Puss in Boots

Matthew Hope #7

by Ed McBain

When a talented young filmmaker is brutally murdered, all evidence points to her loner husband. But lawyer Matthew Hope sees a different story — one with no happy ending for an innocent man.Praise for the Matthew Hope Mysteries“The Matthew Hope novels do for the world of Florida sleaze what the 87th Precinct books do for big-city vice. The reader is hooked and given not a moment’s letup.” — New York Times Book Review“He is, by far, the best at what he does. Case closed.” — People

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Detective, Murder Mystery, Mystery Thriller

215 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

"Ed McBain" is one of the pen names of American author and screenwriter Salvatore Albert Lombino (1926-2005), who legally adopted the name Evan Hunter in 1952.

While successful and well known as Evan Hunter, he was even better known as Ed McBain, a name he used for most of his crime fiction, beginning in 1956.

He also used the pen names John Abbott, Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, Dean Hudson, Evan Hunter, and Richard Marsten.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

. In Calusa, Florida, Carlton Markham is accused of killing his wife Prudence, who was fatally stabbed after completing a porn film that has vanished along with its producer. Determined to prove his client innocent, attorney Matthew Hope concentrates on tracing the female rumored to play the film's starring sexual acrobat. Switching from the lawyer's perspective, the narrative shifts to the abandoned building where the killer has taken the stolen movie and his captive, the actress ""Puss in Boots.'' Gradually, Hope draws closer to the maniac's lair and perhaps closer to his own death as multiple horrors accumulate. McBain's artistry is undeniable in this expose of ``adult entertainment.''

[John Darnielle]

This is a giallo in practically every sense of the word, which is to say: it's violent, uncomfortable, often offensive, and deeply engrossing. Like a giallo, this is a murder mystery; as in a giallo, the violence, when it finally arrives, is lurid, excessive, grotesque, and, for lack of a better word, lush; as in a giallo, there's an explicit sense of the world as an ugly place in which better impulses rarely govern. It takes place in Florida; there's a lot of racism in the story, including characters whose language is openly racist; it's central to the story. The protagonist, Matthew Hope, a P.I., isn't among the racists, but the discomfort of racism as just a fact of daily expression is intense here. That's giallo, too: rubbing your nose in it. McBain isn't Sciascia, this is brutal and not elegant, but it's also very compelling, very readable, and concludes with a one-two punch of horrid violence & satisfying resolve. Highly memorable.

[Cathy DuPont · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reba said Many moments where I felt like dots were not connected. Well, Reba is certainly a very kind reviewer.

Two guys who worked on a closed movie set didn't know where the movie was filmed or who the stars were? Did I miss something here?

Flimsy storyline, very loosely drawn characters; well, you get the picture or rather don't get the picture.

I've enjoyed attorney Matthew Hope up until now but not sure when I'm going to pick up another. There are far too many series I enjoy than to waste time with Matthew.

What baffles me is that Ed McBain is known for his police procedural 87th Precinct series but all that information was out of his grasp in this book i.e. obvious clues being overlooked.

I've devoted too much time now to say don't waste your time unless it's the only thing to read on a deserted island.

[wally · Rating 5 out of 5]

just finished this one this early friday evening, 3/24/17. excellent story. 5-stars. this one is a matthew hope novel, matthew a crimnal defense attorney in calusa county, florida, a fictional county although geographically it is south of tampa...so? volusia county? apparently mcbain lived there in florida. maybe he was a snowbird, like so many others.

but yeah, good story. first, you have mcbain with all the experience of all those 87th precinct stories under his belt so the man knows what he is doing spinning yarns like this. okay, so what happened? he get tired of writing all of them? mayhap. hope the criminal defense attorney...and what is neat about this story is that the telling involves others who unwrap the mystery of what happened.

there's a couple guys who worked on the movie...a pornographic movie was in the making...the movie has disappeared, and these two guys are looking into matters. almost like the story within the story...but related to the overall mystery.

and then you have hope and a private investigator looking to unravel the mystery.

and you have the husband, in jail, and lo and behold, lo and behold, the husband has not been as forth-coming as he should be.

and then you have the fabled perp...you get short chapters throughout and the reader might not...i didn't...know exactly what was going on, but by story end that is clear.

mcbain has more than a few, call them actual documents, court documents and the like...that i assume are the real mccoy, much as he has done in the 87th precinct stories. lends a sense of realism to the story. all in all, a plus.

one reviewer thought the ending was...something, rushed? is that how they put it? don't recall exactly, but i thought the story was tight. picked this one out of the library, a high school library, to boot. was checked in several times in 1993, once in 2000, and now again in 2017. i think i found it shelved on the wrong shelf, too...i'd already plucked one mcbain from the shelf above and to the right and was getting ready to bogey out when i caught this one hiding under a rock, tail-fin barely moving, keeping it in the flow of the stream. so? i dunno. but after reading it, i wondered if this one might have come under the censor's hammer? all things considered.

or is that just today? when if you say kaka-poopie you're playing with fire? i don't know. thoughts, is all. onward and upward

*edit* had to go back and mark this one as a favorite. discouraging, when the top review is a one-star take, there at the top simply because the reviewer has goodread friends who click "like" on the reviews. where's the soapbox...i could continue. meh.

this is a good story. check it out.

