Ten Plus One

87th Precinct #17

by Ed McBain, Dick Hill (Narrator)

Ten Plus One (87th Precinct Mystery) by Ed McBain

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

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

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

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's spring in Isola, and everywhere you look there are signs of life . . . until a sniper starts taking out the city's residents. At first it seems that the equal-opportunity gun man is choosing a random assortment of victims - from a drunken indigent to a wealthy jerk with political aspirations - until the detectives of the 87th precinct find the missing piece that ties it all together.

This was a fast and furious read for me. I love that the reader discovers the clues only as the cops do, making it more fun to play "guess-the-killer." I waffled between three and four stars for this one, as there is a truly disgusting scene of police brutality against a suspect. It was nasty and pointless, and I'm not sure why the author decided to include it. The ending is also a tad abrupt, but otherwise, this was an entertaining and intriguing entry in the series.

[James Thane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The detectives of the 87th Precinct find themselves in the midst of a particularly challenging case when a sniper begins picking off citizens of the 87th Precinct from the city's rooftops. The killer is taking his targets one at a time and using a silencer so it's especially difficult to determine where the shots are originating. And he or she is long gone by the time the Police arrive.

The victims are a varied lot including a couple of businessmen, a lawyer, and a prostitute. None of the victims apparently knew each other; they don't travel in the same social circles, and so the detectives conclude that the shooter is picking his targets at random and killing for the fun of it. Which means it's going to be very difficult to stop him.

As the weeks pass, the number of victims continues to climb while Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer and the rest of the crew continue to search for the lead that will finally break the case. As always, it's fun to watch them work, and this is another very solid, entertaining entry in this long-running series.

[David Freas · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no such thing as a bad Ed McBain book.

Only McBain could make the weather a character.

Only McBain could make the quoting of the penal code engaging.

I’m down to 7 unread books in this series, and I am not looking forward to the day I read that last one.

[Colin Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking forward to another session with the 87th Precinct and I was not disappointed. Steve Carella to the fore again with Meyer Meyer and Kling in attendance. A sniper starts to kill members of the public without apparent motivation. The detectives were a little slow to pick up the vital clues by failing to ask more than rudimentary questions of the victims but eventually they home into the perpetrator. Frustration together with some fast action are the features of this series which really has me hooked.

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would advise caution in reading this one .It contains one of the most brutal cop beat-downs on a suspect that I've read in crime fiction to date. It's not so much the physical details as the ugly mental process that Ed McBain manages to capture completely. His insight and knowledge is such that he is able to realistically portray how good cops are able to perform their duties without sinking into the pit.

[John Biddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another stellar entry in the collection of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct police procedurals. In this one, people are being shot by a sniper. First one, then another then another and the 87th detectives race to figure out what the connections between the victims are since there are no other clues other than the matching bullets.

This is one of the better 87th novels and that's saying something as they are all quite good.

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Δέκα συν ένα", εκδόσεις Bell.

