Mystery Annotation

COP HATER 

The first novel of the 87^th Precinct Series published in 1956.

(A series that totals 55 novels spanning from 1956-2005 in addition to McBain’s Ladies:  Women of the 87^th Precinct and McBain’s Ladies, Too:  More Women of the 87^th Precinct).

Subject Headings:
87^TH Precinct (Imaginary place) - - Fiction.

Police - - Fiction.

Detective and mystery stories.

Synopsis

In the metropolis of Isola, 87^th Precinct Detective partners Reardon and Foster are killed in two separate shootings.  The murder weapon is the same .45 caliber handgun leading the team of investigators to believe that the two detectives were the victims of some perp they busted together in the past.  This theory is destroyed once a third detective is murdered and now the 87^th Precinct detectives suspect that they have a cop hater on the prowl in the city. 

҉    Appeal Factors    ҉

Story Line:  A Strong Sense of Righteousness

This is the story of the murder of three 87^th precinct police detectives as investigated by policemen from the same precinct.  An overwhelming sense of urgency, danger and the need for justice permeate the novel. 

Frame/Setting:  A Strong Sense of Place

The city of Isola serves as the big city backdrop.  As McBain notes in his 1989 introduction, “the city became a character” (xiv).  “The city lays like a sparking nest of rare gems, shimmering in layer upon layer of pulsating intensity.  The buildings were a stage set.  They faced the river, and they glowed with man-made brilliance, and you stared up at them in awe, and you caught your breath.  Behind the buildings, behind the lights, were the streets.  There was garbage in the streets,” p. 2.  Similar atmospheric and bleak descriptions of the city pepper help set the tone. 

Characterization:  “So, then, a squad room of police detectives as my conglomerate hero.”

The story investigates both the crimes and the lives of its characters, including Detectives Carella, Bush, Reardon, Foster, Havilland, Willis, Patrolman Kling, Lt. Byrnes and Captain Frick as well as colorful secondary characters like lab technician Sam Grossman and police informant Danny Gimp.

Series Read-alikes (from NoveList):

George Gideon mysteries from J.J. Marric.

Badge of Honor by WEB Griffin

Rocksburg, Pennsylvania novels by K.C. Constantine

Evan Hunter, Writer Who Created Police Procedural, Dies at 78

By MARILYN STASIO

Evan Hunter, the author who as Ed McBain virtually invented the American police procedural with his gritty 87th Precinct series featuring an entire detective squad as its hero, died yesterday at his home in Weston, Conn. He was 78.

Skip to next paragraphIn a 50-year career, Mr. Hunter, sometimes as Ed McBain and sometimes using other names, wrote a vast number of best-selling novels, short stories, plays and film scripts. With the publication of "Cop Hater" in 1956, the first of the 87th Precinct novels, he took police fiction into a new, more realistic realm, a radical break from a form long dependent on the educated, aristocratic detective who works alone and takes his time puzzling out a case.

Set in a New York-like metropolis named Isola, "Cop Hater" laid down the formula that would define the urban police novel to this day, including the big, bad city as a character in the drama; multiple story lines; swift, cinematic exposition; brutal action scenes and searing images of ghetto violence; methodical teamwork; authentic forensic procedures; and tough, cynical yet sympathetic police officers speaking dialogue so real that it could have been soaked up in a Queens diner between squad shifts.

Lending humanity to the grim stories that flood the 87th Precinct is a revolving ensemble cast that includes Detective Steve Carella, the heart and conscience of the squad room; his gentle, deaf wife, Teddy; the rocklike Detective Meyer Meyer, whose father refused to give him a first name because he didn't want to name him for "some goy"; Bert Kling, the rookie cop who plays Candide to his hard-bitten elders; and Fat Ollie Weeks, the equal-opportunity bigot.

For all the studied muscularity of his style as Ed McBain, Mr. Hunter considered himself an emotional writer rather than a hard-boiled one. "I think of myself as a softy," he once said. "I think the 87th Precinct novels are very sentimental, and the cops are idealistic guys." He was also a stern moralist, and in many of his novels, this aspect surfaced as a keening lament for the battered soul of his city.

The Mystery Writers of America awarded Ed McBain its Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986, and in 1998 he was the first American to receive a Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain.

---Adopted from the July 7, 2005 New York Times obituary