Puss in Boots [Mass Market Paperback]

Ed McBain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1994

This crime novel describes how Florida's Matthew Hope assumes defence of a husband against circumstantial evidence that he killed his actress wife. Hope is soon on the trail to solving the mystery but the actress, meanwhile, is stashed away - naked but for her red leather boots.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, author of the bestselling 87th Precinct thrillers, McBain presents a gory new fairy tale in the style of his previous Goldilocks and Cinderella. In Calusa, Fla., Carlton Markham is accused of killing his wife Prudence, who was fatally stabbed after completing a porn film that has vanished along with its producer. Determined to prove his client innocent, attorney Matthew Hope concentrates on tracing the female rumored to play the film's starring sexual acrobat. Switching from the lawyer's perspective, the narrative shifts to the abandoned building where the killer has taken the stolen movie and his captive, the actress "Puss in Boots." Gradually, Hope draws closer to the maniac's lair and perhaps closer to his own death as multiple horrors accumulate. McBain's artistry is undeniable in this expose of "adult entertainment." But his seventh dreadful borrowing from fantasy is an extreme test of the reader's nerves and stomach. Mystery Guild main selection; Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (May 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446601357
• ISBN-13: 978-0446601351
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,054,498 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.