Κάτι παραπάνω από δυο χρόνια πέρασαν από την τελευταία φορά που διάβασα βιβλίο του Εντ ΜακΜπέιν και η αλήθεια είναι ότι μου έλειψε πάρα πολύ. Αλλά δεν είναι και τόσα πολλά τα βιβλία του που έχω ακόμα στα αδιάβαστα, οπότε αναγκαστικά πρέπει να κάνω λίγη... οικονομία, για να μην ξεμείνω τελείως. Λοιπόν, αυτό είναι συνολικά το δέκατο πέμπτο βιβλίο του συγγραφέα που διαβάζω, δωδέκατο που ανήκει στην υπέροχη σειρά "87ο Αστυνομικό Τμήμα", και είναι με τη σειρά του πάρα πολύ καλό, υπέροχα γραμμένο και ενδιαφέρον από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος. Μάλιστα, είναι αρκετά αιματηρό, μιας και έχουμε μια σειρά φόνων από κάποιον κατά τα φαινόμενα μανιακό ελεύθερο σκοπευτή, με την επιλογή των θυμάτων να μοιάζει κάπως τυχαία. Είναι, όμως, έτσι; Οι ντετέκτιβ που είναι υπεύθυνοι για την υπόθεση ελπίζουν να μην πρόκειται για κάποιον τρελάρα που σκοτώνει ανθρώπους στην τύχη, γιατί τότε τα πράγματα θα είναι πολύ δύσκολα, τόσο γι' αυτούς, όσο κυρίως για τους κατοίκους της Ιζόλα. Κλασικά, πρόκειται για ένα απολαυστικό μυθιστόρημα, από την πρώτη μέχρι την τελευταία πρόταση, με γλαφυρές περιγραφές και ολοζώντανους διαλόγους. Τι να λέμε τώρα, ο ΜακΜπέιν σκίζει στους διαλόγους, ειδικά σ' αυτή τη σειρά βιβλίων. Φυσικά, δεν είναι μόνο η γραφή υπέροχη, αλλά και η πλοκή είναι πολύ καλή, μιας και διαθέτει δράση, μια κάποια ένταση και αγωνία, καθώς και λίγο μυστήριο για την ταυτότητα του δολοφόνου, όμως εγώ οφείλω να πω ότι στα βιβλία της συγκεκριμένης σειράς απολαμβάνω κυρίως τη γραφή, τους χαρακτήρες και τη γενικότερη ατμόσφαιρα που συνήθως έχουν. Πολύ καλό!

[Kev Ruiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

★★★ 1/2

'Ten Plus One' is a strong entry in the 87th Precinct series and one I really enjoyed. The mystery is intriguing and the storyline tight - I ended up reading it in one sitting.

As always, it's great to dive back into the world of the 87th with its familiar cast of characters. I like how McBain builds them up more and more as the series goes on. In this one, we even get to spend some time with a few of the victims before they’re killed, which added to the story.

As always I enjoyed McBain continue to build his city - at least for me in my mind! It’s detailed and alive, and it’s become a character in its own right. There’s one moment when a character is shot outside the precinct, and I already knew there wasn’t a building directly across the street – just a park. That’s how well drawn this place is, and how well I feel I know it by now.

There’s a good balance here between the police work, the human stories and McBain’s usual dry humour. I liked the way the chapters shifted focus and tone without ever losing pace.

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories vary in quality, but overall, they grow on you. It is much like liking a tv series, knowing that there will be a few dingers and a bunch of great stories. Another thing about an ensemble cast series is that in time you get depth on many of the characters.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ten Plus One is a very solid, entertaining and tightly written installment in the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain. As reliable as the sun rising each morning, the series delivers plots that range from good to great and police procedures that add to the realism of the writing.

The book begins with a bang-- literally-- as Anthony Forrest steps onto the sidewalk in front of his building, his mind on spending a pleasant evening with his wife, when a .308 caliber rifle bullet, fired from atop a building nearby by a sniper, pierces his skull and instantly ends his life.

An intense opening for sure, but McBain is just warming up. Before Detectives Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer can begin putting things together, two more victims will suffer the same fate via the same m.o., same rifle bullet caliber, and same incomprehensible meaning-- why? What would make someone randomly pick off seemingly innocent, unconnected victims this way? Making things even more difficult for the police is that whoever is doing the shooting is using a silencer, firing from far away, making it almost impossible to locate him/her, and insuring a clean get away before the cops can get to the scene.

The killings continue, scattered around the city and across Precincts, causing things to really heat up when an Assistant DA becomes one of the victims. As the pressure mounts and additional victims are added to the body count, Carella & Meyer get some help from an unexpected source-- the 19 year old, "worldly" and attractive daughter of one of the victims. Her contribution uncovers the possibility that the victims are not randomly selected at all, rather, that they have something in common. It's fun to follow Carella and Meyer as they work their way through phone calls, interviews, and good old fashioned detective work (in a world that was before cell-phones & computers).

4.5 stars rounded down due to one niggling complaint; McBain, perhaps under pressure for page count, padded the story here and there, citing city ordinances, replicating detective reports, and the like when such things really are superfluous to the story. He's known to do this occasionally and it usually is a mild irritant at worst, but one that was enough for me to refrain just a little in my rating. A great addition to the series nonetheless.
Happy New Year to all.

