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THE HEROES OF THE CITY'S STREETS BECOME THE HUNTED -- IN THIS CRIME FICTION CLASSIC ED MCBAIN'S FIRST 87th PRECINCT NOVEL Swift, silent, and deadly -- someone is knocking off the 87th Precinct's finest, one by one. The "how" of the killings is obvious: three .45 shots from the dark add up to one, two, three very dead detectives. The "why" and the "who" are the Precinct's headaches now. When Detective Reardon is found dead, motive is a big question mark. But when his partner becomes victim number two, it looks like open-and-shut grudge killings. That is, until a third detective buys it. With one meager clue, Detective Steve Carella begins his grim search for the killer, a search that takes him into the city's underworld to a notorious brothel, to the apartment of a beautiful and dangerous widow, and finally to a .45 automatic aimed straight at his head....… (more)
User reviews
The police procedures would never hold up today – bullying and
This one just didn't work for me.
I read this ebook as part of my Kindle Unlimited membership.
Given that significance, I was a bit generous with my rating. The actual plot was engrossing but I was able to figure out the solution about 3/4 of the way through -- although if I had been reading it in 1956 I might not have! One feature I have not run across before was the images of police forms and documents -- that was cool!
Oh, and this Kindle edition had a hilarious typo, when in the autopsy report of the first victim says "Approximate weight 210 pounds; height 28.9 cm." (my underlining) This makes Michael Reardon about 11 inches tall!!! It is a strange typo too as it couldn't be 289 cm as that would make him over 8 feet tall! Either a humunculus or a giant it would seem - LOL!
Cop Hater is set at the height of a sweltering summer - everyone is suffering from the heat and humidity, even the cops - especially as they know that with the heat comes open windows, raised tempers, and more crime for them to deal with. The novel starts with a man getting up to go to work on the evening shift. But he'll never get there - for a gunman shoots him in the back of the head. The corpse is no ordinary body either - `Mike Reardon was a cop'.
Steve Carella leads the investigation which faces difficulties from the outset as there were virtually no clues. Then events take on a more frenzied turn when another cop is murdered, and then a third. It must be a `cop hater' - who will be next? Carella is then put in a difficult situation when a journalist prints Carella's off the record remarks and puts his girlfriend in danger leading to a final twist that I never saw coming.
The drama is backed up by wonderful descriptions of solid policework, taking casts of footprints, blood typing and spatter analysis - telling us how its done without being too heavy-handed, (remember this is the 1950s, so no DNA testing or computers here). Anyone who's seen the later TV series Hill Street Blues, or NYPD Blue will be able to picture the squadroom, complete with typewriters, and the bar separating the desks at the entrance. Carella is a solid, dependable and likeable detective with a surprisingly tender side to him in his relationship with Teddy, his girlfriend. The other policemen are also well-drawn and complementary, and those who survive will come to the fore in some subsequent novels.
I definitely want to read more 87th Precinct novels.
The tone of the book is dogged. It's hot, damn hot. The city is cooking & on the edge when a cop is killed. The investigation starts & goes on. The cops are snatching at rags & being complete jerks about every thread they can find, but they keep trudging along. They don't have electronic data, just file cards, etc... No Internet, cell phones or anything. How did they solve anything? Sheer brute determination.
Unfortunately, when read in Shay's monotone, I wanted to scream after a while. It was too depressing & not going anywhere. I almost didn't continue, but heard the book was good. I'm glad I hung in there. It was. It might have even been worth another star if the reader hadn't made me want to cut my throat. So, I'll look for another by this author, if not by this reader.
Ed McBain's series is a classic and I was... meh. I'm not sure if it was because I didn't care for the case or 1950s NYC, but this story just didn't do much for me. Still, it was a Kindle Unlimited two day read so nothing lost.
Cop Hater is an able and worthy introduction to the world of the 87th Precinct's Homicide Division, walking the beat of its fictional city for over fifty years. Many book series suffer from weak openings and fluctuations in quality and style that often leave fans recommending later entries as a starting point for new readers. The 87th never felt any such growing pains, and Cop Hater still stands as strong as the 53 that soon followed.
Detective Carella, the anchor of the series, is introduced in this initial outing, along with other long-term cast members including his love interest and future wife Teddy, stoolie Danny the Gimp, Lt. Byrnes, hack journalist Savage, Bert Kling (still a patrolman before earning his detective's badge in The Mugger), angry bull Roger Havilland, and the diminutive but dangerous Hal Willis.
