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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The history of a great American crime author, July 13, 2006
This review is from: Learning to Kill: Stories (Hardcover)
Just before his sad death last year, Ed McBain oversaw the compilation of twenty-five of his earliest stories. This collection, Learning to Kill, has just been published, and it's a wonderful look back at (so my wife says) one of the best crime writers ever. Yes, that's right. I've never read an Ed McBain book before, so I probably didn't get as much out of this book as true fans would have, but even I can see the seeds to what became a brilliant career in these stories. All of these stories were published between 1952 and 1957, and they run the gamut from private detectives (a genre he swiftly removed himself from because he felt that only cops should be investigating murders) to "loose cannons" to the general cops and robbers that eventually became his bread and butter. One thing I can definitely say about this book is that it has increased my desire to read some of his 87th Precinct novels.
Learning to Kill starts out with a wonderful introduction, where McBain details the history of his start in the writing business: responding to a blind ad in the New York Times for an editor that turned out to be from a literary agency. He almost turned it down when he discovered it was an agency, but quickly changed his mind when he found out why the person he was replacing was leaving. It turns out that he was making too much money writing his own stories to make staying in that position worth it. McBain jumped at the chance, and the rest is history. Once he was established, he began submitting his own work as well as handling other clients, and many of these stories are published in this book. The book is appropriately named as he was literally learning and honing his craft here. Along with the introduction to the book, I found the previews of the stories very interesting too, as he tells where the story was published (mostly in "Manhunt" magazine, but there are a few others) and gives some background on it. This background, written fifty years after the fact, is definitely intriguing.
The meat of the book, however, is the stories, and there are definitely some good ones here. The book is divided into subject sections: Kids, Women in Jeopardy, Private Eyes, Cops and Robbers, Innocent Bystanders, Loose Cannons, and Gangs. Most impressive to me were the ones dealing with cops, as that seems to be where he's most comfortable (as fifty years of 87th Precinct novels can attest). Each of these was written with ease and just flew off the page. I really found it interesting that he said he didn't do research because he wasn't getting paid enough for each story to do much research. All of his police procedures were taken from Dragnet and other outside sources. None of the stories in this section have any real twists and turns, instead being straight police procedurals where the cops do the digging and eventually find the killer. While they're not complex, I found the simplicity refreshing.
There are other standout stories in the collection too, however. Most powerful (though unfortunately, a bit clichéd) is the last story in the book, in the "Gangs" section. It's called "The Last Spin," and details two kids in rival gangs who have agreed to sort out the gangs' differences by playing a game of Russian Roulette. In the process of the game, they get to know each other. The ending is inevitable, but I found the power in this story in the relationship that develops between these two kids. The writing is evocative, and while the ending is a foregone conclusion, that almost adds to the tragedy in the story. Another strong story is the other gang story, "On the Sidewalk, Bleeding." A young gang member lies bleeding in an alleyway, another victim in ongoing rivalry between the two gangs. At first, he doesn't believe he's dying, just in pain, and he wishes that somebody would just come to help him. As he lies there, a few people do stumble upon him, but for one reason or another, are unable (or unwilling) to help him, so he just lies there reflecting. He comes to a revelation, but the end of the story (I won't tell you if he lives or dies) makes that revelation moot, instead demonstrating that things will stay the same on the streets. Again, the writing is gripping and even though nothing "happens" (it's just a boy lying bleeding on the street), the tale of this kid's life, his dreams, and his desire to become more than just a "color" keeps the reader going.
I do have to say there were some stories in here that I actively disliked, but I think it's telling that it seems he never really went back to the genre. All of these stories are in the "Loose Cannons" section, and all of them are about seriously disturbed men who end up killing somebody because of their psychoses. I didn't find any of the subjects (I can't really say "protagonists") interesting and they were slightly disturbing. Since I don't really go for those kinds of stories, there was nothing really in this section to grab me.
Other than those stories, though, every one of the stories in Learning to Kill had at least some interest in it. Some were not as well-written as others, but all of them held my attention and the combination of them made me almost race through the book. It was interesting to take a look back at crime writing from the 1950s, especially when he made reference to "the war." In this day of CSI and its spin-off television shows, I was intrigued by the way the lab was handled in these stories. It was a different age, and these stories reflect that. Learning to Kill is a fascinating look at a developing author.
