Customer Reviews

Sadie When She Died

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

 

 

This is early McBain, from 1972, and all the boys from the 87th precinct are here in top form! (Why can't I meet a guy like Steve Carella?!) Like all of his police procedurals, it's a very entertaining and breezy read. Suspense, humor, and crackling dialogue are all served up in equal doses. The book's jacket says, "What could be easier? He had a confessed killer, clear fingerprints, and a witness. Everything was sewed-up tight. Or was it?" Bad vibes and his keen cop's instinct sends Detective Carella on a mission to prove promiscuous Sadie wasn't killed by the number one suspect, but by somebody very close to her. YOU CAN'T GO WRONG WITH MCBAIN! I've loved him for years -- and his books written under his real name -- Evan Hunter -- are also wonderful.

I've read most of the 87th Precinct series, and while the worst ones are always at least above-average, the best ones are a rare excursion into perfection (esepcially for the crime/mystery genre, which, although I love it, is vulnerable to substandard, schlocky stuff). "Sadie" is the best of the best, McBain's most taut, surprising, and intricate little gem. Read it, if only to understand its cryptic title.

This is the fifteen book in the series that I have read, and except for "Lady, I Did It" I've like and enjoyed McBain's books. But, this was about as dull a story that I have ever read. The people in it, especially the ponderous narration, seemed as if everyone was forced at gunpoint to be in this novel. What I mean is that even the characters didn't want to be there.

The story itself just plods along, with so much unnecessary fluff and fill (especially the side story with Kling) that you get the feeling (or I did) that McBain had a book to deliver and he was gonna get it done no matter what. The problem is that there is no life in the book, it lays there like a fish washed up on the shore gasping for breath.

Every good series, has it's ups and downs; hopefully this is as down as the series gets.

Do you ever start to read a book and find yourself after a while completely alienated from the storyteller and the narrative? It happened here, and it was strange to me because this is an 87th Precinct novel, written by the masterful Ed McBain. I figured the guy was playing with me, setting me up for one of his classic big twists to come.

Only the twist never comes, and you are left with a disengaging, oddly unsympathetic chapter in the 87th Precinct saga.

The boys find what appears to be a straightforward burglary gone wrong: Dead female resident brutally slashed across the abdomen, silverware littering the floor, a guy three chapters in who confesses to the entire crime. But Detective Steve Carella is unconvinced it is as neat as that. While his partner Bert Kling deals with his latest love affair gone bad, Carella sets out to entrap the victim's husband, who says he's glad his wife is dead.

For the first time reading an 87th Precinct mystery, I really resented the detectives, wishing they would leave well enough alone or stir up some interest from Internal Affairs if not the ACLU. In pursuit of his hunch against the husband, who to all appearances seems a decent guy, Carella connives for an array of wiretaps violating not only the fellow's right to privacy, but that of his girlfriend. He also knocks on the doors of some of the dead wife's many ex-lovers, to get information about her other life as "Sadie" to reveal why her husband felt as bitter as he did.

Kling meanwhile uses his badge to get a rebound date with a witness to the crime after breaking up with his latest problem girlfriend, only to pull his gun out when things turn deadly between himself and some of the witness's pals.

It was 1972 when this was published, and perhaps McBain was trying to make some point about the limits of police authority in civil society. But he never makes this clear. Worse, he tells a story that is completely uninvolving as a suspense yarn, desultory and pointless, that lurches to a nonsensical conclusion, jacked up only by an out-of-nowhere attack which my edition pumps up in the teaser copy like it is the point of the story. It might as well be, for the absence of anything else here.

Even McBain's usually crisp writing is curiously distrait: "Reading another man's love letters is like eating Chinese food alone." Um, yeah...

Only toward the end, when McBain as an aside describes the Christmas Eve traffic in the precinct house, a rogue's gallery of pickpockets, thieves, and drunken killers, was I reminded again of why I come back to these McBain stories. It's for their sense of life, of vitality even at its lowest ebb and darkest hour.

Alas, "Sadie When She Died", while low and dark, is almost never vital, except in the wrong places. It's a sad, unpleasant work, further confirmation for me that the early 1970s represent a weak point in the McBain series.

Who was Sadie? Gerald Fletcher calls police and reports he came home and found his wife, Sarah, dead from a knife stabbing. There is even a confesed killer, Ralph Corwin. Carella does not think Corwin was the killer and sets out to prove it. There are many twist and turns. Kling is beaten up by some men. He does not know why or who. Is this connected to the murder? It is a good case of police work and running tips down. McBain writes so you can feel like you are there and can see the action. Who was the killer? Will Kling find out who beat him up? The ending has a surprise twist to it, at least to me. If you like a good mystery with lots going on you will like this one.

I loved this story, the twists and turns and the final conclusion. A real page turner.

Great vintage 87th Precinct novel by the master of the police procedural. In this outing, the boys of the 87th investigate the murder of an attorney's wife. When the lawyer comes home and discovers his wife is dead, he proclaims himself delighted. A petty thief confesses to the crime, but Steve Carella still thinks the husband did it. If you like police procedurals, you will love this book. One of McBain's best.

Reviewer: Liz Clare, co-author of "To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark"

This reprint of the 1972 original features most of the main characters from the 87th Precint. Makes you wonder what age these guys are today if they were mid-30s back then.

Some unintentional technological humour from McBain, especially his detailed description of bugging and tracking, but the characters - Kling and Carella in particular - are beginning to take shape. The plot is fairly rudimentary and by employing a simple-to-crack code as one of the keys of the case, much of the suspense is missing from a pretty predictable ending.

A quick read, and certainly not a boring one for McBain fanatics - and should be enjoyed for its description of a 1972 lesbian bar as much as anything.