Showing results by author "Ed McBain" in All Categories

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.

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?

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 murder of a young mistress in a penthouse apartment has Detectives Carella and Brown investigating a family with many motives…even as an unrelated murder impacts Carella personally.

A woman is murdered in a liquor store, hurtling the men from the 87th Precinct into an investigation of her secret lives and many possible enemies. Faced with a host of suspects—from the woman’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.

Murder is in season as a brutal winter grips the city. The detectives of the 87th Precinct must fight the elements and turn up the heat to find a ruthless killer.

The book behind the major motion picture High and Low, King's Ransom is the tenth book in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. Here, McBain delivers the full-throttle action and suspense we have come to expect. When a wealthy businessman is faced with a kidnapping, the ransom could ruin his biggest deal ever—unless Detective Steve Carella can find the culprits before the kidnapping turns to murder.

A beat cop winds up on the trail of a deadly mugger, but when it suddenly gets personal, his own life might be the next thing to be snatched….

When a young woman’s body is fished out of the 87th Precinct’s river, a street-wise detective is on the clock to find the con man who killed her before he strikes again.

Selected Shorts is an award-winning, one-hour program featuring readings of classic and new short fiction, recorded live at New York's Symphony Space. One of the most popular series on the airwaves, this unique show is hosted by Isaiah Sheffer and produced for radio by Symphony Space and WNYC Radio.

A craftsman visiting the city struggles to contact the 87th Precinct with details of a former lover’s sudden death when there’s another beauty distracting him.

A calypso singer fresh off a gig walks home in a downpour, when shots tear through his head like steel rain. A hooker out on the street in the same miserable weather doesn’t know her final trick will be her last. What brings these two sad ends together… the same gun.

It is stormy in the 87th Precinct and with every hour that passes, every minute the killer stays on the loose, the trail is only going to get colder.

When a sniper begins gunning down cops from the 87th Precinct in cold blood, it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to solve the case. With three cops already dead, Carella delves into the city’s underworld to search for the killer.

After an aging rock starlet is murdered and her daughter kidnapped, Matthew Hope must find out who’s come to collect on the woman’s former good fortune.

The murder of a priest in one of the 87th Precinct’s parishes sends Detectives Carella and Hawes on a troubling investigation where everyone has a secret and the truth hides within the lies.

When a client is murdered just before he’s due to pay forty grand for a bean farm, lawyer Matthew Hope wanders into a world of shotguns, cowboys, dangerous farm beauties, and vanished cash.

A killer is out for blood, and it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to bring him in. But a shocking surprise awaits when a survivor fingers the suspect in a lineup.

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. This is a devastating look at the personal side of a hardened detective.

Detective Steve Carella’s sister is getting married but someone wants the groom dead, and Steve has just a few hours to locate the killer before his sister becomes a bride — and a widow — on the same day.

A babysitter and the child she is watching are murdered on New Year’s Eve — just as a gang war over drug trafficking erupts and puts one of the detectives of the 87th Precinct in mortal danger.