Two challenging cases bedevil the cops of the 87th Precinct

4 min readFeb 4, 2025

Nearly 70 years ago, the celebrated author of the bestselling novel The Blackboard Jungle launched America’s first series of realistic police procedurals. Evan Hunter, writing in 1956 under the pseudonym Ed McBain, published the first of what became a series of 52 short crime novels. He drilled down into the lives of the cops of the 87th Precinct. They work in the fictional metropolis of Isola, a stand-in for New York City. Although the clever detective Steve Carella plays a central role in some of the early books, there is no single protagonist. The focus shifts from one of the precinct’s 16 detectives to another. Cases come and go, as do the detectives. And the investigative and forensic techniques they use take center stage as well. In other words, Hunter strives to convey a far more realistic picture of police investigations than had been the case in earlier detective novels.

A KILLER AND A CON MAN: TWO DIFFICULT CASES

In The Con Man, the fourth book in the 87th Precinct series, Hunter/McBain writes about two very different cases. The detectives that “catch” them are Carella, Arthur Brown, and Bert Kling. One is the murder of a young woman whose body turns up as a “floater” in the river. The other is the eponymous confidence man and his accomplice who fleece unsuspecting marks with new twists on classic cons. Both cases prove challenging. And a detective’s obsessive focus on the con man leads him to ignore a glaring clue to the identity of the river killer. In other words, unlike most cop stories of the era, The Con Man conveys a balanced picture of the frustrations and screw-ups that so often complicate long police investigations.

THE CON MAN (87TH PRECINCT #4 OF 52) BY ED MCBAIN (1957) 216 PAGES ★★★☆☆

*New York City police retrieving a “floater,” the body of a woman from the East River. Image: J. C. Rice — New York Post*

A HARD-BOILED STYLE THAT GETS ON MY NERVES

The author’s style in The Con Man and its predecessors seems well adopted for crime stories. But it grates after awhile. With the repetitive use of rhetorical devices familiar in oral storytelling, Hunter/McBain writes in a way that’s almost a parody of the style in the hard-boiled detective novels of its era. Here’s an example where he makes the point that it’s not necessary to kill people to make money outside the law.

“You can, if you figure crime is the quickest, safest, most exciting way of making the most money in the shortest time, go about it like a gent. You can fool people. You need not resort to violence. You need not go out and buy a costly set of burglars’ tools. You need not acquire a pistol. You need not draw up complicated plans for getting in and out of a bank. You need not set up an expensive counterfeit printing press in your basement. You can remain a gentleman, pursue a life of romantic criminal adventure, see the world, meet a lot of nice people, drink a lot of cool drinks, and still make a lot of money — all by fooling people. You can, in short, become a con man.”

Am I the only reader who finds the repetition in that passage annoying? And if I tell you that Hunter/McBain spread it out not in one paragraph but in nine, with every single paragraph starting with the word “You?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

*Ed McBain (Evan Hunter). Image: Pulp Serenade*

Ed McBain was the most familiar pen name of Evan Hunter (1926–2005). He was a prolific author of mystery and crime novels with a career spanning six decades, from the 1950s to the turn of the 21st century. He had been born Salvatore Albert Lombino but legally adopted the name Evan Hunter. Hunter was born and raised in New York City and attended Hunter College after service in the US Navy aboard a destroyer in the Pacific in World War II. He was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1986 and became the first American recipient of the Diamond Dagger by the British Crime Writers Association 12 years later. He was the father of three sons.

FOR RELATED READING

Previously I reviewed the first three books in this series:

Cop Hater (The first of the original police procedural series)
The Mugger (When mugging turns to murder)
The Pusher (Cops of the 87th Precinct search for a homicidal drug pusher)

Check out The best police procedurals, where you’ll find many later examples of the genre Ed McBain launched with his 87th Precinct series.