Lullaby [Mass Market Paperback]

Ed McBain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2004

The squadroom at 5:15 on New Year's morning looked much as it did on any other day...

But an exceptionally heinous crime was already sending a wave of outrage through even the veteran cops of the 87th Precinct: a wealthy couple, returning home from New Year's festivities, discovered their baby -- and the infant's teenage sitter -- murdered. Parents themselves, detectives Carella and Meyer resolve to bring in the perpetrator at any cost. Meanwhile, gang warfare is overtaking the city's streets, threatening its very foundation. A sinister song of death and destruction echoes through the 87th, and it isn't "Auld Lang Syne."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Stephen King and Nelson DeMille on Ed McBain

I think Evan Hunter, known by that name or as Ed McBain, was one of the most influential writers of the postwar generation. He was the first writer to successfully merge realism with genre fiction, and by so doing I think he may actually have created the kind of popular fiction that drove the best-seller lists and lit up the American imagination in the years 1960 to 2000. Books as disparate as The New Centurions, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Godfather, Black Sunday, and The Shining all owe a debt to Evan Hunter, who taught a whole generation of baby boomers how to write stories that were not only entertaining but that truthfully reflected the times and the culture. He will be remembered for bringing the so-called "police procedural" into the modern age, but he did so much more than that. And he was one hell of a nice man. --Stephen King

Way back in the mid-1970s, when I was a new writer and police series were very big, my editor asked me to do a series called Joe Ryker, NYPD. I had no idea how to write a police detective novel, but the editor handed me a stack of books and said, “These are the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain. Read them and you’ll know everything you need to know about police novels.” After I read the first book--which I think was Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man--I was hooked, and I read every Ed McBain I could get my hands on. Then I sat down and wrote my own detective novel, The Sniper, featuring Joe Ryker. My series never reached the heights of the 87th Precinct series, but by reading those classic masterpieces, I learned all I needed to know about urban crime and how detectives think and act. And I had a hell of a time learning from the master. Years later, when I actually got to meet Ed McBain/Evan Hunter, I told him this story, and he said, “I would have liked it better if my books inspired you to become a detective instead of becoming my competition.” Evan and I became friends, and I was privileged to know him and honored to be in his company. I remain indebted to him for his good advice over the years. But most of all, I thank him for hundreds of hours of great reading. --Nelson DeMille

To read about how Ed McBain influenced other mystery and thriller writers, visit our Perspectives on McBain page.

For a complete selection of 87th Precinct novels available for Kindle (paperbacks coming in February 2012), visit our Ed McBain's 87th Precinct Booklist.

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--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Of all McBain's 60 or so bestsellers, the chillers about the 87th Precinct have been the most popular. This is the 40th, bringing detectives Carella and Meyer to a swank apartment on New Year's Eve. Returning from a party, a couple find their adopted baby and her teenaged sitter murdered. There are so many ramifications, including the later death of the biological mother, that the case seems hopelessly muddled. But Carella and Meyer, outraged by the crime, stick to the wearying routine and finally bring the guilty to book. While readers are absorbed in this horrendous story, they simultaneously fear for Bert Kling, as he investigates competing drug traffickersJamaican, Chinese, blackwho are killing each other and bent on killing him. The lamentably convincing portraits of today's metropolis also create empathy for endangered detective Eileen Burke, tempted to resign despite her commitment to police work and her lover, Kling, as a matter of self-preservation. MWA Grand Master McBain's staccato dialogue and authentic characters, as always, make the new series entry a page turner. Mystery Guild selection; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (August 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743470745
• ISBN-13: 978-0743470742
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #995,087 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

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Lullaby To Keep You Awake, April 9, 2004

By 

Bill Slocum (Norwalk, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lullaby (Audio Cassette)

Ed McBain's 87th Precinct has been the wellspring for many terrific books, and this is one of his finest. A baby and her sitter are found murdered inside a swanky apartment, and it's up to Dets. Carella and Meyer to solve the crime.

