87th Precinct Series

As a cop with the city’s famed 87th Precinct, Steve Carella has seen it all. Or so he thinks. Because nothing can prepare him for the sight that greets him on a sweltering July night: fellow detective Mike Reardon’s dead body splayed across the sidewalk, his face blown away by a .45. Days later, Reardon’s partner is found dead, a .45-caliber bullet buried deep in his chest. Only a fool would call it a coincidence, and Carella’s no fool. He chalks the whole ugly mess up to a grudge killing…until a third murder shoots that theory to hell. Armed with only a single clue, Carella delves deep into the city’s underbelly, launching a grim search for answers that will lead him from a notorious brothel to the lair of a beautiful, dangerous widow. He won’t stop until he finds the truth—or until the next bullet finds him. The debut novel from EdMcBain’s gritty 87th Precinct series, Cop Hater was hailed by the New York Times as “the best of today's procedural school of police stories—lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory.”

This mugger is special. He preys on women, waiting in the darkness…then comes from behind, attacks them, and snatches their purses. He tells them not to scream and as they’re on the ground, reeling with pain and fear, he bows and nonchalantly says, “Clifford thanks you, madam.” But when he puts one victim in the hospital and the next in the morgue, the detectives of the 87th Precinct are not amused and will stop at nothing to bring him to justice. Dashing young patrolman Bert Kling is always there to help a friend. And when a friend’s sister-in-law is the mugger’s murder victim, Bert’s personal reasons to find the maniacal killer soon become a burning obsession…and it could easily get him killed. The second book in the 87th Precinct series, The Mugger is an Ed McBain classic, a nuanced portrayal of justice and vengeance hailed by the Daily Mirror as “a masterpiece of crime writing…and there’s nobody who does it better.”

For a wealthy businessman, a kidnapping puts him in a predicament as troubling as any he has ever experienced. For Detective Steve Carella and the men at the 87th Precinct, their troubles are even worse. Their only hope is that he will play ball—at least long enough for them to catch the perps before the kidnapping turns into a homicide. Ed McBain delivers another rapid-fire nail-biter in his 87th Precinct series with King’s Ransom, a morally complex weaving of friendship, personal responsibility, and the nature of man hailed by the Daily Mirror: “McBain spins the tightest tale in town…there’s nobody who does it better.” King’s Ransom was made into the major motion picture High and Low by acclaimed director Akira Kurasawa.

Three different stories, one prolific author. She was young and wealthy…and now she’s dead. With only a name and a pile of cancelled checks to go on, Detective Steve Carella has his work cut out for him in finding her killer. But he’s in for a shocking surprise when the checks lead to more than just murder in “The Empty Hours”. In “J,” Passover is supposed to be a day of celebration. This year, however, it is a day of murder when the rabbi is found stabbed to death, and the only evidence is a “J” painted on the synagogue’s wall. A local anti-Semite is assumed to be the perpetrator, but if Detective Carella thinks the case is going to be that easy he’s got another thing coming. A ski vacation with a beautiful blonde is just what the doctor ordered for Detective Cotton Hawes in “Storm”…until he stumbles upon the body of a young woman beneath the crystalline snow. And with the local cops bungling the investigation, Hawes is on the clock to find a mountainside killer before he strikes again. The Empty Hours is another spine-tingling addition to the 87th Precinct series, a riveting collection of which the New York Times comments, “Ed McBain owns this turf.”

Annie Boone is dead. She was shot four times in the chest, pieces of the liquor store’s windows spread over her body like raindrops from a lethal storm. For 87th Precinct Detectives Carella, Kling, and newcomer Hawes, even more troubling is the loss of one of their own. Detective Roger Havilland is murdered shortly thereafter, a shard of glass through his jugular. Faced with a host of suspects—from Annie’s former mother-in-law to her ex-husband, employer, and a string of boyfriends—the detectives find themselves with a victim whose identity spurns all conventional definition. She was the store’s saleswoman…as well as a divorced mother, pool shark, society lady, drunk, and patron of the ballet. Each facet of her life has a corresponding potential suspect. The only way for Carella and the men to find her killer—and maybe that of Havilland, too—is to find out who she really was. The problem is, the only one who really knew her died in a shower of glass. A brooding, mesmerizing psychological thriller, Killer’s Choice is a stunning addition to mystery icon Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series. Its complex plotting and extraordinary intensity, which culminates in an explosive finish, will leave you breathless.

