A collection of suspense stories, puzzle stories, whodunits and tricky whydunits involving police detectives, private eyes, talented and sometimes lucky amateurs, armchair detectives, and ethnic detectives

Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.) Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best

It’s a jacket; it’s a mattress; it’s a fortune! Mullaney staked his life on it. The way it all worked out was that Mullaney finally figured he had to take the big gamble; he’d never get rich selling encyclopedias. Consequently, he left his wife and went off to make a killing at cards, horses, dice — you name it. But here he is at the end of the year with a single subway token in his pocket and the hottest, sure-thing tip he’s ever heard on the second race at Aqueduct... So he’s standing at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue wondering where he can promote some coin, who he can put the bite on, when this long black limousine pulls up and out hops a big guy with a beard and a gun and says, “Get in!” That’s how A Horse’s Head, Evan Hunter’s hugely funny new novel, starts. It never lets up as it races back and forth across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, diving into some very odd places indeed — such as the locked stacks of the Library’s Main Branch and an East Side cellar synagogue — and introducing some of the strangest gunsels, moon-struck kooks, and pliant lovelies in the entire metropolitan area. The laughs, the bodies, the girls come tumbling one on top of the other as Mullaney smooth-talks, wheedles and deals his way out of one dangerous situation into the next in his mad chase after the crummy, magical black jacket that doesn’t even fit him but which he’s sure is worth half a million dollars. Wild, wonderful, zany — A Horse’s Head is another surprise from the versatile author of The Paper Dragon, The Blackboard Jungle, and the 87th Precinct mysteries

Evan Hunter’s new novel is a fresh and powerful demonstration of the narrative gifts, the instinct for themes that concern us, the exuberant flow of invention that were responsible for the nation-wide impact of his best-selling Strangers When We Meet and The Blackboard Jungle. A Matter of Conviction is the story — told dramatically and in depth — of a sensational murder, the passions it arouses in a community, the people caught up in its tangled after-math. Above all, it is the story of the ethical dilemma imposed on the young prosecutor who values justice above the triumph of a conviction. The prosecutor, Henry Bell, is dedicated to his profession. He demands of himself an almost inhuman objectivity. He is intensely disturbed when the murder forces him to revisit the crime-breeding slum in which he himself was born, from which he escaped by his ambition and his integrity, and which he has almost, but not quite, managed to forget. How can he serve blind justice when the boys he must prosecute are an image — impossible to shut out — of what he might have been, when the newspapers scream for their blood and their neighbors stop at nothing to protect them, when his superiors insist on chalking up a conviction, and when — the final blow — his investigations bring him face to face with a woman who once had his happiness, as she now has his reputation, at her mercy. Henry Bell’s ordeal is superbly told in a novel that plunges the reader into a world of law and disorder, of crime and vengeance, of turmoil — emotional and political — of cold panic. In Henry Bell, Evan Hunter has created a memorable hero — a man of conscience and heart. When you finish his story you know that you would trust him with your life

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S HOW-TO-DO-IT BOOK Including: • How to solve your marital problems       —(poison) • How to dress properly when admitting to first degree murder       —(black tie) • How to take off a few pounds fast       —(a knife) • How to ruin a perfect friendship       —(a homemade bomb) And many, many other helpful hints from such specialists as: EVAN HUNTER, JOHN CORTEZ, RAY BRADBURY, RICHARD STARK, RICHARD MATHESON, HELEN NIELSON, DONALD WESTLAKE, RICHARD DEMING, JACK RITCHIE, JONATHAN CRAIG, C. B. GILFORD, JAY STREET, ROBERT ARTHUR, FLETCHER FLORA, CHARLES EINSTEIN

It's a nightmare no parent should ever endure. Especially Alice Glendenning, a South Florida real estate agent who hasn't managed to sell a single home — or collect any insurance money — after her husband's fatal boating accident. Her daughter and son's kidnappers demand $250,000, the exact amount she's supposed to receive from the insurance company. To complicate matters, her housekeeper has contacted the police — a glaring error in judgment that puts a spotlight on the crime, the children's lives at risk… and Alice in jeopardy