Cop Hater is one of McBain's more direct titles, and covers the plot simply. Someone is killing cops out of the 87th Precinct. A dead cop is always taken seriously by other cops, but things become personal for Carella when the third officer gunned down in cold bloody is his partner Bush, and even more so when newspaper reporter Savage turns his deaf girlfriend Teddy into a prospective target. With nothing more to go on than the killer's motive as a Cop Hater, the race is on to catch the killer before he kills anyone else that Carella cares for, or for that matter. Carella himself.
Many police procedural series try to over-the-top with spectacular crimes or completely outrageous twists and turns, and mind-numbingly technical procedure descriptions. This is territory that where the 87th Precinct never strays into. While McBain does take the time to explain how and why certain aspects of the job are undertaken, he does so not to flog the reader with facts, but to help them understand exactly what the bulls of the 87th are up against. The crimes and characters of the 87th are always believable, interesting, and never fail to ring with a truth and honesty that makes it seem as real as crime in your local papers. Cop Hater embodies this truth as much as any of the other books, despite being written over fifty years ago. The procedures may change over time, but the criminals are cops are still driven by the same beliefs.
This book was originally published way back in 1956 and is the first in the 87th precinct series, one of the longest running crime series in history, with a whopping fifty-five installments.
I’m not one hundred percent positive, but as
As a vintage paperback collector, I have a healthy collection of Ed McBain novels, but not all of them are from this series. I keep my eyes peeled for them here and there and hope to someday own the entire collection, without breaking the bank.
But now that the books have been reissued in digital format, I am entertaining the idea of reading through the entire series, in order, if possible.
This first installment introduces us to the 87th precinct, set in the fictional location of Isola, which is obviously based on the city of Manhattan.
The series is a straightforward police procedural, which no doubt, was a real trailblazing novel back in 1956. The plot and dialogue would have been cutting edge, filled with ‘street’ vernacular that the ordinary person might not have been familiar with.
Now, however, the story is a little dry, and may even put you in mind of the old “Dragnet” series. The dialogue is hilariously outdated, at times, and the plot was easy to figure out. But, it’s an easy read, with a scant 224 pages, and despite being outdated, there is a Noir feel to the story, though that is rarely mentioned, which gave it a touch of style. The series is dark, gritty, and its realism paved the way for many influential novelists, books, television shows, and movies.
If you haven’t read any of the books in this series, try thinking of ‘Hill Street Blues’ as an example of how the series is constructed. There is an ensemble cast, with recurring characters, which I think is a very good idea.
Although the novel is a bit past its prime, I still enjoyed reading it, and appreciated the author’s approach. I can see why the series was so popular and why it continued for as long as it did.
I think it’s going to be fun and entertaining to work my way through these classic crime novels!!
4 stars
What I loved about McBain's style is how he drops clues along the way. Once you know "whodunit" you can go back and see the answers peeking out way before the individual crimes are solved. While the details are a little dated and police procedures are very different than they were in the 50s, Cop Hater is still an entertaining read.
This is the first book in Ed McBain's long running police procedural series 87th Precinct. McBain would continue writing the ongoing series for half a century until 2005, the year of his death.
Someone is killing cops with a 45 calibre handgun. Steve Carella and the rest of the
As with quite a few of his books McBain makes good use of the weather conditions. You can almost feel the heat throughout. The last time I read one of these it was to the other polar extreme, with the city literally freezing in the depth and dark of winter. What really makes 87th Precinct books work though is the to and fro between the cops, the banter, some of it digging into the investigations or just the mix of everyday talk of a bunch of guys doing a day to day job, friendships, rivalries - real dialogue. McBain doesn't let the plot rule him. He takes time to develop characters and aspects of the city that sometimes have little or nothing to do with the central plot line. It's all canvas for the picture. Don't expect summarised forensic reports either. For example if Carella gets a lab or ballistic report expect to hear it line for line. With this being the first book there's quite a lot of technical and scientific stuff to cover too. Fingerprints - here comes a breakdown of the chemical process that results in finger prints being created. It's just one of those signature elements that makes the series what it is.
Cop Hater isn't going to be the best book in the series but it does serve as a great introduction. The book was adapted for a 1958 movie of the same name starring Robert Loggia in the Carella/Carelli role.
There book itself introduces a police precinct in a fictional City. The story is there work there detectives do to find a man who is meeting police. The solution is unexpected. The characters will drawn. I found myself disliking the newspaper reporter because of his dishonesty in dealing with police. Also the story clearly predates Miranda. Few clues to three solution that I recognized even after I finished.
The featured detective, Steve Carella has had his friends and now his partner gunned down in the street. He has a slightly different theory as to who is behind these killings but unfortunately, an unscrupulous reporter tricks him into saying too much makes both him and his fiancee a target for the killer.