There’s a lot going on in the 87th Precinct this spring, and none of it is good. Jumpers on building ledges, a salesman torn apart by an explosion, and to cap it all off, they find the dead, half-naked bodies of Irene Thayer and Tommy Barlow in bed together. It has all the earmarks of a double suicide: a note, empty liquor bottles, closed windows, and the gas on the stove turned up. At least this one’s open and shut. Or is it? Something doesn’t sit right with the detectives at the 87th Precinct, so Steve Carella and his partner Cotton Hawes decide to give the case a once-over. Routine checks can turn up interesting facts. Like Irene’s mother, who has an insurance policy on her daughter. Or Irene’s grieving, cuckold husband who’s riding the ragged edge. Even Tommy’s brother. Problem is, in order to find a killer, you have to prove there was a murder… A complex, captivating thriller that probes the deep recesses of the human heart, Like Love is a bittersweet addition to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series and a rare look inside the softer side of hardened detectives.

Her name is Virginia Dodge. And she’s here to kill Detective Steve Carella. An ordinary day at the 87th Precinct is about to take a turn for the worse when Dodge shows up to put a bullet in Carella’s head. And she doesn’t care if she has to take all the men in the 87th with her to do it. Armed with a homemade bomb, handgun, and a bottle of nitroglycerine hidden in her purse, Virginia holds the entire squadroom hostage as she waits for Carella. And no one is leaving until he shows up to meet his maker. With all the men of the 87th save one held prisoner, they engage in a battle of wits to save their colleague from their deadly captor. A classic in Ed McBain’s groundbreaking 87th Precinct series, Killer’s Wedge is a mesmerizing, profoundly relevant thriller where terrorism strikes deep into the heart of the house, putting everyone’s life on the line in a tense standoff with an enemy who cannot be reasoned with.

A bitterly cold night offers up a body turned blue—not frozen, but swinging from a rope in a dank basement. The dead teen seems like a clear case of suicide, but Detective Steve Carella and Lieutenant Peter Byrnes find a few facts out of place, and an autopsy confirms their suspicions. The boy hadn’t hung himself but OD’d on heroin before an unknown companion strung him up to hide the true cause of death. The revelation dredges up enough muck to muddy the waters of what should’ve been an open-and-shut case. To find the answers to a life gone off the rails, Carella and Byrnes face a deep slog into the community of users and pushers—but a grim phone call discloses that very community already has its claws in a cop’s son. A new pusher is staking a claim right under the 87th Precinct’s noses, and it’s up to Carella and Byrnes to snag the viper before it poisons their whole lives.

A con man is plying his trade on the streets of Isola: conning a domestic for pocket change, businessmen for thousands, and even ladies in exchange for a little bit of love. You can see the world, meet a lot of nice people, imbibe some unique drinks, and make a ton of money…all by conning them for their cash. The question is: How far is he willing to go? When a young woman’s body washes up in the Harb River, the answer to that question becomes tragically clear. Now Detective Steve Carella races against time to find him before another con turns deadly. The only clue he has to go on is the mysterious tattoo on the young woman’s hand—but it’s enough. Carella takes to the streets, searching its darkest corners for a man who cons his victims out of their money…and their lives. A crime fiction classic, The Con Man is the third book in the 87th Precinct series from Ed McBain, whom the Daily Mirror hails as “the undisputed master…There’s nobody who does it better.”