Here is an irresistibly charming tale, beautifully packaged in a small, illustrated and slipcased gift book. All’s quiet at the 87th Precinct on Christmas Eve... until Steve Carella’s fellow detectives appear with a kid who’s stolen a sheep, a robber with a bagful of gold, two guys fighting over a sack of frankincense, and a young couple who give birth to a baby boy at midnight! “And All Through the House” was first published in Playboy in December, 1984

When the affable owner of a checkered-tablecloth restaurant in Little Italy is cut down by the bullets of a pair of ski-masked thugs, Fifth Precinct Police Detective Reardon has his hands too full to give a damn about some odd things going on uptown. For instance, why does a noted Madison Avenue art lover suddenly decide to sell his entire collection in an effort to raise a cool million? And why was a well-known Arab oil magnate assassinated? Almost too late, Reardon sees the connection between the deaths of a multi-millionaire and a smalltime restaurateur, and the fluctuations in the international markets for crude oil, fine art, and precious metals. And now that he knows the truth, just how long has he got to live? ANOTHER PART OF THE CITY is a brilliant, hard-hitting foray into Manhattan’s tangled web of twisting downtown streets and crooked uptown lives

Eighty-six-year-old George Lasser was the superintendent of a building in the 87th Precinct until just recently. Unfortunately his tenure ended in the building’s basement with a sharp, heavy blade of an ax in his head… There are no witnesses, no suspects, and no clues. The wife and son? They’re both a little off-kilter, but they have alibis. Just when Carella and Hawes are about to put the case on the shelf, the killer strikes again. Now the detectives are hot on the trail of a man crazy enough to murder with an ax. One of the 87th Precinct series’ finest installments, Ax is a sharp, intense crime thriller that is classic Ed McBain. The New York Times hails it as “the best of today’s police stories—lively, inventive, convincing, suspenseful, and wholly satisfactory

Ed McBain is a pen name of Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Evan Hunter, who wrote the screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and “Strangers When We Meet,” and the novel The Blackboard Jungle. As Ed McBain, he has written fifty 87th Precinct novels, the blueprint series for every successful police procedural series. This original collection of eleven short stories takes you onto the gritty and violent streets of the city, and into the darkest places in the human mind. “First Offense” is narrated from behind bars by a cocky young man who stabbed a storeowner in a robbery attempt. In “To Break the Wall,” a high school teacher has a violent encounter with several punks. And a Kim Novak look-alike blurs the line between fantasy and reality in “The Movie Star.” These and eight more stories showcase the mastery for which the San Diego Union-Tribune dubbed McBain “the unquestioned king.”

Matthew Hope spotted her on North Sabal Beach, one of those fabulous Gulf Coast keys that yearly draw ever more people to condo life in the Sunshine State. She was spectacular, “carved of alabaster, pale white exquisite face framed by ebony cascades of hair, the flesh of her naked breasts almost translucent, lustrous in the hot rays of the sun. wide hips flaring above the restraining strings of the bikini patch, a shimmering mirage in black and white that came closer and closer, pale gray eyes in that incredibly lovely face, the scent of mimosa as she passed and was gone.” That was on Saturday. On Monday, Michelle Harper came to Hope as a client. Below the short sleeves of her T-shirt, ugly bruises obliterated the whiteness of her arms. Adhesive was taped across the bridge of her nose and both her eyes were discolored, one puffed almost entirely shut. She wanted Hope’s help in filing a complaint with the police. She wanted her husband arrested and put away. On Tuesday. Michelle Harper was found dead on Whisper Key Beach. Her hands and legs were bound with wire hangers and she had been burned to death. An empty five-gallon gasoline can lay some ten feet from the body. By four that afternoon. George Harper had been charged with the brutal murder of his wife. Big, black, and monstrously ugly, George Harper vociferously denied the charge. And somehow, Hope believed him. But in committing himself to help Harper, Matthew Hope is drawn into a hall of mirrors filled with lies, sexual perversity, and thrill- seeking corruption. The result, says The Sunday Times (London), is “a strictly X- rated fairy tale” and a thoroughly good read

A killer is out for blood, and it’s up to Detective Steve Carella to bring him in ― but a shocking surprise awaits when a survivor fingers the suspect in a lineup