While the trend at the time of publishing was toward noir and the anti-hero, McBain goes in a different direction by writing about ordinary people who happen to be policemen. This “cops as good guys” sets the style of his long running series which puts it’s focus on the group who work out of the 87th precinct as opposed to a single hero. These books helped to give birth to the popular Police Procedural sub-genre and this fact plus the author’s descriptive writing and masterful dialogue elevate Cop Hater to it’s well deserved position on the U.K. Crime Writer's Top 100 Crime Novels.
Cop Hater introduces us to Steve Carella, a detective in the precinct that has been assigned the task of hunting down the man who has been shooting cops in apparently random attacks. Armed with only the slightest of clues he must pool all his resources before more of his colleagues end up on the mortuary slab, how many will die before the killer is brought to justice?
I just loved this book, particularly the way there are no heroics or superhuman efforts to find the killer, just good old fashioned police work. The author writes with such a gritty realism that reminds me of the hard boiled detective writers such as Chandler or Cain. The characters are believable and well rounded and McBain allows you enough of the mundane home life and behind the scenes for you to build a picture of the daily grind.
When you consider this book was written in 1956 it has aged extremely well, some the words used are dated and you may have to look a few of the slang terms up but I think it easily stands up against newer books in the same genre, especially these days where science/forensics seems to have taken a forefront instead of old fashioned police work. It is also refreshing to read books without todays ultra PC slant and I am sure some may find certain aspects a little shocking. My only criticism, and this is nothing really to do with the book, is that the blurb on the back was far too revealing and gave away much of the plot before you even had chance to begin.
To sum up, a near perfect police novel told in a matter of fact style. Apparently there are 55 novels in the series... can't wait to try the next.
And, he was a cop. One of their own. From the 87th precinct. Then two more. “Who else would senselessly take three lives? It has to be a cop hater.”
I finally read
Someone is killing police officers, using a .45 handgun. But all is not as it appears. The officers are not in uniform when they are gunned down on the street. They are all detectives and they all work in the 87th precinct of a fictional city obviously based on New York. The main character in the series, detective Steve Carella, is introduced here, as is the woman who is the love of his life, Teddy (Theodora).
In a short introduction to the book, McBain recounts how it was written and reveals his original big idea. Instead of writing crime fiction with a genius detective as the hero, McBain wanted to create a team of heroes: the detectives of the 87th precinct. After writing more than 50 more novels over the course of more than four decades, it turns out to have been a very good idea.
I can’t wait to read the next book.
In addition, he considered setting the series in NYC, but discovered that there would have to be too much coordination with the NYPD to make sure all the procedures were authentic. So he decided to go with a "mythical city," which itself would become a character. He also states that the weather, which features in this book, would figure prominently in each book in the series.
This first entry involves someone who is killing off the cops in the precinct.. I have to say I found the story somewhat dated and lackluster. However, I often find the first book in a crime series to be a little lacking. (I probably would not have continued with the Rebus series if the first Rebus book I read was the first entry in the series). So I will probably read a few more from this series.
2 1/2 stars
The heroes of the city's streets are becoming the hunted. When Detective Reardon is found dead, motive is a big question mark. But when his partner becomes victim number two, it looks like open-and-shut grudge killings. That is, until a third detective is
With one meagre clue, Detective Steve Carella begins his grim search for the killer, a search that takes him into the city's underworld to a notorious brothel, to the apartment of a beautiful and dangerous widow, and finally to a .45 automatic aimed straight at his head
[Ed McBain is just one of the many pseudonyms used by one prolific writer, Evan Hunter.
Born in New York in 1926 as Salvatore A. Lombino, the master of the police procedural has used many pen names, including Curt Cannon, Ezra Hannon, and Richard Marsten, but he is best known for his police novels written under the name Ed McBain.
The first, "Cop Hater" (1956), introduced the famous members of the 87th precinct, set in the fictional city of Isola. Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer, Andy Parker, and the other hard-working precinct cops are usually seen tackling several cases simultaneously and have remained ageless over the course of four decades. This was necessary, according to McBain, because, he says, "If I hadn't done that, I'd now have a precinct of doddering old men." (Great Detectives)
In McBain's books, police life is presented in a gritty, realistic style that has only added to their popularity.]
Given that significance, I was a bit generous with my rating. The actual plot was engrossing but I was able to figure out the solution about 3/4 of the way through -- although if I had been reading it in 1956 I might not have! One feature I have not run across before was the images of police forms and documents -- that was cool!
Oh, and this Kindle edition had a hilarious typo, when in the autopsy report of the first victim says "Approximate weight 210 pounds; height 28.9 cm." (my underlining) This makes Michael Reardon about 11 inches tall!!! It is a strange typo too as it couldn't be 289 cm as that would make him over 8 feet tall! Either a humunculus or a giant it would seem - LOL!