It’s like an old-time gangster movie: a speeding car, a blazing gun…and suddenly a guy walking down the street without a care in the world is lying in the gutter without a head on his shoulders. But who pulled the high-powered trigger that turned Sy Kramer from a blackmailer into a chalk outline? Was it the politician’s wife with a pornographic past? The soda-pop tycoon desperate to keep a business-busting bungle bottled up? Or was it whoever was paying Kramer a small fortune to hide what must’ve been one very big bad? It falls to detectives Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes of the 87th Precinct to pound the pavement of the city and beat the bushes of the backwoods for the suspect with the best motive, the most blistering weapon, and the biggest set of brass ones. En route, they’ll meet pretty ladies and petty lowlifes, great white hunters and gray flannel ad execs, and, when the going gets rough, maybe even their match. It’s all in several long days’—and even longer nights’—work for the guys who make their living behind the badge, and under the gun.

He dresses in black and stalks the streets of the 87th Precinct. He is a shadow, always searching for his next victim. And when he finds it, all that will be left is a severed hand. For Detectives Carella and Hawes, this new killer is an enigma. He leaves no trace of his crime—no evidence at all. Even the severed hands have had their fingertips sheared off. With nothing much to go on, the detectives work off the hunch that the black-clad killer has a grudge against the 87th, and begin a frantic manhunt before any more of his handiwork appears on their streets. One of world-renowned crime master Ed McBain’s most grisly and intense novels in the famed 87th Precinct series, Give the Boys a Great Big Hand is a finely tuned build-up of brooding malevolence and frantic desperation…

“I will kill the Lady tonight at 8. What can you do about it?” This is the message on a pasted-up letter handed to Desk Sergeant Dave Murchison at 8:00 a.m. The detectives at the 87th Precinct have gotten these types of threats before, but there’s something different about this one. Something ominous. Problem is, the city contains millions of women—finding the right one in twelve hours is like finding a needle in a haystack. Detectives Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes go down the list of likely suspects but in a city this big, it’s a best-guess scenario. And with the clock ticking and no other leads, guessing is the only card they have to play. All they need is one break—or they won’t get a second chance. A classic race-against-time thriller with relentless pacing and top-notch plotting, Lady Killer is a master class in detective fiction and a riveting addition to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series.

With crooks to cuff and pimps to put behind bars, detectives Carella and Meyer of the 87th Precinct simply don’t have the time or patience to deal with a prank caller—even if he has phoned murder threats to two dozen local shop owners. What they fail to realize, however, is they aren’t dealing with a heckler who’s ringing round for kicks but rather a modern-day Moriarty known only as the Deaf Man—and these phone calls are just his first move in a calculated scheme to pull off the bank robbery of the decade. Further calls darken a lovely spring with suspicion and fear, before a brutal murder whips things into a frenzy, prompting Carella and Meyer to scour the town for clues to the Deaf Man’s identity. As the detectives grasp at a few tenuous threads of the larger plot, those targeted by the calls clamor for the cops to slam the case closed before more of them wind up stiffs. If they can find him in time, the 87th Precinct promises to shut down the Deaf Man for good.

The wedding day of Detective Steve Carella’s sister Angela should be the most romantic, special day of her life. But it might turn out to be the worst if her brother can’t figure out which man on the guest list has come to murder the groom. Carella and the men from the 87th Precinct find themselves on the clock as they desperately hunt amongst the name cards and catered dinners for the would-be assailant. Trouble is, the crowd has numerous people with viable motives: the best man who stands to inherit everything the groom owns, the ex-boyfriend with a homicidal crush, and even an ex-GI with a score to settle. But time is ticking, and if they don’t act fast, Angela will become a bride—and a widow—on the same day. Another riveting installment of the 87th Precinct series, ‘Til Death is one of bestseller Ed McBain’s finest, an intense, life-and-death nerve-wracker hailed by the Literary Review as “zestful, inventive, and utterly compulsive.”