It was a miserable day in August in the 87th Precinct. Detective Steve Carella was hot and tired and his shirt was sticking to his back, and now this dumpy little man named Roger Grimm was sitting across from him in the squadroom demanding to know if they were going to catch the arsonist who had burned down his warehouse. “We’ll see what we can do,” Carella sighed. In the next few days Carella and his partner, Cotton Hawes, find themselves in the middle of an astonishing case, one which quickly proves to contain not one, but two arsons — and two murders. Assisted by a rather unfortunate personality named “Fat Ollie” Weeks of the 83rd precinct coarse, bigoted, and given to terrible W.C. Fields imitations, but, they have to admit, first-rate cop — Carella and Hawes roam across the city from the waterfront to the heart of the black ghetto, following a deadly trail of greed and violence. Their path leads them directly to a gallery of very unpleasant suspects and to a most unusual afternoon poker game,complete with high stakes, fast company — and a wild card

Evan Hunter’s magnificent new novel is the story of a desperate journey of discovery-through a man’s past, through the byways of a great city, through the infinitely more complex labyrinths of the human psyche. Its nameless protagonist wakes at sunrise in Central Park in New York City, faced with a terrifying riddle: Who am I? Completely without memory, as naked of self-knowledge as a newly born child, he ventures out into the city in search of self, tentatively at first, then with increasing boldness, finally with a headlong fierce compulsion to find and face whatever truth it is that has stripped him of his past. As he approaches the explosive climax of his quest, the scenes shift in a kaleidoscopic succession of encounters and adventures, fragments of the intermingled past and present: Greenwich Village and the haunting echo from his past awakened by the girl who takes him in; Chinatown and the wild spree with a sailor on shore leave; the Italian all-night wedding feast; the scavenger hunt with the glossy rich woman on an emotional bender; Harlem and the incredibly tense high-stake crap game; the door slammed in his face... and, at the last twirl of the kaleidoscope, the final electrifying revelation

“This is your case,” the manual advised, “stick with the investigation.” Stick with it in the pouring rain where a man lay with his open skull seeping his brains onto the sidewalk, stick with it in a hospital room reeking of antiseptic, stick with it in a tenement apartment at two in the morning, the clock throwing minutes into the empty hours of the night while a woman wept tears for her man who was dead. Search her closet for the clothing the killer wore. Get her to talk about her husband’s possible infidelities. Be a cop. Being a cop was something Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct knew a lot about. He knew about the careful, painstaking work of tracking down leads that could mean nothing or everything. He knew that cops like continuity even if it takes a couple of corpses to provide it and that right now he and his partner Meyer Meyer had all the continuity they could handle. They had two corpses shot within four hours of each other on the same rainy Friday night with the same .38 Smith & Wesson — one a calypso singer from Trinidad who had just finished a gig the other a hooker named C. J. who had just turned her last trick. Carella knew they had a case that was growing as cold as a slab in the morgue. He knew that they had a killer loose in the city who had killed once, twice, and perhaps would kill again if he and Meyer didn’t follow the leads, didn’t stick with the case, didn’t get there first... With this breathtakingly suspenseful novel Ed McBain shows us what the police procedural novel is all about. Whether you’re one of the millions of faithful followers of the 87th Precinct or a fan-to-be, from the first terse page of Calypso to an ending that will frighten you out of your skin, you’ll know you are in the hands of a master

Benjamin Thorpe is married, a father, a successful Los Angeles architect — and a man obsessed. Alone in New York City on business, he spends the empty hours of the night in a compulsive search for female companionship. His dizzying descent leads to an early morning confrontation in a mid-town brothel, and a subsequent searing self-revelation

Matthew Hope spots her on Saturday, exquisitely beautiful, strolling topless on the beach. On Monday, she shows up in his law office, beaten and bruised, ready to file for divorce. By Tuesday, she is dead — and her big, ugly husband is arrested for murder. But Matthew believes he is innocent; now, he has to prove it

