There Was a Little Girl [Mass Market Paperback]

Ed McBain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1995

After Matthew Hope slips into a coma--the result of a drive-by shooting--his friends, private eye Warren Chambers and police detective Morris Bloom--must follow in his investigative footsteps to discover why he was shot. All signs point to the local circus--an underworld of offbeat sex, drugs, blackmail, murder, and in the center of it all, there was a little girl.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Matthew Hope has been mysteriously shot--by whom? As he lies in a hospital bed in a near-coma, his friends try to discover why his professional involvement with a small circus had murderous results. To do this they must traverse a web of sinister acrobats, kinky animal trainers, and beautiful businesswomen--one of whom is a ruthless killer. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

After 40 years and more than 100 books, McBain (aka Evan Hunter) continues to amaze and entertain. In this 11th Matthew Hope novel (Mary, Mary), the hero spends most of his time in a semi-coma after being shot outside a bar on the seedy side of Calusa, Fla., despite his vow to avoid the criminal side of his law practice. Meanwhile, Hope's PI pals Warren Chambers and Toots Kiley, as well as police detective Morris Bloom, try to reconstruct Hope's previous week, probings that are intercut with flashbacks to Hope's own investigation of the years-old suicide of a circus star. What emerges is an intricate, lurid tale of sex, blackmail and murder fueled by greed. "Little girl" refers to the dead circus star, a fully developed woman only three feet tall. Or it may be an old slang term for cocaine, in high demand among certain circus folk. Or it may even stand for lesbian child abuse-or all of the above. The tracings and retracings of Hope's trail among a large, colorful, unsavory cast are fascinating, and the final revelations-about some very nasty people-are stunning. This is the kind of book we hope for from a grandmaster like McBain. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (October 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446602140
• ISBN-13: 978-0446602143
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,102,964 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

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not one of his best, not even one of the good ones., July 24, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: There Was a Little Girl (Mass Market Paperback)

Being a big fan of Ed McBain's novels, I was very disappointed when reading, "There Was A Little Girl". It just wasn't as good as his other Matthew Hope novels. By putting his main character, Matthew Hope, in a coma I think McBain made a big mistake. True, it was an interesting twist watching his friends and colleagues try to figure out what happened to him while geting a glimpse into his head and learning what happened but, the mystery he was trying to solve was boring. The ending left me feeling empty. I hate to say that it was one of my least favorite McBain novels

2.0 out of 5 stars A Page Turner..., August 20, 2008

By 

James Carragher (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: There Was a Little Girl (Hardcover)

but only to have it be over.

Every once in a while -- three years or so --I decide I really should read a mystery novel or two to give myself another chance at appreciating the genre. One of this year's choices was There Was a Little Girl. I hate to beat up on the dead, but this book is deviously plotted, overly descriptive, with one completely pointless character, Matthew Hope's 14 year old daughter, and every other character firmly occupying a genre role -- ex-wife, best buddy, current lover, macho performer, etc, etc.

For me, a mystery should, with inconspicuously planted clues, involve the reader in its solution. That may be an unjust expectation, but here the reader trails around Hope's friends as they go from suspect to suspect, tracking the current crime and -- it develops -- an earlier crime. There are plenty of false leads, but no cleverly dropped information that would enable the perceptive reader to solve the crime. Instead, about thirty pages before the end we get told the Eureka! moment and all the rest is coda.

1.0 out of 5 stars Sad, July 24, 2008

By 

mammoth "booscout3" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: There Was a Little Girl (Paperback)

This wasn't like any McBain book I remember. It was boring, confusing and basically uncool. I think he had written too much by the time he wrote this one. No new ideas, losing the touch. A tired writer.