Eighty-six-year-old George Lasser was the superintendent of a building in the 87th Precinct until just recently. Unfortunately his tenure ended in the building’s basement with a sharp, heavy blade of an ax in his head… There are no witnesses, no suspects, and no clues. The wife and son? They’re both a little off-kilter, but they have alibis. Just when Carella and Hawes are about to put the case on the shelf, the killer strikes again. Now the detectives are hot on the trail of a man crazy enough to murder with an ax. One of the 87th Precinct series’ finest installments, Ax is a sharp, intense crime thriller that is classic Ed McBain. The New York Times hails it as “the best of today’s police stories—lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory.”

When Anthony Forrest walked out of the office building, the only thoughts on his mind were of an impending birthday and a meeting with his wife for dinner. And a deadly bullet saw to it that they were the last thoughts on his mind. The problem for Detectives Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer of the 87th Precinct is that Forrest isn’t alone. An anonymous sniper is unofficially holding the city hostage, frustrating the police as one by one the denizens of Isola drop like flies. With fear gripping the citizenry and the pressure on the 87th mounting, finding a killer whose victims are random is the greatest challenge the detectives have ever faced—and the deadliest game the city has ever known. A gritty, relentless pressure cooker of a thriller, Ten Plus One is one of bestselling author Ed McBain’s finest, the ultimate addition to the 87th Precinct series where time threatens to stand still and murder rules the day.

The only person Detective Bert Kling cares about in this world is his fiancée, Claire Townsend. And when her body is found slain at the infamous “bookstore massacre,” Bert and every detective in the precinct is determined to get the man responsible. To do so, they’re going to have to figure out the connection between a junkie, a professor, a bookstore owner, and the beautiful fiancée of a cop. When they do, there will be nowhere for the killer to hide. A devastating look at the personal side of a hardened detective, Lady, Lady, I Did It! is a gut-wrenching addition to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, and it paints in sharp relief the squadroom’s familial bonds and the price paid for violating its sanctity.

Roger Broome is in the city to sell the woodenwares he and his brother handcrafted in their shop upstate—and he does so with stunning success. To celebrate, he goes out to enjoy the fruits of his labor and winds up in a bar, where he meets Molly. They have a few drinks and then head back to his room. Now Molly is dead, and only Roger knows what happened. The men at the 87th would surely love to get that information from Roger…if they even knew he had it. While Roger wants to report what he knows to the detectives, he struggles to reach out to them when a Spanish beauty named Amelia makes him forget everything else in his life. And with each missed opportunity, Roger delays justice from being served. One of the 87th Precinct series’ more gripping and psychologically intense installments, He Who Hesitates is bestselling author Ed McBain at his finest as he delivers a brooding, suspenseful thriller Newsday hails as “a tour de force!”

“Kill me if you can.” Local thug Pepe Miranda’s open challenge to the police has pushed July’s heat to a boiling point. His latest crime elevated him to the top of the 87th Precinct’s most wanted list, and now his dare is earning him street cred as well. With the city’s most dangerous gangs mobilized for an epic showdown, the fate of the precinct hangs in the balance. But Lieutenant Peter Byrnes and his detectives are ready for anything. They certainly aren’t going to let a challenge like that lie—not from someone like Miranda and not when a tip puts them hot on his trail. As the men of the 87th close in, they could be heading into a deadly gunfight that blows their city apart. Ed McBain’s See Them Die is a visceral journey into the heart of the 87th Precinct’s meanest streets, a gritty, adrenaline-fueled freight train that hurtles toward its explosive conclusion.

Stan Gifford is the ultimate comedian. A pro through and through, when Stan’s act dies, so does he—in front of forty million viewers from coast to coast, including the 87th Precinct’s Steve Carella. But what seemed to be death by natural causes quickly turns into a case of murder, and Carella must unravel the motivations behind the comedian’s final act. Meanwhile, Cindy Forrest has been working to put herself through college since the sniper who held the city hostage three years ago murdered her father. But now she’s in the crosshairs, and the only thing standing between her and a killer is Detective Bert Kling of the 87th Precinct. A pair of spellbinding mysteries full of intricate plotting and razor-sharp dialogue, Eighty Million Eyes is an Ed McBain classic, keeping the boundary-pushing spirit of his 87th Precinct series rocketing forward with gritty precision.

