This mugger is special. He preys on women, waiting in the darkness… then comes from behind, attacks them, and snatches their purses. He tells them not to scream and as they're on the ground, reeling with pain and fear, he bows and nonchalantly says, “Clifford thanks you, madam.” But when he puts one victim in the hospital and the next in the morgue, the detectives of the 87th Precinct are not amused and will stop at nothing to bring him to justice. Dashing young patrolman Bert Kling is always there to help a friend. And when a friend's sister-in-law is the mugger's murder victim, Bert's personal reasons to find the maniacal killer soon become a burning obsession… and it could easily get him killed

Detective Steve Carella of the 87th precinct had a pretty complete description of the man he was looking for: The man was tall, blond, handsome — a powerhouse of strength and sex. Women gave him whatever he wanted. And he made some strange requests. After seducing a woman, he would ask her to have a small heart tattooed on her hand, to show the world that she belonged to him. When the woman had been thus branded as his property — he murdered her

Detective Steve Carella thought it was be an easy day — and an enjoyable one. It was his day off and it was his sister’s wedding day. But it began much too ominously. Tommy Giordano, the groom, found a wedding present on his doorstep in the morning — a small box, neatly gift-wrapped. Its contents were deadly. Weddings-Fetes, Incorporated decorated the Carella back yard; there was a band and plenty of champagne. On the surface it was everything a wedding should be. But Steve wasn’t at all sure that Tommy would live long enough to become Angela’s husband. Meyer Meyer, Cotton Hawes and the rest of the 87th Precinct detectives begin a dogged race against time to trace down one small and possibly fruitless lead. It might mean nothing at all. The man they were trying to find wasn’t even at the wedding — or was he? There is a second attempt on Tommy’s life, then a third, this time on that Steve doesn’t even know about. Will there be more — and when will they come and from what direction? Is the killer a guest at the wedding — at least one man there carries a gun — or is he watching Tommy from a distance through the cross-sight of a sniper’s rifle? Until death us do part... or will death arrive before the ceremony has even began? Even if the bride and groom are joined in holy matrimony, one murder device in timed to strike during the honeymoon — after Carella thinks the case is finished. There never was a gayer wedding or one with such an undercurrent of driving suspense. And Steve Carella gets his biggest shock of the day on the very last page — a surprise supplied by Mrs. Carella!

Patrolman Richard Genero couldn’t see clearly in the driving rain. The man — or perhaps the tall woman — standing at the bus stop was dressed entirely in black. Black raincoat, black slacks, black shoes, black umbrella which hid the head and hair. A bus pulled to the curb, spreading a canopy of water. The door snapped open. The person — man or woman — boarded the bus and the rain-streaked doors closed, hiding the black-shrouded figure from view. The bus pulled away from the curb, spreading another canopy of water which soaked Genero’s trouser legs. “Hey!” he yelled after the bus. “You forgot your bag!” Genera picked up the bag — a small, blue overnight bag issued by an airline. He unzipped the bag and reached into it. Then he gripped the bus-stop sign for support. The bag held... a severed human hand. The police lab gave both bag and hand a thorough examination and discovered next to nothing. Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, Meyer Meyer and the other 87th Precinct detectives had a murderer to find, and they had to begin without even knowing who the victim was. The Missing Persons Bureau files supplied two leads, both of which led nowhere. Everything that looked even faintly like a clue was checked and double-checked and they all led to the same place — a dead end. Then, when the break finally came and several clues turned up at once, they neatly contradicted each other. It was the toughest case the 87th Precinct detectives had ever faced

It is late afternoon, Friday, October 13. Detectives Carella, Meyer and Kling of the 87th Squad are waiting for their relief, due at 5:45 P.M. At 5:15, the telephone rings. Meyer answers, listens, jots down a few notes, then says, “Steve, Bert, you want to take this? Some nut just shot up a bookstore on Culver Avenue. There’s three people laying dead on the floor.” The crowd had already gathered around the bookshop. There were two uniformed cops on the sidewalk, and a squad car was pulled up to the curb across the street. The people pulled back instinctively when they heard the wail of the siren on the police sedan. Carella got out first, slamming the door behind him. He waited for Kling to come around the car, and then both men started for the shop. At the door, the patrolman said, “Lot of dead people in there, sir.” A routine squeal for the 87th, answered with routine dispatch. But there was nothing routine about it a moment later. What Bert Kling found in the wreckage of the shop very nearly destroyed him. Enraged, embittered, the youngest detective on the squad begins a nightmarish search for a crazed and wanton killer. The hunt is relentless and intensely personal — not only for Kling but for every man on the squad. Lady, Lady, I Did It! like all 87th Precinct stories, is charged with emotion and moves from the first page with the relentless, driving intensity that is characteristic of Ed McBain