[David Highton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Hope’s first homicide defence since he decided to add criminal as well as civil law to his portfolio follows the case of a murdered film producer and the missing film being edited. I enjoy the Hope series, set in Florida.

[Conor Tannam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read a lot of Ed McBain. This one was very readable as ever. However, there was too much sexism and blatant misogyny to make this a particuarly enjoyable book. Likewise, some of the language was racist. Disappointing.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gore isn't my thing, and this entry in the Matthew Hope series had plenty of it. Carlton Markey is accused of murdering his wife. He claims innocence but has no evidence to refute the testimony of several neighbors who saw him the night of her death. To complicate matter, Prudence Ann Markham was illegally filming a porno flick which was unfinished at the time of her death and there are several people, the producer, an actor and several stage hands who want to find the negative of the film that has already been completed.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good Ed McBain novel set in the world of porn filmmaking. Also reads a little like John Grisham at times. McBain has the ability to have lots of characters telling their story within the novel without it becoming too clunky or complex.

[Benjamin Bauer · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, one of the first crime novels I ever read was "The Gutter and the Grave" by Ed McBain. I had just gotten into Noir lit coz of a major addiction to classic film Noir. The Gutter and the Grave seemed almost a perfect distillation of everything that made those films great.

Ever since I've meant to get back to McBain but just somehow never did until I stumbled across this book in a book depository box. It looked a tad generic but I thought "Eh, what the Hell! Looks like a quick read!". Well, it was, on both counts. It reminded me somewhat of Willeford's Moseley quartet, but it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that made those books such a pleasure. Maybe it's just that Matthew Hope is a dull protagonist. Most everyone else in the book was much more interesting than he. The plot was also pretty standard stuff. Lots of sleaze and a villain that manages to not only have terribly dull motives for his murdering but also crawls completely out of left field.

Still, the prose was sharp and there is a sense of humor that helps float the book along. Some of the characters were a lotta fun to. You could do a lot worse if you're looking to kill time, but a classic crime novel this thing is not.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 1 out of 5]

I write this one with some trepidation. McBain is a recognized master in this genre. I respect that. I know that a very negative review can seem like trolling.

But this was bad. Really bad. Like, paperback original from a mostly porno imprint bad.

Why? Well, a couple of reasons. One, it seems like all the characters — detectives, suspects, lawyers, law enforcement — are rather badly formed marionettes for the authors enjoyment and the needs of the plot. People just do stuff that seems 180 degrees from what real people will do. Our hero, for example, after practicing as a civil lawyer, does an abrupt shift to criminal law? Why? Well, so he’ll be available to solve this mess of a crime, I guess. There are many more decisions made by the characters in this book that are just as unmotivated and stupid. It may be an intentional (though unstated) theme, but it just doesn’t work.

Second — well, the sexual politics in this thing is just gross. All the guys want, so all the pretty girls put out. Again, there isn’t a lot of sense in the various couplings, but it’s the 80s, so we must have couplings.

I really don’t know what happened here. But this is one to avoid. Even the McBain completists should skip.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it was a quick read, there were two many "Huh?" moments for my enjoyment. Hard to explain without spoilers, but there were characters doing things I would not expect them to do, relationships that don't make sense, superfluous story lines. The story line with the film crew didn't add anything to the plot. The conclusion, though I got the gist of it midway through the book, rang completely false to me. I like Ed McBain, but I can't recommend this one.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot is that a woman is murdered and her husband is charged with the crime. Matthew Hope represents the husband. He finds out the woman was making a film and now the film is missing.

As for the book, this one is the least favorite of the Matthew Hope novels I've read so far. It was well written and had an interesting set up, but the ending came too easily, without any effort really on the main character's part. Decent read but not nearly as good as most of the rest of the series.

[Reba Bloom · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast read. Many moments where I felt like dots were not connected.

[Milisnail · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pas un très bon Mc Bain... Très daté années 80, tant au niveau de l'histoire, que des personnages.
Cela marche mieux avec un intemporel du 87è District!

