A review by audreyintheheadphones
The Big Bad City by Ed McBain

3.0

Sunday evening turned a rosy pink and then a deeper blush and then a reddish-lavender-blue and then purple and black, the golden day succumbing at last to night.

It was time to go buy a gun.

Synopsis: Three inter-locking cases in the 87th Precinct: a dead nun, an unhinged stalker and a burglar who bakes chocolate-chip cookies. Go.



In the course of one very long, hot August in the city, the 87th Precinct has to contend with a dead nun with breast implants and a baking burglar whose career gets away from him in a very big way. Oh, and someone's trying to kill one of the detectives.

It's hard to talk about this novel without giving away the whole plot. Suffice it to say, it's the 87th Precinct. The same detectives, the same measured pace and gritty realism, but this time with a bittersweet note of time passing, things lost. Carella's turning forty. He's not well with that. To some extent, I think you could complain that this book becomes The Steve Carella Show, with a majority of the action focusing on him and his case, his angst, his family. But his case is the twistiest, the most difficult and the one that yields the fewest answers.

I had been totally trying to read a different book right now, about Russian exiled royalty, trying to off each other all over 1920s Paris, Egypt and Shanghai, but as soon as this book made it into the house, I had a hard time staying away from it. I just love this series, even when it's a little older, a little slower, a little obsessed with the twilight. It has a right to be.