When Anthony Forrest walked out of the office building, the only thoughts on his mind were of an impending birthday and a meeting with his wife for dinner. And a deadly bullet saw to it that they were the last thoughts on his mind. The problem for Detectives Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer of the 87th Precinct is that Forrest isn’t alone. An anonymous sniper is unofficially holding the city hostage, frustrating the police as one by one the denizens of Isola drop like flies. With fear gripping the citizenry and the pressure on the 87th mounting, finding a killer whose victims are random is the greatest challenge the detectives have ever faced — and the deadliest game the city has ever known. A gritty, relentless pressure cooker of a thriller, Ten Plus One is one of bestselling author Ed McBain’s finest, the ultimate addition to the 87th Precinct series where time threatens to stand still and murder rules the day

Eighty-six-year-old George Lasser was the superintendent of a building in the 87th Precinct until just recently. Unfortunately his tenure ended in the building’s basement with a sharp, heavy blade of an ax in his head… There are no witnesses, no suspects, and no clues. The wife and son? They’re both a little off-kilter, but they have alibis. Just when Carella and Hawes are about to put the case on the shelf, the killer strikes again. Now the detectives are hot on the trail of a man crazy enough to murder with an ax. One of the 87th Precinct series’ finest installments, Ax is a sharp, intense crime thriller that is classic Ed McBain. The New York Times hails it as “the best of today’s police stories—lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory

She was a living doll — until she was slashed to death. Detective Steve Carella wants Bert Kling on the case, even though Kling is making enemies of everyone. Then finally even Carella has had it with Kling, and suddenly the detective is missing and suspected dead. The men from the 87th Precinct go full tilt to find the truth. But they really need to find is a little doll — the little doll with all the answers

Stan Gifford is the ultimate comedian. A pro through and through, when Stan’s act dies, so does he—in front of forty million viewers from coast to coast, including the 87th Precinct’s Steve Carella. But what seemed to be death by natural causes quickly turns into a case of murder, and Carella must unravel the motivations behind the comedian’s final act. Meanwhile, Cindy Forrest has been working to put herself through college since the sniper who held the city hostage three years ago murdered her father. But now she’s in the crosshairs, and the only thing standing between her and a killer is Detective Bert Kling of the 87th Precinct

They were dead, the husband and wife. Both were shot in the face at close range with a shotgun. The husband, in fact, still had his finger on the trigger, the barrel pointing toward what used to be a significant portion of his head. It was clearly a suicide — or did it just look that way? For Detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling, what seems to be the truth on the surface often reveals something far different underneath. A killer is murdering married women and their husbands. But setting up shop in the 87th Precinct was the wrong move. Carella and Kling don’t buy the suicide theory, and soon enough they are on the killer’s trail. The only trouble is the murderous crime wave ripping through the city has gathered momentum

“Nothing can confuse a person (cops included) more than a lot of names and a lot of pieces and a lot of corpses...” The cops of the 87th Precinct are really confused this time. When Detective Arthur Brown finds two dead men, it looks like a nice simple double homicide — except for the piece of photograph clutched in one dead hand. The confusion doesn’t start until Irving Krutch, an insurance investigator, turns up at the squad room with another piece of the photograph. Part of a homemade jigsaw puzzle, according to Krutch. The handiwork of the late Carmine Bonamico. When all the pieces, which had been passed around to friends and relatives of Bonamicos gang, were assembled, they would reveal the hiding place of the§ 750,000 the gang had stolen from a savings and loan association six years ago. Find the missing pieces, find the missing money. The search is on, and it involves Detectives Brown and Carella with people like an art gallery owner, a cheap hoodlum, a middle-aged floozy, a hot-dog vendor and an old Sicilian woman. Detective Meyer gets lucky. He visits a boutique where all the salesgirls wear see-through blouses. Some of these people have another caller. It turns out that owning a piece of the photograph can be deadly, and it looks like a toss-up as to who will get the puzzle completed first — the police or a very determined murderer

