Number 22 - Killer's Choice - Ed McBain

 

An accidental reread for me.  half way through i suddenly realised I'd read it a few years ago.  On checking my Facebook "books read in" albums i read it in 2017 and at the time was my first Ed McBain novel.

It's very much a product of its time. If someone tried to publish this today there would be a storm about the casual sexism displayed by pretty much everyone including the women.

However, that aside, this is a damned good police procedural. It's the 4th in the 87th precinct series, but they all work as standalone novels so no prior knowledge is necessary.

I would love to see an ongoing tv series made of these books, set in the same time as the books. They could do three or four of the books per series and they'd take years to get to the end of the source material.

This one follows the investigation into the death of a young woman, Annie Booth, shot to death at her job in a liquor store. It wasn't a robbery since the cash was all still in the register.

Every person who knew Annie seems to describe a different person.  But which of them had the motive means and opportunity to gun her down?

There's also a subplot with another killer being chased down. McBain managed to squeeze a lot of story, and description, into the scant 150 pages of this book.  It's not perfect, but it's solid and good enough that I now pick up the 87th Precinct novels any time I see them going cheap.

In summary, some dated attitudes but a good read.