Book info

• Title Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
• Author Ed McBain
• Year 1960
• Genre Mystery

He dresses in black and stalks the streets of the 87th Precinct. He is a shadow, always searching for his next victim. And when he finds it, all that will be left is a severed hand. For Detectives Carella and Hawes, this new killer is an enigma. He leaves no trace of his crime―no evidence at all. Even the severed hands have had their fingertips sheared off. With nothing much to go on, the detectives work off the hunch that the black-clad killer has a grudge against the 87th, and begin a frantic manhunt before any more of his handiwork appears on their streets.

Thoughts

The titles of these books are sometimes straightforward, but sometimes a clever play on the crime within. This is one of those but it seems a bit flippant having read the story and realised exactly how sad the crime itself was.

I did find this one a little bit harder going than the others - still a quick and easy read, but there were so many characters, and so many missing persons, that I found myself getting a bit confused in places.

After the last book didn’t progress any of the cop characters too much, this time we had a bit of Carella rage plus information about how he’s dealing with being a father, plus more about Bert Kling and his burgeoning relationship. It’s nice to see these characters developing over time, particularly as it all happens nice and slowly, in the background to the main crime stories.

Rating: 2 / 5