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Hark!
A NOVEL OF THE 87th PRECINCT
ED McBAIN
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When it comes to fast, funny, pitch-perfect tales of cops and perps in the big city, nobody spins them better than the grand master, Ed McBain. And like fine malt whiskey, McBain and his extraordinary 87th Precinct series just get better with age.
HARK! (Simon & Schuster, August 2004, $24.95) the 54th entry in the series and the second of 2004 (after The Frumious Bandersnatch), brings back the Deaf Man, the series’ most notorious villain. Planting cryptic clues from the plays of William Shakespeare, the murderous mastermind plunges the “Eight-Seven” detectives—including series stalwarts Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer—into their most gripping case to date.
When last seen in 1993’s Mischief, the Deaf Man was betrayed by his beautiful accomplice and left for dead. As HARK! opens, his act of revenge leaves one dead femme fatale and the cops of the 87th Precinct scrambling to figure out what he’ll pull next. His diabolical plot, which becomes clear only at the very end, involves riddles written in iambic pentameter and anagrams, a priceless violin, and a prostitute who is craftier than she first appears.
As always in the 87th Precinct, nothing turns out as planned, for either the police or the criminal. Bouncing effortlessly between crime caper, character drama, and comic hijinks, HARK! is vintage Ed McBain.
In the timeless, fictional metropolis of Isola (a thinly veiled Manhattan), the familiar faces of the 87th Precinct squad room haven’t aged a day since 1956’s Cop Hater. But thanks to McBain’s gift for crafting fresh, character-driven subplots that are every bit as gripping as the central investigation, the cops’ personalities and relationships continue to evolve with the series.
This time around, Steve Carella faces the dual challenge of foiling the Deaf Man while footing the bill for his mother and sister’s double wedding; the interracial romance between Bert Kling and surgeon Sharyn Cooke threatens to erupt, as Kling suspects Cooke of infidelity; Cotton Hawes discovers that his news anchor girlfriend, Honey Blair, will do anything for higher ratings; Hal Willis confesses his crush on fellow detective Eileen Burke; and Ollie Weeks’ novel-in-progress, which was purloined in Fat Ollie’s Book (2003), turns up in an unexpected form.
Half the pleasure of reading a McBain novel comes from the crackling, often hilarious dialogue, and HARK! is another showcase for “the man with the golden ear” (as hailed by the New York Times Book Review). Over the decades, McBain’s breezy, discursive style has proved enormously influential—Quentin Tarantino surely picked up a few pointers—but no one does it better than the master.
You know you’re in McBain territory when, in the middle of a crime scene, the detectives spend a page debating the semantics of “nice tits” versus “great jugs.” (The corpse in question has, or had, great jugs.) Or when the Deaf Man, explaining why he toys with the cops instead of simply committing the crime, delivers a nifty soliloquy on Frank Sinatra’s bowtie. And consider this confessional moment between the overweight Ollie Weeks and his girlfriend: “Am I a fat person?” “Yes, you’re fat ... But that’s just eating.”
As in Fat Ollie’s Book, where everyone’s favorite misanthropic cop penned a cop novel, the literary conceit of HARK! provides for smart, off-kilter fun. To decipher the Deaf Man’s Shakespearean clues, the streetwise detectives are forced to become literary critics. In one particularly funny scene, Kling confuses Christopher and Philip Marlowe, which prompts another detective to ask, “Who’s Raymond Chandler?”
As the 87th Precinct series nears the half-century mark, the man who invented the modern police procedural still has plenty of new tricks up his sleeve. HARK!, dear readers, Ed McBain is back and better than ever.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed McBain holds the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award, and received an Edgar Award nomination for his novel Money, Money, Money. In 1998, he was the first American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. His books have sold more than one hundred million copies, ranging from the more than fifty titles in the 87th Precinct series to the bestselling novels The Blackboard Jungle and Criminal Conversation, written under his own name, Evan Hunter. His most recent Evan Hunter novel is The Moment She Was Gone. Writing as both Ed McBain and Evan Hunter, he broke new ground with Candyland, a novel in two parts. He is also the author of the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Dragica. Visit his website at www.edmcbain.com.
ABOUT THE BOOK
HARK! A Novel of the 87th Precinct
By: Ed McBain
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: August 2004
Price: $24.95
ISBN #: 0-7432-5035-4