“It almost seemed as if winter had already come.”　 Those were the final words of Last Summer. In this, Evan Hunters new novel, winter has indeed arrived — and Sandy, David, and Peter are together again. Sandy, David, and Peter five years later. The searing summer of Rhoda is far behind them. More stylish and sophisticated than they were as adolescents, each complete in the presence of the other, they form a brilliant trio: handsome, intelligent, witty, humorous, impregnable — and deadly. Into their dazzling orbit come Foderman and Mary Margaret. What happens to them all, in the days before Christmas, is as chilling as the snow- covered terrain surrounding them, as terror-ridden as the trails they ski.　 COME WINTER is an unforgettable exploration into the nature of evil

“Consolation,” which appeared in Mystery Monthly, is one of his more recent tales; this powerful, uncompromising, and sexually explicit story of two small-time criminals named Colley and Jocko was later revised and incorporated into the McBain novel Guns, published that same year

“Just you,” Andrew Farrell says, when Sarah Welles asks him what he wants of her. “Just you.” But long before she finally gives in to Andrew, long before she walks up those steps into the mysterious world of his wood-paneled office, long before she feels his naked body against hers, Sarah knows she has already chosen to betray her husband and her marriage. Adultery will be the least of her crimes. Making forbidden love to Andrew, Sarah has no idea of the dangerous game she has begun. She is about to find out who her lover really is, and Andrew is about to discover how unforgiving and relentless her husband can be. CRIMINAL CONVERSATION is a gripping novel of sex, passion, and violence, set against a backdrop of a society tattered by criminality. Prom victims to predators, from foot soldiers to kingpins, Evan Hunter spins a masterly tale that no one — not even Ed McBain — could do better: an explosive and erotic novel of psychosexual suspense

DESCRIPTION: From some of the greatest literary minds of our time comes a collection of stories about dangerous women. With an unprecedented lineup of authors, Mysterious Press proudly presents an extraordinary collection of short stories. Lorenzo Carcaterra, Michael Connelly, John Connolly, Jeffery Deaver, Nelson DeMille, J.A. Jance, Andrew Klavan, Elmore Leonard, Laura Lippman, Ed McBain, Jay McInerney, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Perry, Ian Rankin, S.J. Rozan, and Thomas H. Cook combine their talents in a collection which is certain to find a large audience eager to read stories by some of the most distinguished names in the genre

She was a living doll — until she was slashed to death. Detective Steve Carella wants Bert Kling on the case, even though Kling is making enemies of everyone. Then finally even Carella has had it with Kling, and suddenly the detective is missing and suspected dead. The men from the 87th Precinct go full tilt to find the truth. But they really need to find is a little doll — the little doll with all the answers

Ed McBain, author of the best-selling 87th Precinct novels, now takes you Downtown in a bold, new departure of a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and tingle with the special brand of electrifying suspense that only McBain knows how to generate. Downtown you’ll meet Michael Barnes, a lone out-of-town businessman in New York City on Christmas Eve with a couple of hours to kill before his plane leaves. It promises to be a sweet interlude when he meets a lovely blonde in a bar. But first his identification and all his money are stolen, and next his rental car — only to resurface on the other side of town with an unexpected passenger: a corpse. Here are every readers brightest, glittering fantasies and blackest nightmares about the Big Apple: big-shot movie producers, muggers with the instincts of Vietnamese guerrillas, cops who arrest the victims, mobsters who embrace you, thugs who tie you up, beautiful women who take you into their limousines, beautiful women who try to drive their stiletto heels through your skull, warehouses full of furs, jewels, and other valuables, smoky gambling dens in Chinatown, ritzy penthouse apartments, miserable dives... Michael Barnes has only twenty-four hours to survive the wildest ride in his life

A sunny, quiet, perfectly ordinary school day in autumn turns suddenly dark when sixteen-year-old Rebecca Patton runs down and kills a pedestrian during a driving lesson. It all happens so quickly, so inexplicably, like an accident. The victim — a woman carrying a red handbag — had been stepping off the curb at the corner of Grove and Third. Then she was lying in the street, in critical condition. When police detective Katie Logan arrives at the station house, she finds a distraught but cooperative Rebecca. Her driving instructor, Andrew Newell, is totally disoriented, however. He appears to be drunk. Or on drugs. Certainly, his apparent incompetence warrants his arrest in what has now become a case of negligent homicide. The situation in this adroitly told tale by a master at the top of his form grows far more sinister, though, when Logan learns that the victim’s handbag has been recovered. It identifies the dead woman as Andrew Newell’s wife