The first page introduces the murder scene, and from there on the plot twists and suspicious characters accumulate with bullet-train velocity. The detectives find out another B&E (breaking and entering) occurred in another apartment in this building, and chase the burglar believed responsible, while a lapis pendant found at the scene is overlooked for the moment but will assume greater significance.

By the 1980s, people were overlooking the 87th Precinct a little, while McBain himself pumped out one great book after another, finding something a little different to bring out about the precinct territory and the nature of hard crime each time. It's been said McBain writes not "whodunits" but "whydunits," and "Lullaby" is a classic "whydunit," but it also works as a standard police procedural.

There's a second plot that introduces a new group of bad guys, members of a Jamaican drug "posse" who tangle with Det. Kling after he interrupts three of them in the middle of a hit on a Hispanic rival. The storyline actually takes us through a parade of ethnic nationalities, each representing a major force in the underworld, in a way that allows McBain full vent for his political incorrect dialogue and humor as he throws them up against each other. When it's all over, and only one group is left standing, the boss decides it's "all a matter of which is the oldest culture."

This second story is fun, but it's less integrated thematically and in plot with the other story than is typical for McBain, it moves a bit baroquely and the conflict with Kling is not resolved in a satisfying manner. The first story is the main one, and it moves with force and deftness, but the reveal of the killer striking about 30 pages short of the end read like a mistake to me. Otherwise, it keeps you guessing, as much about motive as identity (who would kill an infant?), and that is a huge part of the story's success.

Until then, it works almost as well as a psychological thriller as it does a murder mystery. In order to solve the crime, the detectives have to get inside the mind of someone who killed a child. Even for hardened investigators, this is not an easy place to be. The theme of lost innocence, prefigured by the title, is everywhere in this story, in such details as the lapis pendant, a fugitive who seeks shelter and companionship from his former babysitter, and an old man dying in Washington State.

It's hard to say any book that features a dead baby is funny, and certainly McBain handles this sensitive subject with grace and finesse. But the mourning tone does not detract from enjoying the book as a satisfying crime drama, and as a prime representation of a crime fiction master at his best.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Always captivating, August 3, 2002

By 

Carol Sandoval "cegiraffe" (Burien, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lullaby (Audio Cassette)

Another good Ed McBain mystery. After reading a few of these, a person becomes well acquainted with the detectives in the precinct and they almost seem like friends. Thank goodness they always catch their man! This has the usual false suspects, parade of criminal types, and the surprising if logical guilty person uncovered by good police work and a lot of luck. I enjoy reading Ed McBain and this was a very good one. It's fun to see if one can figure out the solution before the detectives do. I failed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good book, my first in the series. Will it keep me reading?, March 24, 2008

By 

Bill Garrison (Oklahoma City, OK USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Lullaby (Mass Market Paperback)

Lullaby is an 87th Precinct book by Ed McBain, one of way too many to count in the series, and also the first I've read. It came out in the mid 80s. I love McBain as an author and have read most of his later works so I wanted to know if this is a series I could enjoy. It is probably impossible to go back and read the series in order, so I picked up one at random and started reading it. Would I be lost? Would it matter that I had no idea about the characters or their backgrounds?

In Lullaby, a little baby and her 17 year old baby sitter are murdered on New Years Eve. There's also a major drug deal going down. And, a cop who was raped is traumatized over the shooting of a criminal and wants to quit the force. These three story lines encompass the entire book. This is a true police procedural. We get to know the characters a little, but not too much.

I really don't know what to think. The plot moved along briskly and the police moved closer to solving the baby and sitter murder. The drug deal and gangs seemed confusing at times, and the cop that wanted to quit was probably tied to another novel. I guess I thought all the story lines might be tied together at the end, and they weren't. Each separate story was like a TV show, when I was expecting a major motion picture. I'll probably read more in this series and you should too if you like these types of novels. I'll just know I should expect to be entertained, not overhwelmed.