It’s January. The weather is cold—and it’s about to feel even colder. Detectives Carella and Kling of the 87th Precinct stand at the edge of their jurisdiction staring down into a ditch filled with six naked, murdered bodies. But who put them there and why? As Carella and Kling dive deeper into the mystery of the six, they find themselves walking into a deadly battle among three teenage gangs: the Hispanic Death’s Heads, the African American Scarlet Avengers, and a white gang known as “the clique.” Racing to put together the clues before a criminal mastermind and a full-blown gang war tear the city apart, Carella and Kling need to use every trick in their arsenal. Hail to the Chief is one of the finest in bestselling author Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series. An edgy thriller with marvelous characters that speeds toward an explosive final act.

They were dead, the husband and wife. Both were shot in the face at close range with a shotgun. The husband, in fact, still had his finger on the trigger, the barrel pointing toward what used to be a significant portion of his head. It was clearly a suicide—or did it just look that way? For Detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling, what seems to be the truth on the surface often reveals something far different underneath. A killer is murdering married women and their husbands. But setting up shop in the 87th Precinct was the wrong move. Carella and Kling don’t buy the suicide theory, and soon enough they are on the killer’s trail. The only trouble is the murderous crime wave ripping through the city has gathered momentum. The Chicago Sun-Times proclaims, “Ed McBain…He hooks you…He holds you.” Shotgun, a gritty thriller in the 87th Precinct series, is a blast of sheer intensity as a series of grisly murders leads you on a high-octane ride toward a shocking, unforgettable conclusion.

It’s a cold November when James Harris takes his dog, Stanley, for their usual rounds of panhandling. Blind since Vietnam and married to a blind woman as well, James realizes his disability pension and her part-time job go only so far. The money he makes on the streets is desperately needed—yet it’s still not enough. But after today it won’t matter…When Detective Steve Carella finds James’ wife murdered as well, her throat slit like her husband’s, it is no longer a random crime. And when another blind woman turns up dead, all Carella has to go on is the nightmare James told a psychiatrist after coming home from the war ten years ago. What he finds is a labyrinthine trail of betrayal, sex, and a secret worth killing to keep buried. An intricately woven and flawlessly layered thriller, Long Time No See is a live wire in the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain, the bestselling author that People magazine describes as “a skillful writer who excels at pace, plot, and, especially, the complex clockwork of a cop’s mind.”

Detectives Brown and Carella answer a call to a double homicide. One guy broke in and another defended himself and now they both are dead. The case seems open and shut. Except for one piece of evidence: a torn picture in one of the dead men’s hands. When insurance investigator Irving Krutch turns up at the squadroom with another piece of the photograph, Brown and Carella realize their tidy little case isn’t so tidy after all. In fact it leads back to a six-year-old bank robbery that left the four robbers dead and $750,000 missing. Now they must search for the next missing piece of the picture… A fascinating, intense crime thriller, Jigsaw is bestselling author Ed McBain at his finest. With relentless pace and genius plotting, this installment of the 87th Precinct series weaves an unforgettable tale of greed and murder.

“You’ll have to speak a little louder,” the voice said. “I’m a little hard of hearing.” Between a highly successful cat burglar and a hippie crucifixion, the 87th Precinct definitely doesn’t need the Deaf Man showing up again—especially since his two previous appearances resulted in blackmail, murder, and general havoc. But at least they have him now...unless he had them first. The Deaf Man can hardly contain his glee. Detective Steve Carella is about to inadvertently help him rob a bank. Each day, he mails Carella a picture to keep the game going. The first two are pictures of J. Edgar Hoover, while the next ones involve George Washington. All are clues, obviously. But how do they add up? And will the 87th Precinct find out before the Deaf Man has the last laugh? A tough, taut, and hilarious mystery, Ed McBain’s classic novel will captivate a new generation of police procedural fans.