As the weeks pass, the number of victims continues to climb while Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer and the rest of the crew continue to search for the lead that will finally break the case.

[Simon Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm on a mission to read the myriad 87th Precinct novels from start to finish. I have not read these book since I was a teenager in the 80s which means there a many written since then that I have never read.

There are a few of the earlier ones I missed back then and this is one. What a shame I missed it out. It is easily the best so far. In addition to the excellent characterisation, the brief but very punchy and evocative descriptive scenes and the simple relaying of complex police procedures McBain adds humour to the mix.

I won't spoil it for you but when Meyer and Carella are interviewing a witness named Quentin the conversation takes an Eddie Izzard-style surrealistic turn. And there is nothing wrong with that.

The story sees our heroes trying to catch a killer who is knocking off seemingly random citizens with great gusto. As is often the case with McBain this is not really a whodunnit in the sense that you will be able to unravel the clues along with the precinct detectives, but rather a careful revealing of the salient points allowing us to sense the same frustrations as the detectives themselves.

The frustrations are a joy though as they serve to keep you turning the pages rather than turning you off. McBain rarely delivers a mediocre book but this one is the one you should lend to unconvinced friends.

[Jenny]

I loved this book and I loved that we didn't have any insight into the killer until the end. I was guessing until about 10 pages from the end! (I did, however, think the play in 1940 was important when Professor Richardson droned on and one about it.)

A few things that make this funny and place it as having been written in the 1960s:

-- a cigarette ad in the middle of the book (sooo weird!)
-- "the war" means WWII
-- the use of the word "oriental"
-- no use of cell phones, so no way to reach people if they are out of the office
-- the fact that trying to find alumni from Ramsey University was such a tedious ordeal. Nowadays someone would just use their computer to give new name and address.

[Skip · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better 87th Street Precinct books. A sniper is killing what, at first, appear to be successful businessmen with standard routines, but then a prositute, district attorney, and fruit/vegetable vendor are killed. One of the victim's daughter provides Steve Carella wth a key piece of evidence -- a 20+ year old playbill, which provides the critical link between the victims. Suspenseful. Excellent detecting.

[Andrés Zelada · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5

Anthony Forrest cae asesinado: un francotirador le vuela la cabeza. Antes de que la policía pueda ni siquiera iniciar sus pesquisas, otras personas empiezan a morir, siempre de la misma manera. Son víctimas muy diferentes, y la policía tendrá que establecer qué tienen en común antes de que sigan apareciendo cadáveres.

Compré esta novela en una librería de viejo, un poco por impulso, y me ha gustado mucho. El autor emplea una estructura curiosa: el protagonista colectivo es el grupo de policías del distrito 87 de Nueva York, formado por hombres absolutamente normales. Eso podría hacer que la novela resultara aburrida (al fin y al cabo, los protagonistas tienen muy poca personalidad), si no fuera por una prosa muy eficiente, ágil donde tiene que serlo, que no ahorra detalles explícitos pero que tampoco abunda en ellos. Y, sobre todo, con una ironía y una inteligencia que me ha hecho sonreír, la verdad.

El libro es de 1963 y contiene los elementos rancios esperables, pero aun así me lo ha hecho pasar genial.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A much more engrossing mystery than most of the other books in the series (so far). Here the author combines the context of the police procedural with his experiences with the film industry (the plot hinges on a college play) and his extracurricular writing in the (shall we call it) flesh trade. The motive hinges on a rape and, although nothing is described in graphic detail, the reader gets enough of an idea of what went on to appreciate what a salacious scandal this would have been in 1960. (Frankly, reading about it almost 60 years later down not dull the disgust.)

[Brendan Hough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye read 2024
8.5/10 carella and meyer are trying to track down a sniper in the big city of 10 million. Can they find this murderer before another is killed? Great story up until the last two or so chapters. Ending is ok, but there was room for something better.

[Vicky D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This plot is a lot different and twist is interesting with an unlikely hero.

[Noah Goats · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gritty, entertaining, and packed with McBainesque minor characters, this is another solid 87th Precinct novel.

