When the rope around a teen suicide’s neck turns out to be hiding a heroin overdose, the detectives of the 87th Precinct plunge into a world of pushers and users right on their home turf—and in their own families. “McBain has the ability to make every character believable—which few writers these days can do.” —Associated Press “McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet… even those we thought we already knew.” —New York Times Book Review
Ed McBain concocts a brilliant and intricate thriller about a master criminal who haunts the city with cryptic passages from Shakespeare, directing the detectives of the 87th Precinct to a future crime -- if only they can figure out what he means.
The 87th Precinct gets a visit from one of the city's most accomplished criminals -- a thief known as the Deaf Man. Because he might be deaf. Or he might not. So little is known about the man who is harassing Detective Steve Carella with puzzling messages that it is hard to tell. But as soon as a pattern emerges, the detectives of the 87th are forced to hit the books and brush up on their Shakespeare -- because each new clue contains a line from one of his plays. Unless they can crack this complicated riddle and beat the Deaf Man at his own cat-and-mouse game, someone is going to end up hurt, or something will be stolen -- or both. It's always so hard to tell with the Deaf Man.
Ed McBain brings his most intelligent and devious criminal back to the 87th Precinct with a richly plotted and literary crime.
An ax murderer has taken root in the 87th Precinct…Will Detectives Hawes and Carella be able to stop him before he kills again?
“Imagine your favorite Law & Order cast solving fresh mysteries into infinity, with no re-runs, and you have some sense of McBain’s grand, ongoing accomplishment.” — Entertainment Weekly
“McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet…even those we thought we already knew.” — New York Times Book Review
'm a Fathead, Men!
I Am the Deaf Man!
Unscrambling the cryptic messages -- anagrams, Detective Carella called them -- delivered to the 87th Precinct confirmed that the master criminal who has eluded them time and again is not only alive and well, but may or may not be behind a deadly revenge shooting. For that matter, the Deaf Man may or may not be deaf. But he's getting through loud and clear with clues drawn from Shakespeare's works -- taunting hints and maddening riddles pointing to his next plan of attack. It doesn't take a literary scholar to know there's no room for misinterpretation. For when the Deaf Man talks, everybody listens...or somebody gets hurt.
But as any real writer could tell you, that's how inspiration strikes -- with the sudden force of a violent crime. Known more for his foul mouth and short temper than his way with words, Detective Weeks has written a novel. But just as Isola is rocked by the murder of a mayoral candidate, the only copy of Ollie's manuscript is stolen -- and an all-too-real adventure begins as a thief follows Ollie's fictional blueprint to find a $2 million cache of nonexistent diamonds. Now, the 87th Precinct races to bring poetic justice to a cold-blooded assassin -- and someone's about to add another chapter to the colorful career of Ollie Weeks, a cop who's never played by the book....
The hanging death of a nondescript old man in a shabby little apartment in a meager section of the 87th Precinct is nothing much in this city, especially to detectives Carella and Meyer. But everyone has a story, and this old man's story stood to make some people a lot of money. His story takes Carella, Meyer, Brown, and Weeks on a search through seedy strip clubs and to the bright lights of the theater district. There they discover an upcoming musical with ties to a mysterious drug -- and a killer who stays until the last dance.
The kidnapping was audacious,
and there were plenty of witnesses...
But no one attending the dazzling launch party for up-and-coming pop idol Tamar Valparaiso knew what they were seeing when, halfway through her performance, masked men whisked the sexy young singer off a luxury yacht and into a waiting speedboat. Now, the evening that was supposed to send Tamar's debut album, Bandersnatch, skyrocketing with a million-dollar promotional campaign has instead kicked off a terrifying countdown for Steve Carella and the detectives of the 87th Precinct. Time is their enemy in the race to find Tamar's abductors -- before the rising star is extinguished forever.
Sarah Whittaker is a green-eyed beauty with a love for Danny Kaye and white knights. Lawyer Matthew Hope can see all this clearly, despite the fact that whenever they meet the two are under constant surveillance by the mental institution staff. You see, Sarah's crazy...or is she? Sarah pleads with Matthew to take her case, claiming that her mother wrongfully had Sarah committed in order to seize her inheritance money. And while the mother and doctors in question seem shady, almost cloying in their belief that Sarah is a paranoid schizophrenic, Matthew can't tell day from night, or Rose Red from Snow White. Meanwhile, the corpse of a woman about Sarah's age washes ashore in a town nearby. Is there a connection? Is Sarah Whittaker really pure as snow? Is she the Virgin Queen she says she is? It's up to Matthew to find out. In Ed McBain's Snow White and Rose Red, Matthew Hope plunges into the noir, twisted world of the most complicated of mysteries - the human mind.
Jack McKinney is a bright-eyed twenty-year-old in the business of buying a snapbean farm with forty grand in cash, and attorney Matthew Hope assists with the deal - until Jack's found dead in his condo, stabbed fourteen times. The backwoods seller wants his forty grand pronto, but nobody can find the cash. And when Matthew pays a visit to the McKinney ranch, he gets more than he bargained for. Jack's mother, Veronica, is a woman who looks half her years, with cool gray eyes to match her ambivalent attitude toward her son's death. The only thing more dangerous than Veronica is daughter Sunny, the mirror image of her mother and a girl who can hold her liquor. Everyone seems to have a theory about the missing money, but Matthew's the only one who can get to the bottom of the bum deal. The fourth installment of Ed McBain's Matthew Hope Mysteries, Jack and the Beanstalk delivers our lawyer into a world of seedy folks, sour deals, and a family gone afoul.
With trademark wit and sizzling dialogue, Ed McBain unravels a mystery that takes us to the outer edge of the city and examines the dreams we chase in the darkening hours, before the fiddlers have fled.
Most serial killers don't shoot their victims twice in the face with a Glock. Most don't strike five times in two weeks. And most choose their prey for a reason, not randomly.
The detectives of the 87th Precinct are stumped by a serial killer who doesn't fit the profile. A blind violinist taking a smoke break, a cosmetics sales rep cooking an omelet in her kitchen, a college professor trudging home from class, a priest contemplating retirement in the rectory garden, an old woman walking her dog—these are the seemingly chance targets. Their only similarity seems to be age; all are just over 50. Now Steve Carella and his colleagues must learn what else—or who else—the victims had in common before another body is found.
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.
"McBain has the ability to make every character believable-which few writers these days can do." -Associated Press
"McBain forces us to think twice about every character we meet...even those we thought we already knew." -New York Times Book Review
