McBain's Ladies (87th Precinct Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Evan Hunter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1988 | Series: 87th Precinct Mysteries

Here are excerpts from more than 30 years of Grand Master Ed McBain's bestselling 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, featuring some of his most lovable female characters. "If you are already a fan, here is a reunion of some old friends".--St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This book is not one of McBain's superior police procedurals but a jumble of excerpts from his bestsellers about the 87th Precinct. Lifted out of context, these chapters describe both the policewomen of the precinct and the wives and lovers of the men on the force. Starting when Detective Carella meets and woos the beautiful deaf-mute Teddy (Cop Hater, 1956), other extracts dwell upon the Carellas as the ideal spouses, parents and lovers. Later, the focus is on handsome but amorously luckless Detective Kling. Before he can marry brainy and lovely Claire Townsend, she's shot dead by a mass murderer. Then quarrelsome Cindy Forest breaks their engagement and the officer's heart again. During the following years, Kling finally weds, expecting eternal bliss with the gorgeous model Augusta Blair; she, however, winds up in bed with a writer of TV commercials. In the collection's only partially rewarding entries, the precinct's Officer Eileen Burke earns a promotion as a decoy on the rape squad (The Mugger, 1968, through Lightning, 1984). Burke's career is a good example of the realism and fearful tensions that McBain invariably creates; in addition, one could suppose courageous Officer Burke is his bow to feminism. Given the attraction between her and Kling, however, she might be his last chance at living happily ever after.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (May 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892962844
• ISBN-13: 978-0892962846
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,433,462 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

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars `The Women of the 87th Precinct.', February 12, 2010

By 

J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: McBain's Ladies (87th Precinct Mysteries) (Hardcover)

This book contains excerpts from Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series of police procedurals published between 1956 and 1981. This collection of short stories focuses on the private lives and careers of a number of the tough, beautiful and streetwise women who are part of the 87th Precinct including Teddy Franklin, who becomes the wife of Steve Carella; the passionate and tragic women in the life of Bert Kling; and Ellen Burke.

I have not read any of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, so this material was entirely new to me. I picked this novel up entirely by chance and found it an interesting, absorbing quick read. I suspect that long-standing McBain readers will have already read the novels and will find nothing new in this collection. For me, though, this was an interesting introduction to this particular series and I'm pleased I read it. I'm very tempted to read the novels from which these stories were excerpted. Mr McBain was a prolific writer: there is an extensive backlist for me to explore.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not essential, but handy to have, March 13, 2010

By 

H. Jin (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: McBain's Ladies (87th Precinct Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I seem to be on a roll with 87th Precinct reviews recently so may as well keep going......

'McBain's Ladies' is a collection of extracts from his 87th precinct novels dealing with the various female protagonists of the series. Although it contains nothing new, it is still handy for fans to have. The 87th collection is so extensive that even die-hard fans may not have read every single book, and McBain often scattered character development and backstory randomly throughout the series. There's almost certainly something here that you haven't yet read, or don't remember.

The highlight for me is the focus on the lovely Teddy Carella, who is a personal favourite. We recall how she and Steve first met, and are treated to several key moments in their relationship such as the birth of Mark and April. Nearly every novel includes an interlude between the two, and several selections highlight the strength of both their relationship and of her own character.

From here, the book moves on to the various partners of Bert Kling. In the sequel to this ('McBain's Ladies Too'), McBain wrote an introduction in which he takes issue with a reader comment that Kling was a "token sufferer". But it's hard not to draw this conclusion when reading the rest of this book. From Claire Townsend through Cindy Forrest, Augusta Blair and finally Eileen Burke, we witness how his relationships are destroyed through infidelity, tragedy, and bad luck. The story of Claire (the original and best Kling Girl) is particularly sad. Once again, it's good for new readers to introduce themselves to these characters from the past, and for fans to re-connect with old favourites.

It would have been nice to see more of the other females in the series such as Sarah Meyer, Caroline Brown, and Harriet Byrnes. And given the series continued for about 20 years after this, these extracts certainly aren't the full story (e.g. the relationship between Kling and Burke is not finalised at this point). But as it stands `McBain's Ladies' is a good enough collection for fans of the series, even if it's not exactly essential.