was a Little Girl, 1994) and, true to his earlier resolve, practicing only civil law in (fictional) Calusa, Fla., represents the plaintiff in a suit involving the eponymous teddy bear, named after a mis-heard line in a hymn ("Gladly the cross I'd bear"). Young toy designer Lainie Commins is suing her ex-boss, toy manufacturer Brett Toland, for copyright and patent infringement, contending that his cross-eyed bear is a direct steal from hers. When Brett is found shot to death on his yacht, Lainie is arrested and charged with murder. She persuades Hope to represent her even as, we later learn, she commits the first legal sin, lying to her lawyer. From mansions to shacks and yacht club to sleazy venues for lingerie "models," McBain gives us a tour of Gulf Coast Florida that's seldom grand. Unable to reach his usual investigators (the main subplot has PI Warren Chambers urging his colleague Toots Kiley to kick her crack cocaine habit cold turkey), Hope hires 60-something Guthrie Lamb, an old-style PI with major male chauvinist traits. McBain, as he has for more than 40 years, keeps his readers riveted through this entire, satisfying tale.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446604941
• ISBN-13: 978-0446604949
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,019,902 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

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gladly we read Ed McBain, November 11, 2000

By 

charles falk (Novato, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear (Hardcover)

Ed McBain is the best and this is one of his best. Matthew Hope has two cases, but only one client. The first case is Lainie Commins' battle with a big toy company over trademark rights to a cross-eyed teddy bear. The second is defending her aginst charges that she has murdered the owner of the toy company. He is also battling the after-effects of his own recent near-death experience. Matthew has to work through all these difficulties without the help of his favorite PI's Warren Chambers and Toots Kiley who are embroiled in a life-threatening subplot of their own. This complcated story is played out against the backdrop of McBain's beautifully rendered city of Colussa, Florida.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Carefully Written Than 87th Precinct Books, January 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear (Mass Market Paperback)

I enjoyed reading this book. I am pretty sure that McBain takes more time writing his Hope series. There's liitle of the flippant dialogue and other narrative devices that often mar the putative reality of the 87th books. McBain's novel (not McBain necessarily) wants you to examine the complexities of human beings--in this novel: Hope, Laine--both in some depth. But all characters invite consideration and really seem to blend seamlessly into the narrative (e.g. Guthrie, Diaz, and Tootsie). The casual connection between pornography and a unique children's teddy bear merits a second (third) look. Characters in this book are generally not nice, but are a mix of good and bad, right and wrong. Many readers will pooh-pooh the secondary plot with Warren and Tootsie, but it is in this world (the boat out on the open sea is a microcosm of our world) that seems so surreal, but really is "life-lived" and the "thing itself" that
we glimpse a human being staring intently at evil (crack and/or cocaine) and saying "you aren't going to beat us this time" He stands strong, helps his addicted friend and gave me some hope that good still may triumph, at least aspirationally, in this world, where my 50 plus years on earth has seen a lot of nastiness, betrayal and other unalloyed forms of evil. But a little good along the way. I read Money, Money, Money just before this one. I enjoyed it, but Gladly has legitimate edginess (not too overdone for a novel) and a kind of crunchy soulfulness that makes you applaud what Etta did to her husband. Again right over wrong; good over evil. Money also had its virtues but was too jauntily frivilous about certain things (lion) and maudlin about human relations: Carrella, mother and wife. My first Hope book; hope others are as good. Oh, I almost forgot. McBain's handling of Hope's coma was excellent and was wrapped up beautifully (understated and clever)at the end of the book. I have read 9 McBain books; Gladly (and just a little of Vespers) is the only one where when I finished the book, I said a little prayer and reached for Yeats's poems. WEll Done.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fan from IL who was very GLAD to have read this Hope book, May 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear (Mass Market Paperback)

I loved reading this book. I forced myself not to skip to the end of this book because I wanted to enjoy the ride as long as possible. McBain always teaches you something i.e. strabismusly challenged, INS in Big Bad City (which I already knew) and the subtle variations of the definition of Nocturne (I give Nocturne ***** also). I even went back and read The Black Board Jungle and enjoyed it.

Criminal Conversation and Privileged Conversation are also excellent books.

McBain/Hunter is an absolute gem. I always feel I've gained an experience from his books.