One night. One shift. No rest. Featuring the 87th Precinct’s entire cast of characters, this Halloween takes them into the darkest corners of depravity the city has to offer. And sometimes, surviving is the greatest treat of them all. From a liquor store hold-up ending with a dead owner and four costumed “kids” making off with the money to the pieces of a man showing up around the city, the Day of the Dead is turning the streets into a carnival of violence and murder. Meanwhile, a magician disappears in a stunning final act, and Detective First Class Eileen Burke poses as a hooker to lure in a serial killer. The question is, will the detectives all live to see the dawn of November? Newsweek declares bestselling author Ed McBain “has virtually reinvented the police procedural.” Interweaving rich characters, taut plotting, and sharp dialogue, Tricks is a multi-character masterpiece.

At midnight, one day dies as another comes to life. For the men of the 87th Precinct, they all bleed together in a never-ending cycle of crime and punishment. But every now and then, a day stands out as more unusual than the others. This is one of those days. Carella and Hawes investigate a murder; Kling delves into a store-front church bombing; Meyer checks out a house haunted by larcenous ghosts; Willis and Genero look into a naked hippie’s four-story death fall; Delgado takes an assault case in the Puerto Rican barrio; and Kapek hunts a man and woman mugging team. But when a gunman kills a grocer and shoots Parker twice, the rules of the game quickly change. With Parker’s life hanging in the balance, the detectives of the 87th will stop at nothing to get their man. For the first time, bestselling author Ed McBain puts all of his characters into one supercharged installment of the 87th Precinct series. Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here! is a taut, relentless thriller that illustrates his unmatched ability to weave multiple story threads into one ferociously intense novel.

The dog days of August are making the 87th Precinct feel like the inside of an oven. But things can always get hotter. With nearly half the squadroom on vacation, Detectives Carella and Hawes look into what appears to be an ordinary warehouse fire—but Carella and Hawes rarely see anything ordinary, and this is no different. The trail from the warehouse leads uptown to the murders of a junkie and a suspected prostitute. They soon discover a shady ghetto redevelopment deal may have gruesome ties that run deep into the city’s underbelly. Full of fascinating characters and dialogue that tears up the pages, Bread follows a bloody money trail through the city’s back alleys and dark corners. This installment of the 87th Precinct series is bestselling author Ed McBain at his grittiest.

Christmas is coming. But erudite attorney Gerry Fletcher got his present early: his wife’s body with a knife buried in it. Though he shamelessly cops to being happy she’s dead, his alibi is airtight and all signs point to a burglary gone bad. But even when detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling follow the clues to a junky punk and get a full confession, Carella can’t quit thinking there’s something about the case that’s as phony as a sidewalk Santa’s beard. Maybe it’s because the victim’s husband wants to pal around with the suspicious cop on a cryptic pub-crawl through the urban jungle. Or maybe it’s the dead woman’s double identity and little black book full of secret lovers. Whether she was Sarah the shrewish wife or Sadie the sex-crazy swinger, there’s more to her murder than just a bad case of “wrong place, wrong time.” And Carella won’t rest till his cuffs are on the killer.

A young woman stops at the grocery store after work, but she never makes it home—at least not all the way. She is stabbed to death in front of her building, her groceries strewn across the cold pavement. Upstairs her neighbor and popular ghost story author Gregory Craig lay dead as well, stabbed in his apartment. When Craig’s publisher is found murdered just days later, Detective Steve Carella has a deadly mystery on his hands, one unlike any he’s ever had before. Searching for clues, Carella instead finds Craig’s girlfriend, a medium whose spooky predictions keep him guessing. When some leads take him to a “haunted” house on the New England shores, strange events turn even stranger…until, back in the city, he turns up the crucial evidence he needs to track down the killer. A rare twist in Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, Ghosts weaves the haunting uneasiness of the supernatural thriller with a classic, tightly plotted police procedural. Stephen King hails Ghosts as “excellent. It’s a fine—and creepy—mystery, and a fine novel.”