Tricks – Ed McBain

I’ve often cited on this very blog my preference for reading series novels in order of publication. However, I just violated my own rule and picked an 87^th Precinct novel at random. Well, not entirely at random, the premise of Halloween night in the Precinct seemed too tasty to resist browsing over the few McBain titles I own. One reason I felt comfortable jumping into the series is because I’ve always looked at the 87^th Precinct novels as self-standing episodic tales. Like many crime shows on television, it isn’t difficult to start watching in the middle of a season, or for that matter, in the middle of an episode, and picking up the story elements and running with them quickly deciphering what crime has happened and following along with the investigation. 

Master storyteller Ed McBain fills in plot elements with previous tidbits or character development pertaining to the previous 39 installments necessary to the plot without slowing down the action. In fact, it’s straight action all the way through and takes place in a single night in linear fashion. I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the 87^th Precinct having read Ax (1964) and having seen the movie Fuzz (1972) with Burt Reynolds. Again, the characters are easy to get a grasp on and the reader can follow along with the investigation. However, I think my appreciation will grow as I read more 87^th Precinct novels and become more familiar with the team’s interactions and humor. The book is full of humor and great crackling dialogue that at times reads like a screenplay.

True to its title, Tricks (1987) rattles off out of the gate with liquor stores robbery that ends with a manager gunned down by children in costumes. Could children possibly perform such an outrageous act or is someone pulling a Halloween trick? A murderer cuts up prostitutes picked up at the local dive bar in a neighboring precinct and a stakeout becomes organized. Eileen Burke is the plant in the uncover sting operation for the prostitute killer posing as a trick despite recovering from an attack on herself not that long ago. Cotton Hawes takes the call from a lovely magician’s assistant who’s searching for her missing husband, the Great Sabastiani that has mysteriously vanished after an afternoon matinee. Coincidentally, Sabastiani’s apprentice has left town in their van leaving all of their tricks and props scattered across a parking lot. Body parts are turning up in trashcans all over the city and a magician is missing. Do the body parts belong to the missing magician that has performed his very last trick?

Steve Carella, Andy Parker, and Arthur Brown also play major roles in this novel. Carella and Brown plan a stakeout of their own inside a liquor store with disastrous results. Andy Parker responds to the call of Peaches Muldoon, who was the mother of killer, now harassed by an obscene phone caller. Parker is eager to connect and romance Peaches, but stumbles on a little trick by pretending to be dressed as a plain-clothes cop at Halloween costume party and impresses all the guests with his authenticity and very real badge and gun. Strangely enough, a circus performer takes notice of Parker’s charm and Parker quickly has a little female admirer.

I don’t want to give away too many details, but the book’s layers weave into many story elements that intersect at various points of the different investigations. If police procedurals are your cup of tea, then the 87^TH Precinct will fill your kettle. Ed McBain was the pen name for Evan Hunter, who wrote the novel Blackboard Jungle, and most famously, the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. While close to fifty novels in the 87^th Precinct series, Hunter has another fifty novels under various pseudonyms including Evan Hunter and Hunt Collins. Hunter died in 2005 at the age of 78.