[Glenn Hopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last scene of chapter ten was to me the best scene in the novel. Matthew Hope goes to a moving-and-storage company seeking information on a case and interrupts their Christmas party. A female employee who’s had a few more than a few is quite attracted to him. He’s divorced but desires to reconcile with his ex-wife and so is resistant (somewhat). But his knowledge of New York (where she is from) in this Florida-based novel makes him so appealing. The scene is developed with stichomythia, that tool for writers (mostly playwrights) in which characters alternate speaking short dialogue often in rapid-fire fashion like a verbal tennis match. It quickens the pace of a scene and is probably one of the things that makes reading a McBain novel like scarfing down potato chips. Ed McBain probably uses this technique in every book, though he really rings the bell with it in chapter ten. However, this Matthew Hope novel may fall a little below the level of the others I’ve read (which would be the first seven). The interest level of the subplot doesn’t really match the interest of the main plot, but I smiled all the way through the eight pages of the final scene of chapter ten.

[Andrés Zelada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las cosas se presentan mal para Carlton Markham. Su esposa ha sido brutalmente asesinada y hay un carro de pruebas circunstanciales que le incriminan. Pero el abogado Matthew Hope, que solo defiende a personas en cuya inocencia cree, piensa que puede haber otra explicación. Porque la muerta era directora de cine, y la película que estaba rodando no aparece por ninguna parte.

Entretenida novela policíaca, que parece la única traducida al castellano de toda una serie de novelas con títulos de cuentos de hadas. Está protagonizada por el abogado Matthew Hope, pero parece que a McBain no le gustaban los protagonistas únicos, porque hay otros detectives aficionados, ambos del mundo del cine, que abordan el misterio por sus propias razones.

Aparte de eso, una novela clásica de género policíaco, con sus empresarios de turbios manejos, sus testigos no fiables, sus mujeres bellas y sus motivaciones escondidas y espurias. Y contada en el estilo de McBain, que incluye muchos documentos oficiales para que te metas aún más en la historia.

[James H. Jaqua · Rating 5 out of 5]

My opinion of the author has not changed. I enjoy his work. He wrote in a manner that held your interest even though on occasion you thought you may have missed something. The boots were red, by the way.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

The next in the "Matthew Hope" series after "Snow White & Rose Red." Porno movie maker is killed by the crazed husband of an actress. Must have liked it well enough because the next book I read was another in the series.

[Romonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such Darkness

Attorney Matthew Hope has seriously gotten himself in a murder case. It involves porno, evil darkness sex and greed. Personally he just doesn’t kno how hat is going on with his ex wife

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ed McBain is the man.

[Margaret McHardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twists and turns

This book went all over the place at first but was a good read,the characters were quite believable, very descriptive

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just have no idea how this got onto my "to read" list. It is quick paced but has some holes in it.

[Jeff J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

#7 in the Matthew Hope series. More of a crime novel than a whodunnit, despite having three parallel investigations that finally intersect at the end.

[Nikki Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short, entertaining whodunnit sit in fictional Florida with an original if risqué storyline. Found it hard to put down.

[pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can tell this book was written a long time ago with the words he used, the actors names he used. I don't think he should get back with the wife. His daughter got a small part in book.

[Phil Landry · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those, "if he'd had just told the truth at the beginning, there'd be no book" stories. Kind of annoying.

[Marti · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Matthew Hope book, rather than the 87th Precinct. It goes back to 1987, but is still an entertaining story despite the fact that it is about the murder of a porno film director. Matthew is defending her husband, who swears that he didn't do it. It is a rather unsavory topic, but well handled. The setting is Calusa, Florida and it is just before Christmas. A subplot is the visit of Matthew's daughter and his possible reconciliation with his ex-wife. I like to read Ed Bain's books, but do prefer the 87th Precinct gang.

[Karmen]

A director is brutally slain while filming. Matthew Hope is hired by the husband accused of her murder.
It's revealed that she was filming a porno version of "Puss in Boots". As everything begins to unravel, its stars are being murdered.
Meanwhile Matthew is trying to get back with his wife. They follow the case to its end: the film's feature actress: the film's feature actress Connie and her father who killed her. Matthew breaks up with his wife and looks to greener pastures.

[Robert James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Ed McBain at his most nastiness. He goes a little farther than he did in earlier Matthew Hope books. Again, his characters are terrific and Hope has to face a huge domestic dilemma. His main characters continue to act like people you would meet and not like some of the ridiculous characters from today's authors. McBain was a master at developing characters and suspense based on dialogue.

[Sheldon Lehman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one started off like it would be marginally better than the last ones, but it really wasn't. I can see why he only wrote 13 of these and like seventy 87th precinct series (that's an estimate of course)