Ed McBain

It should have been the night that launched a new pop idol. Tamar Valparaiso is young and beautiful, with the body and voice of an angel. The stage is set for her to launch her debut album, Bandersnatch, on a luxury yacht in the heart of the city. But halfway through her performance, masked men drag Tamar off the stage and into a waiting speedboat, while the partygoers look on helplessly. Detective Steve Carella is just showing up for the graveyard...

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...

Ed McBain, author of the best-selling 87th Precinct series, takes us Downtown in this harrowing tale of a lone out-of-towner running for his life in New York CIty. Meet Michael Barnes, a Florida orange grower who finds himself in a Wall Street bar with a couple of hours to kill. It's a couple of hours that almost kill him, as he's swindled, robbed, framed for murder, and hunted down by an assassin in one of the wildest, scariest, funniest, fastest...

An 87th Precinct novel -- Certain that someone is trying to kill her, Emma Bowles turns to another killer for protection, and only a dedicated cop trapped in a defective legal system can save her.

A con man taking an old woman's money, a cheater tricking businessmen out of thousands, and a lady-killer. If the cops know every game he plays, why are dead bodies still being found on the shore?

A long shadow looms above the wife of filmmaker Carlton Markham. Then a hand clamps over her mouth, and a blade sinks into her back. Blood splatters on the film reel case beside her, and a young life is cut short. Lawyer Matthew Hope gets a call from Markham, who's been arrested for his wife's murder, but he says he didn't do it. Witnesses fly forward to proclaim his guilt, but Markham's not giving up on his innocence that easily. And when Hope digs...

The hanging death of an old man in a shabby little apartment in a meager section of the 87th Precinct was nothing much, especially to detectives Carella and Meyer. But 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 Isola's 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...

The lives of two New York toughs spin out of control when a routine burglary spirals into a cop killing in this thriller by the author of the 87th Precinct series. Robbing the cars is Jobbo's idea. Frankie just goes along because it's too hot to do anything else, and he can't resist easy money. They walk along the East River, reaching into open windows and taking whatever they find. Mostly, it's just junk, until Jobbo picks up the .45. It's fully...

The detectives of the 87th Precinct are confronted with a call - clearly a crank call - that threatens the life of the city's parks commissioner unless a ransom of $5,000 is paid. The deadline soon passes and the parks commissioner is shot in the head as he leaves a rock concert. Soon, another anonymous warning follows and the deputy mayor is blown up in his Cadillac. The next target is the young, charismatic Kennedy-esque mayor who is on the hit...

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.