[jaroiva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mám prostě ráda tyhle staré dobré detektivky. Ani tento díl nezklamal.
Proč by někdo vraždil po letech ochotníky?

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent mystery from the 87th. What really shone for me in this one is McBain's ability to create living, breathing, believable characters in just a few pages. And then kill them.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

The city is plagued with a sniper delivering a .308 slug to the heads of a disparate bunch of victims. Carella and Meyer don't want to deal with a sniper; a perp who can kill from the shadows with almost supernatural precision and impunity. This one is a strongish entry to the series that is only slightly let down by the wrap-up. McBain creates some wonderfully vivid support characters populating the list of possible targets/suspects, not least the gag writer so mentally scarred by a wartime service as a sniper he can never laugh at a joke even though he's a master at constructing them. Although the psychology of being a sniper is glanced at I felt the true heart of the story belonged to how lives can be so indelibly ruined by events that happen during the wildness of youth. There are also two interrogations, one by a neighbouring precinct and another by Carella and Meyer that stand out, both for being brutal, one on a physical level and the other one a psychological one. The disregard the bulls have for a reformed criminal is both sad and shocking but also in keeping with the era and the job. Carella and Meyer's interrogation is purely psychological but no less brutal considering they employ every double teaming trick in the book to try to crack a clearly mentally damaged suspect. Although there is a clear distinction between good cops and bad cops in the story it's a bit of a shock to see Carella and Meyer come up with a gut evaluation that is completely at odds with my own but I guess that's mainly because I'm not on the job.
There's a couple of amusing scenes with Bert Kling and one of the victim's relatives. Is that going somewhere? Who can tell? That's part of the fun of the 87th.

[Helen (Helena/Nell) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading my way through the 87th precinct series in chronological order, this struck me as a good one. Extremely interesting in many ways, steadily pleasurable to read, well-written. The dialogue was crisp and effective too. Is he learning to use fewer adverbs? Or has he acquired a better editor? I don't know but long stretches zip past with no troubling attributives and the effect is good. He's also relaxed in this novel and effortlessly confident.

In the previous two volumes, The Empty Hours (three long-short stories) and Like Love, I felt amiably distanced from the victims. Here, McBain wrings the emotive charge more sharply by allowing you to identify with each of a series of victims just before they die. He's done this before (the last few minutes of a person's life) and he likes the drama of it and does it well. He's never done it through a whole series of victims (the killer is attempting to polish off a list of ten, as the title suggests) and he likes the challenge of all those varied characters and the mini-character-sketch opportunity.

There are other things I particularly enjoyed here, and they're products of the laid-back approach to the tale. Bits of humour, like the character Quentin (first name Stan) who is puzzled by the fact that the detectives find his name funny. The similarity to a well-known prison has never struck him, rather like the character in I think the very first novel, Cop Hater, whose name is Ernest Hemingway but -- since he never reads -- is entirely unaware of the resonance . Whenever Meyer Meyer features, McBain starts playing about with names, and somehow the absurdity is both amusing and true to life.

The ten potential victims here are each distinctive. McBain had an incredibly fertile imagination for character. Either that or an ongoing interest in people. Maybe he collected them. One here is a gag writer: he writes the brief situations that cartoonists later illustrate. So we see the precise format a gag writer creates to sell his copy. So not just police procedural detail here but gag procedure precisely described. Fascinating.

A journalist quite often pops up in the series. There's one in See Them Die, and McBain uses them to show a different angle on the story, simply because he loves the possibilities, the different ways of looking at any set of events, depending gender, role, reason for sharing etc. Here he briefly features a reporter for a 'blue headline tabloid', whose editor has decided "illiterate people" "would ... prefer reading each story as if it were a chapter of a long novel about life". I wonder who he's getting at here? I bet there was a specific target. Anyway, one of the victims is shot through the window of a restaurant. The reporter writes (I would put this into a fully justified column but the html won't let me) as follows:

The tall man was drinking Scotch.
He sat by the restaurant window
watching the rush of humanity out-
side, thinking private thoughts of
a crusader who has foolishly and
momentarily taken off all his arm-
or. He could have been a Columbus in
other times, he could have been an Es-
sex at the side of Elizabeth. He was,
instead, a tall and impressive man
drinking his Scotch. He was soon to
be a dead man.