David Roy
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Pulp fiction" at it's best, July 24, 2006
This review is from: Learning to Kill: Stories (Hardcover)
Long before Quentin Tarantino popularized the term, there once was a real world of "pulp fiction." For the first half of the 20th century, magazines printed on cheap "pulp" paper with names like Black Mask, Manhunt and Argosy thrilled readers with lurid covers and often equally lurid tales of crime and violence, among other illicit subjects. The pulps were what businessmen read to relax on trips and teenage boys read with flashlights late at night in their rooms.
The pulps didn't pay much to writers, only pennies per word --- some things never change --- and most highbrow literary types considered these writers "hacks." Some were. But the best pulp writers created the modern American mystery novel, hard-boiled crime fiction and film noir. They became literary greats like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and Ed McBain.
McBain, best known as the author of the 87th Precinct police procedurals, died in July 2005. But one of his last works was to put together LEARNING TO KILL, an anthology of 25 short stories he wrote between 1952 and 1957. These stories give not only a glimpse into the long-lost world of the pulps, but also show the emergence of a great writer learning his craft.
For anyone who has ever enjoyed an 87th Precinct novel, this is essential reading. The stories were carefully selected by McBain and organized into seven mystery genres. As an added bonus, McBain wrote an introduction to each story that, unfortunately for his millions of fans, will have to serve as a memoir. The stories and commentary make this book an enjoyable, entertaining read.
Like in a great noir film, things were never quite what they seemed in the world of the pulps. For instance, when the stories in LEARNING TO KILL were originally published, Ed McBain was not credited as the author of any of them. They were written under two pen names and the name Evan Hunter, which in 1952 became the legal name of the fellow who grew up as Salvatore Lombino in East Harlem, New York.
Indeed, we learn here that nom de plum McBain was not even created until 1956. About a decade ago, I interviewed McBain and asked him why he had so many names. He told me, "When I was writing for the pulps, I used a lot of different names because I wanted to sell as much as I could."
From 1952 to 1953, he was making $40 a week working at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. If a pulp wanted a 2,000-word western or mystery or science fiction story, and the agency didn't have anything like that written by a client, McBain would go home that night, write the story himself and put another name on it.
For pennies a word, a writer had to be creative. In those days, before television killed the pulps and short stories in general, a writer could learn his craft in these magazines. And we see many examples of this in LEARNING TO KILL. McBain tells us early on that the collection "is about learning to write crime fiction."
Twenty of these stories were printed in Manhunt, which McBain described as the "hottest detective magazine of the day." And one thing that Manhunt did was not just go in for the titillation and plot twists common to the genre; they also emphasized the development of character in stories.
And this is evident in McBain's early work, a clear precursor to what will follow in the 87th Precinct series. There are stories about Kids and Women in Trouble. We find stories about Innocent Bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time along with chilling tales of Loose Cannon psychopaths. There is a story featuring a deaf mute girl who eventually will be reincarnated in the 87th series as the beloved Teddy Carella, wife of lead cop Steve Carella.
All the elements are present in these stories. "The Big Day" is a perfectly planned heist-gone-wrong story, which will be repeated and expanded upon in the five deaf man novels of the 87th series. There are three fascinating Private Eye stories included here, as we see McBain struggling with that genre before reaching the conclusion that "cops were the only people who have any right to be sticking their noses in murder investigations."
In "Kiss Me, Dudley" McBain imitates an over-the-top Mickey Spillane story. As McBain wisely notes, "When you start writing parodies of private eye stories, it's time to stop writing them." And he did, fortunately for us.
This collection also contains three of his first cop stories. He acknowledges "that I knew nothing about cops or police routine except what I had learned from "Dragnet" on radio and television." That would change soon enough. He started work on the first 87th Precinct in 1955 and published the last one, FIDDLERS, in 2005.
McBain was always an excellent recorder of the times he wrote about, and that is evident here as well. We meet 1950s gang bangers with their studded leather jackets and slicked back hair, using words like "dig" and "dad."