Stan Gifford is the ultimate comedian. A pro through and through, when Stan’s act dies, so does he—in front of forty million viewers from coast to coast, including the 87th Precinct’s Steve Carella. But what seemed to be death by natural causes quickly turns into a case of murder, and Carella must unravel the motivations behind the comedian’s final act. Meanwhile, Cindy Forrest has been working to put herself through college since the sniper who held the city hostage three years ago murdered her father. But now she’s in the crosshairs, and the only thing standing between her and a killer is Detective Bert Kling of the 87th Precinct

Carmine Canucci (“Ganooch” to his friends) was a retired soft-drinks magnate with a nice estate in Larchmont and influence in, well, certain circles. Which was precisely why Nanny Poole, the English governess he had hired to look after his ten-year-old son, had no desire to let him know that little Lewis had been kidnaped. Since he was vacationing on Capri at the time, it wouldn’t be too hard to keep him in the dark. Provided, of course, the kid returned, safe and sound, before his parents did. So she asked Benny Napkins, who used to be very big in linens and garbage, to help raise the $50,000 ransom — a search that sets off the funniest and most unlikely chain of events since the mob went “respectable.” In this new novel, Evan Hunter conducts a merry romp through the labyrinth of disorganized crime. There’s Cockeye Di Strabismo, the cross-eyed counterfeiter; Dominick the Guru, the hippie housebreaker; Bloomingdales, the fence (not to be confused with the department store); Snitch Delatore, the well-known informer; and many others, all introduced in Hunter’s peerless prose (not to mention pictures, too). The zany plot revolves around a kidnaper who composes his ransom notes from the impenetrable wisdom of two leading critics, and it careens wildly into complications like a legitimate illegitimate deal that injects a few extra packages of $50,000 cash into the picture, a rudely interrupted poker game, and a Spiro Agnew watch

When the strange hourglass-shaped time machine crashed out of the twentieth century and into the Caribbean Sea of fourteen hundred years ago, Neil Falsen realized how unprepared he was to head the expedition that his father had organized back through time. Of the four men who had flown through centuries to solve the mystery of an ancient Mayan god, two had died in the shattering crash. Only Neil and the ship’s pilot Dave remained to cope with the language and customs of a people who had disappeared into the darkness of history. It was confusing enough not to know which century the machine had fallen into. But Neil was sure his eyes were playing tricks when he spotted a Norse ship cutting proudly through southern seas. How ancient Vikings, Mayas and two twentieth-century Americans met — and fought — amid the splendors of a civilization that today dots the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico with its ruins, makes a tale as unique in telling as it is in content. In scenes that throb with drama and thunder with excitement, Dave and Neil found frightening evidence of the approaching Mayan collapse. With a common modern device, Neil stepped into a tense religious ceremony to prevent human sacrifice. Without realizing it, he discovered the secret of the white god among the Mayan Indian dieties. One of history’s most intriguing suppositions forms the basis for this tale of the secret behind the legend of a lost civilization

It’s Christmastime and Detective Carella gets assigned three murders — including a bestselling author of ghost stories — and is soon after ghosts, mediums, and a crazed killer

Patrolman Richard Genero couldn’t see clearly in the driving rain. The man — or perhaps the tall woman — standing at the bus stop was dressed entirely in black. Black raincoat, black slacks, black shoes, black umbrella which hid the head and hair. A bus pulled to the curb, spreading a canopy of water. The door snapped open. The person — man or woman — boarded the bus and the rain-streaked doors closed, hiding the black-shrouded figure from view. The bus pulled away from the curb, spreading another canopy of water which soaked Genero’s trouser legs. “Hey!” he yelled after the bus. “You forgot your bag!” Genera picked up the bag — a small, blue overnight bag issued by an airline. He unzipped the bag and reached into it. Then he gripped the bus-stop sign for support. The bag held... a severed human hand. The police lab gave both bag and hand a thorough examination and discovered next to nothing. Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, Meyer Meyer and the other 87th Precinct detectives had a murderer to find, and they had to begin without even knowing who the victim was. The Missing Persons Bureau files supplied two leads, both of which led nowhere. Everything that looked even faintly like a clue was checked and double-checked and they all led to the same place — a dead end. Then, when the break finally came and several clues turned up at once, they neatly contradicted each other. It was the toughest case the 87th Precinct detectives had ever faced