Then McBain descends into barbed sarcasm. "But in addition to a city editor who had the notion that everyone was an illiterate except maybe himself, the paper also had a typesetter who thought that people enjoyed working out cryptograms while reading their newspapers. When you were dealing with illiterates, it wasn't necessary to give the facts in the first place, and in the second place it was always necessary to garble every line of type so that the story became even more mystifying and, in many cases, practically unintelligible." So the earlier reporter's paragraph, at the hands of the cryptographic typesetter, becomes:

Thet allman was drinking Scotch.
He sat by the restaurant window
watching the Russian humanity out-
side, thinking private thoughts of
sex at the side of Elizabeth. He was,
a crusader who has foolishly and
momentarily taken off all his arm.
Or he could have been a Columbus in
other times, he could have been an Es
DRINKING HIS SCOTCH. He was
soon to be a dead man.

This is really an 'in' joke for anyone working in a newspaper or despairing of newspaper copy. As a proof-reader and editor myself, I found it pure delight.

Lastly, there are some passages that are so politically incorrect to today's reader that they create their own fascination. Two detectives beat a potential suspect to a pulp because they're bored, for example. It's a brutal scene. They're not 87th Precinct staff. If they were, their better nature would have restrained them, or Lieutenant Byrne or Carella would have stepped in or stopped them locking the door of the interview room. But this pair are as nasty as it gets.

And there's a scarlet woman. McBain's female characters often remind me of Action Comics heroines: Wonderwomen, with wasp waists and breasts pointed towards the clouds, so their highly sexualised appearance also has the mock-innocence of a cartoon. I'll close with a quote that illustrates Helen Struthers inviting a fate worse than death simply by her appearance:

"She spoke in a normally deep voice that carried the unmistakable stamp of elocution lessons. She kept both hands on the slatted rail divider, clinging to it as if it were a lover. She waited patiently, as though embarrassed by her surroundings and embarrassed, too, by the mature ripeness of her own body. And yet, her own awareness seemed to heighten the awareness of the observer. She was a potential rape victim expecting the worst, and inviting it through dire expectation. It took several seconds for the detectives to extract the maiden name 'Struthers' from the names fore and aft, and then to separate it from the heavy miasma of sexuality that had suddenly smothered the room.

'Come in, Mrs Vale,' Carella said, and he held open the gate in the railing for her.

'Thank you,' she said. She lowered her eyes as she passed him, like a novice nun who has reluctantly taken a belated vow of chastity. Meyer pulled a chair out from one of the desks and held it for her while she sat. She crossed her legs, her skirt was short, it rode up over splendid knees, she tugged at it but it refused to yield, she sat in bursting provocative awareness."

So no -- you couldn't write that now. Have we moved on? Are we better than that? Or have we ditched the fun of the sex war in our determination to properly respect everybody? I don't know. But I confess I enjoyed Helen Struthers Vale far far more than I should have.

[Joe Santoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

When my wife and I watch murder mysteries on TV, we often comment that when a SECOND person dies, the good guys have kinda failed. With that standard, the boys at the 87th dealing with a sniper comes out to a truly epic fail.

I don't love it when I figure out the mystery before the detectives do...sometimes it's ok if it's just a random guess, but this one was obvious, and they took a long time to figure out the connects. It kinda felt like they were too buy harassing the innocent witnesses to think for a second.

That's definitely happened in these books before, but it was particularly bad this time.. I'm wondering if that's going to be the plot of a future novel, since the abusers were not members of the main cast, but guys from another Precinct.

This was the first one of these I read a bit out of order, which was no big deal, but it was also the first one that significantly referenced an earlier case, and felt a little less like the writing was from the 'every book in the series is someone's first' style the comics used to use. Which makes me wonder if I should not just read the random ones in the series I've grabbed at the last couple book sales and stick to reading them in order.