The minute hand on the station-house clock crept past midnight, and another day began — a not untypical October Sunday, bringing the usual assortment of big city crimes to the detectives of the 87th Precinct. To start the morning hours of the night, there was a gory homicide: a young actress in a controversial play had been stabbed, and Carella and Hawes set out to investigate. Meanwhile, Bert Kling was taking a call about a bombing in the black ghetto, and Meyer found himself talking to an attractive, well-educated woman who had an unlikely complaint: larcenous ghosts. The day shift was no less eventful. Willis and Genero were investigating the death of a bearded youth who fell or was pushed from a fourth-floor window — stark naked. Alex Delgado took on a nasty beating in the Puerto Rican barrio, while Carl Kapek was looking for a man and woman who specialised in muggings. Andy Parker’s routine assignment took an unexpected twist: a pair of gunmen killed a grocer and shot Parker twice. And, just to fill in the idle moments, there was the usual parade of malicious punks, youthful runaways. hookers, and small-time burglars. For the first time, Ed McBain has brought together all the detectives of the 87th Precinct in a single novel — a book filled with his usual precise descriptions of police procedure and an ingenious assortment of interlocking plots — some violent, some touching, some ironic, but all marked by the masterful McBain touch

“ ‘You’ll have to speak louder,’ the voice said. ‘I’m a little hard of hearing.’ ” What with one thing and another, such as a highly successful cat burglar and what seemed to be a hippie crucifixion, the 87th Precinct didn’t need The Deaf Man. Especially since he’d already put in two previous appearances resulting in blackmail, murder and general havoc. But they had him, certainly, they very definitely had him — or was it he that had them? This time, The Deaf Man thinks it fitting that a police detective will help him rob a bank. Detective Steve Carella, to be exact. So, each day, he sends Carella a photostat in the morning mail. The first two pictures of J. Edgar Hoover, the next are of George Washington. All are clues, obviously, but what do they mean? Who, where, when and how? This is tough, taut, funny mystery with a number of very peculiar cases and a most surprising ending, played against Ed McBain’s highly-detailed knowledge of police and detective procedure

It was a miserable day in August in the 87th Precinct. Detective Steve Carella was hot and tired and his shirt was sticking to his back, and now this dumpy little man named Roger Grimm was sitting across from him in the squadroom demanding to know if they were going to catch the arsonist who had burned down his warehouse. “We’ll see what we can do,” Carella sighed. In the next few days Carella and his partner, Cotton Hawes, find themselves in the middle of an astonishing case, one which quickly proves to contain not one, but two arsons — and two murders. Assisted by a rather unfortunate personality named “Fat Ollie” Weeks of the 83rd precinct coarse, bigoted, and given to terrible W.C. Fields imitations, but, they have to admit, first-rate cop — Carella and Hawes roam across the city from the waterfront to the heart of the black ghetto, following a deadly trail of greed and violence. Their path leads them directly to a gallery of very unpleasant suspects and to a most unusual afternoon poker game,complete with high stakes, fast company — and a wild card

A killer is out for blood, and it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to bring him in ― but a shocking surprise awaits when a survivor fingers the suspect in a lineup

Jimmy Harris lost his eyesight in Vietnam. But it was on a cold city street that he lost his life. Somebody chloroformed his guide dog and slit Harris's throat. Detectives Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer of the 87th Precinct shook their heads at the blood and waste of it all, then took the groggy dog back to headquarters, where it told them all it could — nothing. Jimmy’s blind wife didn't tell Carella much more. And by the next morning, she wasn’t talking at all. She was dead. The only clue Carella could find to the double murder was a nightmare Jimmy had told an Army shrink ten years before... and the detective was too blind to see how a bad dream of sex and violence was the key to the dark places in a killer’s mind