What’s cuddly, cute, and the object of a high-stakes court battle? It’s Gladly, a cross-eyed teddy bear: the brainchild of slightly cross-eyed beauty Lainie Commins, Matthew Hope’s client and the litigant in a trademark dispute with toy company tycoons Etta and Brett Toland. Hope, still recovering from a near-fatal shooting, is certain he can win this case — until someone murders one of the key players. While Hope is locked in a battle of nerves and legal wits, two of his closest associates have found their way into another of Florida’s favorite people traps. Warren Chambers and Toots Kiley have entered the underworld of drug-smuggling violence from opposite ends — and they can only escape together

Goldilocks... The Other Woman Goldilocks-stealing into someone else’s house, with no particular interest in the chairs or the porridge, but with more than a passing fascination with Poppa Bear’s bed. On the steamy west coast of Florida, in the quiet of their home, a woman and her two little girls have been brutally murdered. None of the alibis add up. The one person who couldn’t possibly have a motive for the crime is the only one confessing to it, and he insists on Matthew Hope for his defense. Now Matt finds himself tangled in the unravelling threads of three heartless killings in which every half-sister, stepson, and first wife could have had a hand. Somebody’s lying. Maybe everybody

GUNS: A crime novel unlike any you’ve ever read by Ed McBain, a story of fear and obsession — tougher, grittier, even more suspenseful than his famous 87th Precinct series. GUNS: For months Colley Donato and his partners have been robbing liquor stores in New York — quick cash, easy pickings. But today something is very wrong. The weather is suffocatingly hot, tempers are short — and it is their thirteenth job. Colley doesn’t like it when the others decide to go ahead anyway. He likes it even less when two cops come charging down the aisle with guns in their hands. As if in slow motion, Colley sees his finger pull the trigger — and the back of a cop’s head comes off. Colley Donato, twenty-nine, has just been promoted. He used to be a small-time robber, hardly worth the trouble. Now he has killed a policeman — and all hell is about to break loose. GUNS is the story of the next twenty-four hours in Colley’s life as he scrambles for safety — dodging, improvising cons (for which he has surprising talent), using and being used by a bizarre variety of friends and strangers: like Benny, the broad, smiling, benign man who makes a living hooking girls on dope and turning them onto the streets; Jeanine, Colley’s ex-partner’s wife, who shows a terrifyingly unexpected gift for savagery; his brother, Albert, a Buick dealer in Larchmont, who lectures him: “Nick, a man who has to commit robberies is a man with a serious personality disorder.” With a razor-sharp eye for detail, McBain draws us into the codes and rhythms of Colley’s world, into the flickering scenes inside Colley’s head — the art of growing up in East Harlem; the Orioles “Social and Athletic Club,” where he first makes his mark as “sergeant at arms”; the jobs he pulls; the prisons; above all the exhilaration and glory of holding that first gun at age fifteen, feeling its beauty, its wonderful power... GUNS: Ed McBain’s abilities for characterization, tight suspense, and hard, clear detail have always been first-rate, but this new novel gives them room to stretch as they never have before. From the opening page to the stunning climax, the result is a superb thriller and a brilliant exploration into the criminal mind

The minute hand on the station-house clock crept past midnight, and another day began — a not untypical October Sunday, bringing the usual assortment of big city crimes to the detectives of the 87th Precinct. To start the morning hours of the night, there was a gory homicide: a young actress in a controversial play had been stabbed, and Carella and Hawes set out to investigate. Meanwhile, Bert Kling was taking a call about a bombing in the black ghetto, and Meyer found himself talking to an attractive, well-educated woman who had an unlikely complaint: larcenous ghosts. The day shift was no less eventful. Willis and Genero were investigating the death of a bearded youth who fell or was pushed from a fourth-floor window — stark naked. Alex Delgado took on a nasty beating in the Puerto Rican barrio, while Carl Kapek was looking for a man and woman who specialised in muggings. Andy Parker’s routine assignment took an unexpected twist: a pair of gunmen killed a grocer and shot Parker twice. And, just to fill in the idle moments, there was the usual parade of malicious punks, youthful runaways. hookers, and small-time burglars. For the first time, Ed McBain has brought together all the detectives of the 87th Precinct in a single novel — a book filled with his usual precise descriptions of police procedure and an ingenious assortment of interlocking plots — some violent, some touching, some ironic, but all marked by the masterful McBain touch