But there is something else here. Hunter/McBain was not just a "pulp" writer; he was a serious "literary" author as well. While writing these "pulp" stories, Hunter published a novel in 1953 called THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. He had left the literary agency by then. I was amazed when he told me in 1996 that he had just $300 left in his bank account when he sold 90 pages of that book.
Even in the 1950s, the life of a writer could be a precarious one, economically, especially when Manhunt was paying, he tells us in Learning, "two or three cents a word."
But somehow, great writing prevails. There are two stories that close this collection --- "On the Sidewalk, Bleeding" and "The Last Spin --- that transcend the world of the pulps altogether and become examples of great American writing. When McBain writes from the point of view of a 16-year-old gang member bleeding to death alone in the pouring rain in an alley, the writing is as powerful and eloquent and beautiful as any short story ever written in American literature. These last two stories are heartbreaking.
"I told myself, I am going to write these well," he said during our interview about those early days. "That's going to be the first thing." This collection proves that he certainly did that and more.
In the afterword to LEARNING TO KILL, written in December 2004, McBain says a simple goodbye: "From the first offense to the last spin, it was a remarkable journey. Thank you for sharing it with me all over."
The world of the pulps might be gone and so is Ed McBain. But his work, as demonstrated in LEARNING TO KILL, will live on and be read for generations. For that, we should be thanking him.
--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mastering the Craft of Crime: How Ed McBain Learned to Kill, September 25, 2006
This review is from: Learning to Kill: Stories (Hardcover)
Ed McBain was one of those writers who must have never slept. Writing under four separate pseudonyms, he produced more than a hundred novels in a span of less than fifty years. His contributions to crime fiction are legion. He is credited with being the creator and undisputed master of the police procedural novel, as exemplified by his 87th precinct series. His writing style was spare and effective. Only slightly wordier than Papa Hemingway, his work inspired numerous writers including Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy.
His career began in the mid 1950s, almost by a fluke, when he responded to an ad for a low-paying copy editor position in New York City. The job fell into his lap, and pretty soon he found himself writing short stories, as well as checking facts and correcting typos. His stories resonated with the same tone that Raymond Chandler had perfected, and he was able to crank them out at will. They were gritty and pulpish, peopled with ruffians, lowlifes and cheap gumshoes. Set in the abandoned warehouses and run-down tenement neighborhoods of the lower west side, the material was drawn from McBain's own experiences as the son of first-generation Eastern European immigrants.
Shortly before his death in 2005, the author sat down with his publishers at Harcourt and compiled this collection of early stories dating back to the 1950s. These writings represent his early attempts at crime fiction, hence the title of the collection. There are 25 stories here, every one written in his fast-paced and edgy style. The stories are divided into sections based on character types. There are tales about juvenile delinquents, femme fatales, private eyes, precinct detectives, innocent bystanders, the mentally imbalanced, gangsters and so on. The action moves quickly, and the dialogue is snappy and filled with countless ironies. In one story a young punk celebrates his first arrest, only to discover that he's accidentally killed his victim. In another, numerous passersby refuse to give aid to a stabbing victim because he's wearing a gang jacket. He must have had it coming, they figure.
There are hardly any good guys here, at all. Sometimes the protagonist is only barely likeable, and that's only because he's not as bad as everyone else around him. These are not tales of good versus evil; they are stories about the pretty bad going up against the downright ugly. There's a kind of emptiness in them, too, a sadness about the depravity that sometimes obscures the human condition. These poor characters have resigned themselves to life on the streets, doing what they do because it's the only thing they know.
McBain does not glorify crime, or even make it seem exciting. Instead, he reveals it as the ugly thing it is. The brutality here is mundane, the kind that police officers shrug off as inconsequential. "What does it matter if one more hoodlum ends up on a stretcher," one character asks? These are stories about muggings and knifings, gang brawls and the like. If its glamour you seek, you won't find it on these pages. What you will find, though, is real literature masquerading as penny fiction. You will find a maturing writer exploring the seedy and tawdry underworld around him, trying to humanize the very thing he deplores. This is social commentary without the preachiness, art without the niceties. It's easy reading that purposefully disguises the genius behind it. Why McBain moved away from the short story isn't fully clear. What is clear, however, is that this collection is a raw masterpiece, one that you aren't likely to forget anytime soon.
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