Book info

• Title Cop Hater
• Author Ed McBain
• Year 1956
• Genre Mystery

As a cop with the city’s famed 87th Precinct, Steve Carella has seen it all. Or so he thinks. Because nothing can prepare him for the sight that greets him on a sweltering July night: fellow detective Mike Reardon’s dead body splayed across the sidewalk, his face blown away by a .45. Days later, Reardon’s partner is found dead, a .45-caliber bullet buried deep in his chest. Only a fool would call it a coincidence, and Carella’s no fool. He chalks the whole ugly mess up to a grudge killing…until a third murder shoots that theory to hell. Armed with only a single clue, Carella delves deep into the city’s underbelly, launching a grim search for answers that will lead him from a notorious brothel to the lair of a beautiful, dangerous widow. He won’t stop until he finds the truth—or until the next bullet finds him.

Thoughts

This was an interesting one, I think I must have snatched it up in a Kindle sale or Daily Deal somewhere, as I do so love the start of a series. It surprised me to find this was written way back in the 1950s, and that there was a whole world of sequels out there waiting, but the first had to grab my attention.

It certainly did that, although not in the way I was expecting. It was old-fashioned, naturally, slow-paced and a little bumbling and it felt like for the majority of the time, the cops really had no clue which direction to go in. I enjoyed the narration style, it felt as though a friend was showing me around a city, and a story, they loved. Occasionally they would get distracted talking in glowing metaphors about the highs and lows of the fictional city, but then they would snap back to the task in hand.

The end felt a little sudden, a bit rushed and quite predictable from the moment it began (the beginning of the end!) but overall I thought it was good. I won’t hurry to the next one but I will probably pick up another in the series in the future.

Rating: 3 / 5