It has been almost ten years since Evan Hunter burst upon the literary scene with his first book, The Blackboard Jungle. That best-selling novel, with its important sociological implications, established Hunter immediately as a most exciting topical writer. In the ensuing decade his reputation has grown enormously and become solidified as a result of four other major novels, the most recent of which is Mothers and Daughters. During this same period, Hunter wrote a number of short stories for magazine publication. This collection presents the best of them and displays the stunning range of the author’s interests and talents. There are gay stories and grim stories; realistic stories and wildly fantastic stories; stories of character and stories of action. Only one thing about the collection is uniform: the intense quality that Hunter puts into everything he writes, which holds the reader spellbound to the page. Evan Hunter fans will find the two very long stories in the volume of particular interest, for each is a substantial work on its own and represents the author at top form. These are the title story, Happy New Year, Herbie, and the lead-off story, Uncle Jimbo’s Marbles

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves

Why would any man, however deranged, take an overdose of sleeping pills and then calmly turn off his air conditioner with the city sweltering through a backbreaking heat wave? This question nags at Detectives Bert Kling and Steve Carella. Kling’s got other problems: his startlingly beautiful wife is almost certainly cheating on him, and he is being stalked by a psychopathic ex-con bent on getting Wing for having sent him up. While Carella scratches away like a terrier at the “suicide,” Kling grows less and less capable of coping. In a shattering triple climax, the tinderbox elements converge Ed McBain makes it clear that there can be no real winners here, except for the reader. In this, his thirty-fifth 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain reaffirms his mastery of the police procedural story

Here is Ed McBain’s most ambitious and far-reaching novel of the famed 87th Precinct. But Ice goes beyond the world of the 87th Precinct. Ice transcends the genre of crime fiction... as Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold did the novel of espionage. Ice is Ed McBain’s most searching and compelling novel... of justice triumphant over the savage law of the city streets... of men and women who wear the golden detective shield with pride, honor and dedication. Ed McBain has written his most masterly story of crime and defection, life and sudden death in the chillingly realistic world of the 87th Precinct, and beyond

“Nothing can confuse a person (cops included) more than a lot of names and a lot of pieces and a lot of corpses...” The cops of the 87th Precinct are really confused this time. When Detective Arthur Brown finds two dead men, it looks like a nice simple double homicide — except for the piece of photograph clutched in one dead hand. The confusion doesn’t start until Irving Krutch, an insurance investigator, turns up at the squad room with another piece of the photograph. Part of a homemade jigsaw puzzle, according to Krutch. The handiwork of the late Carmine Bonamico. When all the pieces, which had been passed around to friends and relatives of Bonamicos gang, were assembled, they would reveal the hiding place of the§ 750,000 the gang had stolen from a savings and loan association six years ago. Find the missing pieces, find the missing money. The search is on, and it involves Detectives Brown and Carella with people like an art gallery owner, a cheap hoodlum, a middle-aged floozy, a hot-dog vendor and an old Sicilian woman. Detective Meyer gets lucky. He visits a boutique where all the salesgirls wear see-through blouses. Some of these people have another caller. It turns out that owning a piece of the photograph can be deadly, and it looks like a toss-up as to who will get the puzzle completed first — the police or a very determined murderer

Ed McBain's astonishing 87th-Precinct series continues with a hard look at what passes for love in a city grown used to crimes of passion. When a beautiful blonde tells Detective Steve Carella that her husband's former chauffeur has made two attempts on her life, Carella immediately begins tracking her assailant -- only to find him far uptown, hanging from a basement pipe, a bullet in his head. Who killed the chauffeur? And why, now that her would-be murderer is dead, does the blonde's wealthy husband insist on retaining the services of the private eye from Chicago? "He loves me, " she insists, but Carella has his doubts. It appears the husband is involved with another blonde, also from Chicago. Can Carella prevent another murder-before someone else is betrayed with a kiss?

