Customer Reviews

Lullaby

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Ed McBain, for those unfamiliar with his work, is the master of the police procedural. Lullaby is a great McBain story with the crime being discovered and how the police go through the difficult and frustrating steps of solving the crime. A young couple returns from a night out only to discover that someone has killed their infant daughter and her babysitter. What would be the motive for killing a teenager much less an infant in another room? McBain does a masterful job of stepping you through the twists and turns of this frustrating investigation and ties all of the ends together in a way that you won't see coming. If you like a story that grabs you from the beginning and provides hours of relaxing fun reading than try Lullaby another story starring the men and women of the 87th precinct in fictional city of Isola.

I just recently discovered Ed McBain when I bought one of his books at a thrift shop. After I read the first book I ordered several books from Amazon. I like the author's writing style and the variety of characters he includes in his books. The main character is an intelligent and very competent police officer, but not hard-boiled as many fictional dettectives are.

This is my first McBain book, and it was fun to start (although "fun" is a difficult word re a baby killing). I liked how the characters were well-drawn, and I also admired his dialogue, which, to my ears, seemed more realistic and less cliched than so many other writers of this genre. But there are three stories going on here (double murder, major drug deal, woman detective deciding on quitting), and I thought that at some point they would merge. However, they do not. I was getting bored with the two "lesser" stories, and it didn't take too long to figure out who committed the murder (or even why). The most shockingly disappointing moment was in the climax, when there's a confession just blurted out by a suspect who, for some unknown reason, never requested legal counsel. It seemed that at that point McBain, or editors, or whoever, decided that the page length was at the "stopping point," and just wanted to wrap things up. So I started the book with relatively high hopes, but was led to a major let-down.

That being said, would I ever read another McBain book? Sure. His writing really moves things forward, his allusions are witty, and, as stated above, I enjoyed the characterizations and dialogue. For those reasons, I'm willing to give him another chance, and I'm hoping that the next one (whichever one I pick whenever I have the time) will give me greater satisfaction from beginning to end.

Actually there are only two procedures in this book, the other 'story' is Eileen Brennan's continuing problems with being a cop. Brennan is involved only to the point of her spending time speaking to/at/with a Police shrink. It's almost like McBain through this in to fill out the book (nah, he wouldn't do that).

The first of the procedurals has to do with a double murder on New Year's Eve. A sixteen year old babysitter is found stabbed in the chest and the baby she was watching was smothered with a pillow. This one is only worthwhile for the anger of the cops of the murder of the baby and the dogged running down of any lead that might help to discover who the killer was. About half-way through the story, anyone who has ever read a procedural should be able to pick out the murderer and the reason.

The second relates to Burt Kling stopping three blacks from beating a Puerto Rican to death with baseball bats. First the PR tells Kling to take a hike, but later promises that he can make Kling a big hero by breaking up a big delivery (100 kilos) of cocaine. This story is positively ugh. Silly, dumb and worthless, even the procedural is sloppy and amateur.

As to the recording, everyone on this tap is overly dramatized. Meyer and Carella have New York accents you can cut with a knife. The PR sounds like he escaped from "Westside Story", the Jamaicans are cartoons, and the 'Chinese' sound like Japanese in a bad World War 2 "B" movie. Carion sounds like he's auditioning to do voice-overs on Anime.
Not one of McBain's better outings.

Zeb Kantrowitz
zbestblogaround.blogspot.com