Secondhand Ed McBain 87th Precinct Bargain Book Box SP4090

Secondhand Ed McBain 87th Precinct Bargain Book Box SP4090

Fifteen Ed McBain, fourteen of them 87th Precinct, most in the gold-banded Pan editions: Fuzz, Axe, Bread, Ghosts, Tricks, Vespers, Widows, Hail to the Chief and the omnibus of The Con Man and ‘Til Death. Carella, Meyer, Kling, Hawes and the Deaf Man, in the series that invented the police procedural and ran for fifty years.

1. Eighty Million Eyes — Ed McBain — A TV comedian dies on camera in front of forty million viewers, and the precinct has to work out how you poison a man live on air. Kling’s girlfriend is being stalked in the other half of the book. Mid-1960s McBain, tight as a drum.
2. Widows — Ed McBain — A rich man’s young mistress is murdered, then his wife, and the detectives follow the money. Carella’s father is shot dead in a bakery hold-up in the same book, and McBain writes the funeral straight. The darkest of the late ones.
3. Hail to the Chief — Ed McBain — Six bodies in a ditch, and a teenage gang leader who gives interviews like a president explaining a war. McBain’s Nixon novel.
4. Guns — Ed McBain — A gun-shop holdup, a fleeing couple and the lives they wreck across one night. Not an 87th Precinct; a standalone, nastier than the series.
5. Ghosts — Ed McBain — A bestselling author is stabbed on Christmas Eve, a woman in his building says she saw a ghost, and Carella goes to a séance. The one where the precinct meets something it can’t arrest.
6. Tricks — Ed McBain — Halloween night: a magician’s body in pieces, liquor stores held up by children with guns, and the Deaf Man’s most elaborate heist. Three plots, one shift. The Deaf Man books are the ones fans want.
7. Where There’s Smoke — Ed McBain — A private-eye novel: a corpse is stolen from the morgue and Benjamin Smoke, retired cop, wants to know why. Short, odd, out of print.
8. The Empty Hours — Ed McBain — Three novellas: a rich woman found dead in a cheap flat with a stranger’s name; a rabbi murdered in the title story “J”; and Storm. The best short McBain, and “J” is the best thing he wrote.
9. Bread — Ed McBain — A warehouse fire, a stolen shipment of fake money and a landlord who’s more frightened than he should be. The precinct follows the bread. 1974.
10. Vespers — Ed McBain — A priest is stabbed to death in his church garden and the Satanic church across the street is the obvious suspect, which is why it’s wrong. Late McBain, as dark as Widows.
11. The Con Man and ‘Til Death — Ed McBain — Two early 87th Precincts in one: a swindler who romances women and drowns them, and Carella’s sister’s wedding with a killer among the guests. 1957 and 1959, when the series was young.
12. Fuzz — Ed McBain — The Deaf Man starts killing city officials and demanding money, and the precinct looks like fools. Filmed with Burt Reynolds; the book is funnier. The one to start with.
13. The McBain Brief — Ed McBain — Twenty short stories from the pulp years, cops and killers and one or two surprises.
14. Blood Relatives — Ed McBain — A teenage girl stabbed in a doorway, her cousin a witness, and a diary that turns the case inside out. One of the few 87th Precincts that’s a true whodunit.
15. Axe — Ed McBain — An eighty-seven-year-old janitor is killed with an axe in a basement, and the simplest case on the roster takes the longest to close. McBain working small.