“This is your case,” the manual advised, “stick with the investigation.” Stick with it in the pouring rain where a man lay with his open skull seeping his brains onto the sidewalk, stick with it in a hospital room reeking of antiseptic, stick with it in a tenement apartment at two in the morning, the clock throwing minutes into the empty hours of the night while a woman wept tears for her man who was dead. Search her closet for the clothing the killer wore. Get her to talk about her husband’s possible infidelities. Be a cop. Being a cop was something Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct knew a lot about. He knew about the careful, painstaking work of tracking down leads that could mean nothing or everything. He knew that cops like continuity even if it takes a couple of corpses to provide it and that right now he and his partner Meyer Meyer had all the continuity they could handle. They had two corpses shot within four hours of each other on the same rainy Friday night with the same .38 Smith & Wesson — one a calypso singer from Trinidad who had just finished a gig the other a hooker named C. J. who had just turned her last trick. Carella knew they had a case that was growing as cold as a slab in the morgue. He knew that they had a killer loose in the city who had killed once, twice, and perhaps would kill again if he and Meyer didn’t follow the leads, didn’t stick with the case, didn’t get there first... With this breathtakingly suspenseful novel Ed McBain shows us what the police procedural novel is all about. Whether you’re one of the millions of faithful followers of the 87th Precinct or a fan-to-be, from the first terse page of Calypso to an ending that will frighten you out of your skin, you’ll know you are in the hands of a master

It’s Christmastime and Detective Carella gets assigned three murders — including a bestselling author of ghost stories — and is soon after ghosts, mediums, and a crazed killer

Why would any man, however deranged, take an overdose of sleeping pills and then calmly turn off his air conditioner with the city sweltering through a backbreaking heat wave? This question nags at Detectives Bert Kling and Steve Carella. Kling’s got other problems: his startlingly beautiful wife is almost certainly cheating on him, and he is being stalked by a psychopathic ex-con bent on getting Wing for having sent him up. While Carella scratches away like a terrier at the “suicide,” Kling grows less and less capable of coping. In a shattering triple climax, the tinderbox elements converge Ed McBain makes it clear that there can be no real winners here, except for the reader. In this, his thirty-fifth 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain reaffirms his mastery of the police procedural story

Here is Ed McBain’s most ambitious and far-reaching novel of the famed 87th Precinct. But Ice goes beyond the world of the 87th Precinct. Ice transcends the genre of crime fiction... as Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold did the novel of espionage. Ice is Ed McBain’s most searching and compelling novel... of justice triumphant over the savage law of the city streets... of men and women who wear the golden detective shield with pride, honor and dedication. Ed McBain has written his most masterly story of crime and defection, life and sudden death in the chillingly realistic world of the 87th Precinct, and beyond

A young woman is found hanging from a lamppost in a deserted area of the 87th Precinct. That same night, another woman is raped — for the third time in succession, by the same man each time. Not long after that, a second murder victim is found hanging from a lamppost in another part of the precinct. The murders are obviously linked. But how? And why are both murder victims female athletes and — more specifically — runners on the track teams of two different colleges? Why is someone, as it turns out, systematically raping different women twice, three times, sometimes four times in succession? Has the Deaf Man put in a return appearance, as the detectives of the 87th Precinct secretly suspect? Can Fat Ollie Weeks help the men of the 87th solve these crimes? Will Eileen Burke, working as a decoy for the Rape Squad, be forced into a confrontation that may change her life and her views about police work? Lightning can strike twice — and sometimes even more often. In his new 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain once again shows how the patient, hard-working professionals with the golden shields cope with crime and killers, putting together the pieces of each difficult case with immense skill, intuition... and old-fashioned pounding of the streets... testing their expertise to the limit of endurance

Here is an irresistibly charming tale, beautifully packaged in a small, illustrated and slipcased gift book. All’s quiet at the 87th Precinct on Christmas Eve... until Steve Carella’s fellow detectives appear with a kid who’s stolen a sheep, a robber with a bagful of gold, two guys fighting over a sack of frankincense, and a young couple who give birth to a baby boy at midnight! “And All Through the House” was first published in Playboy in December, 1984

It's not a mystery, it's a story of survival and triumph. That's what some people say about Romance, a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wielding stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. And before the detectives of the 87th can solve that crime, the same actress is stabbed again. This time for keeps. A.D.A. Nellie Brand moves in for a murder conviction, but Detective Steve Carella is sure she's got the wrong guy, and wrestles for the case with Fat Ollie Weeks, Isola's foulest cop. While Bert Kling interviews witnesses and suspects ranging from the show's producers to the author — who has written novels about cops and knows how it's done — to the lead's lovely understudy, he can't keep his mind off what's happening to him. He's falling in love. With a doctor. Who happens to be a deputy chief surgeon. Who happens to be a black woman. In the city of Isola, nothing is black and white. In the play Romance, no one is guilty or innocent. And in the gritty reality of the 87th Precinct, everyone is in love with something — even if it's only murder