Showing results by author "Ed McBain" in All Categories

These three nerve-racking stories from best-selling author Ed McBain put detectives from the 87th Precinct on the trail of different killers who take the lives of a rich woman, a rabbi, and a ski instructor.

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.

An anonymous sniper on a deadly rampage has the men of the 87th Precinct on their heels and the city with tattered nerves. They must somehow find their man before he takes aim again. A gritty, relentless pressure cooker of a thriller, Ten Plus One is one of best-selling author Ed McBain’s finest, the ultimate addition to the 87th Precinct series where time threatens to stand still and murder rules the day.

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….

Ed McBain's latest installment in the 87th Precinct series finds the detectives stumped by a serial killer who doesn't fit the profile. Seemingly random targets shot twice in the face. But most serial killers don't use guns. Most serial killers don't strike five times in two weeks. Now it falls to Detective Steve Carella and his colleagues in the 87th Precinct to find out what, or whom, the victims had in common before another body is found.

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 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.

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 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.

Finding a dead body was not unusual for an autumn night in the 87th Precinct. But this young woman's body was naked - and potentially related to the series of odd missives received at the station house. All signs point to the Deaf Man's return, this time with a plot more diabolical than even the jaded policemen could imagine. He's been sending them mysterious pictures of police equipment: nightsticks, helmets, black horses, and more. But what did they mean?

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.

When a pale beauty accuses her hideous husband of battery, then turns up dead, the lawyer she’d hired before her death is coerced into defending the accused man. Case closed…only the beast may be innocent.

It’s Christmas time and Detective Carella gets assigned three murders - including a best-selling author of ghost stories - and is soon after ghosts, mediums, and a crazed killer.

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.

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.

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.

Six naked, murdered bodies on a cold January night put Detectives Carella and Kling in the middle of a full-on gang war and in a head-to-head battle with a mysterious criminal mastermind.

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.

Two perps - one a serial killer and the other a rapist who revisits his victims - test the limits of the 87th Precinct’s detectives as they race to catch these maniacs loose on the city’s streets.