Saturday, April 07, 2007
 
Book Report: Fiddlers by Ed McBain (2005)
This book represents one of Ed McBain's last books, and it was published posthumously; the About the Author bit on the back flap is in the past tense, which startles me. Cotton Hawes gives his age as 34 in this book, too, which bothered me a little, too. For most of my life, he's been older than I am, and suddenly I'm older than many of the detectives in the 87th Precinct. That's the meta about this book. Also, let it be known that Ed McBain did not support the war in Iraq. I don't have a vivid impression of whether his contemporaneous books from the Vietnam era were as down on it, or even his Korean War-era books were as down on it, but it's noticeable in these last books (see also Hark!). Now, onto the story.

Someone is shooting seemingly-unrelated late middle-aged people very quickly, and the 87th Precinct has to find the perp before he can do another vic. Meanwhile, Kling's broken up with the black doctor following Hark!, Cotton Hawes finds himself falling for an older woman, and Carella's daughter (now 14 after 30 years) is hanging out with a bad seed. That's all it takes to craft a good, readable book. Like Perry Mason, McBain's books age well, so this will be a fine read decades from now.

I was a little disappointed with how long it took the police to figure out what was going on, but I guess McBain had a minimum length to meet.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:10 PM
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