It is late afternoon, Friday, October 13. Detectives Carella, Meyer and Kling of the 87th Squad are waiting for their relief, due at 5:45 P.M. At 5:15, the telephone rings. Meyer answers, listens, jots down a few notes, then says, “Steve, Bert, you want to take this? Some nut just shot up a bookstore on Culver Avenue. There’s three people laying dead on the floor.” The crowd had already gathered around the bookshop. There were two uniformed cops on the sidewalk, and a squad car was pulled up to the curb across the street. The people pulled back instinctively when they heard the wail of the siren on the police sedan. Carella got out first, slamming the door behind him. He waited for Kling to come around the car, and then both men started for the shop. At the door, the patrolman said, “Lot of dead people in there, sir.” A routine squeal for the 87th, answered with routine dispatch. But there was nothing routine about it a moment later. What Bert Kling found in the wreckage of the shop very nearly destroyed him. Enraged, embittered, the youngest detective on the squad begins a nightmarish search for a crazed and wanton killer. The hunt is relentless and intensely personal — not only for Kling but for every man on the squad. Lady, Lady, I Did It! like all 87th Precinct stories, is charged with emotion and moves from the first page with the relentless, driving intensity that is characteristic of Ed McBain

Last summer was a vacation island, beachgrass and plum, sunshine and sand... Last summer was a million laughs... Last summer a pretty blonde girl and two carefree, suntanned youths nursed an injured seagull back to health... Last summer, too, they befriended Rhoda, a shy young girl with trusting eyes... Let the reader beware. This is a shocking book — not for its candor and daring but for its cruelty and scorn, its shattering impact, and its terrifying vision of reality. What begins as a vacation idyll gradually turns into a dark parable of modem society, revealing the insensate barbarity of man. The opening is as bright as summer, as calm as a cobra dozing in the sun. But, as summer and compassion wane, the author strips away the pretense of youth and lays bare the blunt, primeval urge to crush, defile, betray. The tragic, inevitable outcome exposes the depths of moral corruption and the violation of the soul. In this tale of depravity, Evan Hunter has written a novel that is a work of art. Its theme and portent are inescapable, its insolence cauterizing, its humor outrageous — a brilliant stabbing, altogether unforgettable book

Ed McBain made his debut in 1956. In 2004, more than a hundred books later, he personally collected twenty-five of his stories written before he was Ed McBain. All but five of them were first published in the detective magazine Manhunt and none of them appeared under the Ed McBain byline. They were written by Evan Hunter (McBain’s legal name as of 1952), Richard Marsten (a pseudonym derived from the names of his three sons), or Hunt Collins (in honor of his alma mater, Hunter College). Here are kids in trouble and women in jeopardy. Here are private eyes and gangs. Here are loose cannons and innocent bystanders. Here, too, are cops and robbers. These are the stories that prepared Evan Hunter to become Ed McBain, and that prepared Ed McBain to write the beloved 87th Precinct novels. In individual introductions, McBain tells how and why he wrote these stories that were the start of his legendary career

“ ‘You’ll have to speak louder,’ the voice said. ‘I’m a little hard of hearing.’ ” What with one thing and another, such as a highly successful cat burglar and what seemed to be a hippie crucifixion, the 87th Precinct didn’t need The Deaf Man. Especially since he’d already put in two previous appearances resulting in blackmail, murder and general havoc. But they had him, certainly, they very definitely had him — or was it he that had them? This time, The Deaf Man thinks it fitting that a police detective will help him rob a bank. Detective Steve Carella, to be exact. So, each day, he sends Carella a photostat in the morning mail. The first two pictures of J. Edgar Hoover, the next are of George Washington. All are clues, obviously, but what do they mean? Who, where, when and how? This is tough, taut, funny mystery with a number of very peculiar cases and a most surprising ending, played against Ed McBain’s highly-detailed knowledge of police and detective procedure