Do You Really Know Who Ed McBain Is?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

On Friday, Ed McBain, the greatest writer of the police procedural who ever lived, will celebrate his 78th birthday. He marks the occasion with the publication of his 55th book in the iconic 87th Precinct series, “Hark!” (Simon & Schuster, 293 pages, $24.95).
A police procedural is a mystery solved by cops employing the normal methodology of a local police precinct, such as using information supplied by a medical examiner, the forensic evidence uncovered by a police laboratory, stakeouts, wiretaps, tailing suspects, and, importantly, informants.
Unlike other mystery stories, in which a detective such as Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe uses his powers of observation and deduction to solve a crime, or in which a private eye uses his tenacity and toughness in tracking a criminal, procedurals portray police working in teams, amassing evidence to obtain a solution. These cops share the dangers and the responsibilities as they work on a case, as well as sharing the credit when it reaches its conclusion.
The early years of mystery fiction inevitably saw the use of the policeman as the hero. Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket and Wilkie Collins’s Sergeant Cuff, for example, were major figures in the history of the crime story. In later years, so were Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret, Ngaio March’s Roderick Alleyn, and, currently, Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch. But all these characters worked mainly as individuals, much as if they were amateur sleuths or private eyes.
The procedural is the only kind of mystery story in which readers encounter people to whom they can relate in any realistic way. The idea that a brilliant amateur such as Ellery Queen would be called in by a baffled police department to solve a crime is patently absurd. None of us ever met such a person, nor are we likely to.
The same is true for private detectives, who behave fictionally in ways that would certainly find them thrown in the hoosegow if they tried it in the real world. Few of us have ever actually met a private eye, much less heard of one who pulled out a gun or slammed suspects up against a wall. Pretty much everyone, however, has seen a beat cop, watched a patrol car roll by, and seen detectives on television talk about alleged perpetrators, ongoing investigations, and tentative identifications.
Although the procedural is more realistic than other types of mystery fiction, the cases we read about are more interesting than most events in the daily life of a police department, in which there is tedium, paperwork, bureaucracy, and one repetitive task after another – thankfully held to a minimum in their fictional counterparts.
Ed McBain did not quite invent the police procedural. Dashiell Hammett did not invent the private eye novel, either, but he popularized it, and Raymond Chandler then became its greatest practitioner. Mr. McBain both popularized this important literary subgenre and became its greatest practitioner.
Mr. McBain, whose real name is Evan Hunter, already had a successful writing career when he created the 87th precinct, having produced “The Blackboard Jungle” in 1954.
It became an enormous success, spurred by the shocking (for its day) movie that starred Glenn Ford and gave Sidney Poitier his first screen role.
Two years later, Mr. McBain published “Cop Hater,” set in the fictional city of Isola, which is clearly, in most respects, a slightly skewed New York. It was his groundbreaking decision to make the 87th precinct – the whole squad – the hero of the book and its sequels. Although the superb Steve Carella quickly moved himself to center stage, various novels have featured Meyer Meyer, Bert Kling, Cotton Hawes, and, more recently, Fat Ollie.
In “Hark!” Hawes is the target of a sniper while Carella, Meyer, and the others attempt to make sense of a series of notes delivered to the eight-seven by their old nemesis, the Deaf Man. The early notes are anagrams, designed to let the detectives know he’s back and planning more mischief. Each of the later notes is a quotation from Shakespeare, essentially letting the boys know his plans and challenging them to figure them out and stop him – if they can.
The Deaf Man, unnamed throughout the series, has made frequent appearances, always with impeccable plans that the squad somehow thwarts, mainly via the medium of good luck. He is a chilling figure, but Mr. McBain gives him ample scenes in which to behave almost like a normal person. This makes him that much more dangerous. Finding a serial criminal in literature as realistic and as frightening as the Deaf Man is as rare as carpaccio.
A little inside joke should be pointed out, because it’s too cute to miss. A quote from the Bard mentions sparrows, so one of the cops asks the others if they saw that movie Hitchcock wrote. “Hitchcock didn’t write it,” Klitch responds. “Then who did?” “Daphne Somebody.” The fact is, Evan Hunter wrote the screenplay for “The Birds,” which was based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier.
Mr. McBain loves words and wordplay, and never has he used them to better advantage in this thriller. He does, of course, have the advantage of using Shakespeare’s words to help him out, and this will prove a challenge worthy of the smartest reader, and worth the effort. It all makes sense, if you have the intelligence and the patience to work it out.
I, of course, remained baffled throughout.
Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.