For those downsides though ,McBain continues to excel in creating fantastic one off throw away characters... I really like Cynthia Forrest, and the killer was also quite interesting.... the rating is more for the poor performance of the detectives than anything.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do a defense attorney, an importer/exporter, a prostitute, an immigrant grocer, a cartoon gag writer, an assistant district attorney, a homemaker and a couple of businessmen have in common? Besides being the targets of sniper attacks throughout various areas of the fictional city of Isola, that is. Is there something that ties these people together or is it just a random nut taking potshots at people? And can the detectives of the 87th precinct figure it out and catch the killer before more people die? This was a very good book, one of the better ones in the series in my opinion - very creative and very suspenseful. It held my interest throughout and was a very quick read.

[Anna Rossi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi hanno colpito di Ed McBain in particolar modo i dialoghi che portano avanti la storia senza troppi interventi del narratore, molto vivaci e con un ritmo serrato.

Interessante la caratterizzazione dei personaggi anche quelli che hanno semplice ruolo di comparse.
Magistrale l'uso dei contrasti tra gli eventi narrati e le condizioni atmosferiche.

Notevole la capacità di far visualizzare le scene al lettore: sono riuscita a vedere anche la traiettoria del proiettile in una delle prime scene del libro.

[Ron Chicaferro · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Ed McBain then you know what an exceptional writer he was. His characters are as real as they can be - - the dialogue is exactly how people talk - the joy in the book is finding the solution to the crime but also its enjoying the characters and the writing - - you want the stories to keep going even after the crime is solved. Ten Plus One is a multiple murder mystery - there are suspects but the solution is not easily seen - - Its exciting, suspenseful and expertly crafted. This is a book to enjoy.

[Delia Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

havent finished the book yet! pleasant surprise a good pacy read with benefits ie first he champions the cause of jews at a time when they were being persecuted -- then some very funny dialogue with a witness-pimp - and shows surprising understanding of the plight of prostitutes -- never expected that

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable addition to the 87th canon. A sniper's taking down a sundry group of people. It's startling how often McBain's books were prescient - thinking about the Washington sniper at gas stations years ago.

[Daniel Sevitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another new plot. Lots of fun stuff with Meyer Meyer (he meets someone called Stan Quentin and tells him they almost named a prison after him. When the guy asks "which prison?", Meyer answers, "Alcatraz"), but a disappointing lack of Cotton Hawes. Solid stuff with a weird orgy at its heart.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, this one has a meet-cute, or -rude, between Bert Kling and Cindy Forrest, who's the daughter of the first victim of the sniper. Also a somewhat surprising quantity of meta moments, including a delightful minor character named Moriarty who jokes about her archenemies, Holmes and Watson (I find it pleasing that she crops up in a Holmes encyclopedia), a remark that one character could not be guilty because you're allowed to have only WASP murderers these days (wow, anti-woke culture-war posturing in 1963!), an agent who recites the next line of dialogue before the cops do because he knows the things cops say from all the scripts he's handled, and of course the weather, this time the spring, being treated as ironic counterpoint (a reverse or fake pathetic fallacy, I guess?) right before a murder. Also some good bits about Hemingwayesque newspaper writers, which even gives us an alt version of the narration here, the story that could be getting told but isn't, and even a who's-on-first two-hander about Oedipus that you can absolutely see as inspiring generations of TV writers.

The solution here also feels much more modern than those in several of his previous novels in situation and emotion, at least in some respects (and the road there has a certain Golden-Age flair--would be interesting to track when and where McBain nods in these ways; as I just noted, the first book, Cop Hater, reuses the trick from Christie's 1936 A.B.C. Murders, so maybe it's more of a sine wave where he adopts/alludes to other writers and styles), though certain sexual aspects are still discussed in a "surely this beastly conduct cannot be mentioned in polite society" 50s tone.

Wondering when he gets over his homophobia. Is a gay detective joining the 87th somewhere? This one also has a 60s liberal-universalist bit wherein Meyer Meyer ponders the mechanics and ethics of hatred when questioning a German suspect. As with the Parker books, the fun here lies partly in the reliably expert construction and partly in the fun marginal-differentiation opportunities for attentive series readers to spot. Some pleasing-to-note little tweaks here.