Customer Reviews

Widows (87th Precinct Mysteries)

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

 

 

As is typical in the 87th Precinct novels this has more than one plot strand and the various elemnets are pulled together as the book reaches its climactic pages

Events are set in train by the murder of a beautiful young woman named Susan Browner ,dead of multiple stab wounds in her apartment in Isola.A cache of erotic letters -very explicitly described by the author-is found in the apartment and it is clear she is a " kept woman " .Soon after a man named Arthur Schumacher is shot to death on the street ,and his dog is also shot in the incident .Schumacher was the late Susan Brower's lover .The investigation takes Detective Steva Carella into the family circle of the late Arthur Schumacher -his formar wives,his daughters and step children .The death of Schumacer is not the end of the affair -a former wife ids shot and killed and it is obvious there was considerable dissent in the family .

Alongside this case is the hunt for the killers of Carella's father-murdered during a robbery at his bakery .This case is outside the jurisdiction of the 87th and we are given a step by step exposition of the hunt for the two black youths responsible .There is also a section on Eileen Burke,another regular character who is training as a hostage negotiator .We witnes shere skills in this regard when she is called to the scene of a hostage situation in which an elderly Puerto Rican man is holding his grabnddaughter hostage .

The Schumacher case resolved ,the climax sees the other two plot stands coming together as Eileen is called to mediate when the two killers hold a teenage junkie hostage in exchange for a plane to Jamaica .

This is a novel about loss .Carella and his mother mourn the death of his father ;his sister is concerned that her marriage may be in disarray and Carella sepends some time reflecting on the way his youth now seems a distant memory .

It works well enough as a thriller but there is a little too much padding for my sake ,to put it well in the upper echelon of this series but even so most crime novel fans will enjoy another professional outing from an accomplished writer

WIDOWS is a criminal novel which begins with the crime scene of a beautiful 22 year old blond girl found murdered in her expensive penthouse.She had been cut by a knife in several different parts of her body.A series of exotic letters had been found in her apartment with no names of the writer mantioned on it. The detectives manage to guess who had written those letters and Arthur Schumacher is found shot onthe road near his apartment building, witnessed by the doorman. It is found out that Arthur and Susan had been having an affair for about 10 months.In succession Arthur's second wife and ex-wife also get murdered by the same person with the same gun.Now it is for the detective-sergents to find out who is behind all these assainations. The other special part of the book is the fact that the author goes into the lives of the detective-sergents also. His focus is not only on the murder but also on the lives of the people involved. A very interesting book to read. Happy Reading!

The writing here is typical of McBain; a brilliant job.

Ed McBain's long-running series of mystery novels spanned fifty years and over fifty books. Based in the fictional city of Isola (with its eerie similarities to New York), McBain's conscientious cops spent thousands of pages chasing down every sort of villainous behaviour. From 1956 to 2005, readers were introduced to serial killers, money laundering, granny dumping and more.

In Widows, something awful again happens to the perpetually-beleaguered Detective Steve Carella. This time, his father is killed. While that investigation (one of the rare cases that the reader follows outside of the 87th) is underway, Carella's squad tackles another murder, as a hormonally-supercharged man has been killed, leaving behind a trail of blond lovers, wives, ex-wives and daughters. Finally, Eileen Burke is joining the city's Hostage Negotation team, in one of the more interesting subplots.

Widows is one of the more tonally-interesting books in the series.

Horrible things happen to Carella, and the reader is still being exposed to the horrible things that have happened to Eileen. But the murder cases are both best described as darkly comedic. Tense, hysterical laughter; moments of tragic-yet-entertaining self awareness; bizarre characters; and even the occasional puppy.

Although nothing 'nice' happens in Widows, McBain manages to infuse the entire book with enough dark comedy to keep the reader from contemplating suicide (as opposed to, say, Calypso or Lightning from the early 1980s).