Rating: 
Summary: Another Winner!
Review: Ed McBain has this cool little setup in which he's got an entire city inside his head...and he allows us to visit every so often, much to our delight! Having penned more novels of the 87th Precinct than I can count...he's got it down, and how! I've was hooked the first time I read "Fuzz", and have been following along ever since."Money Money Money" is a delicious little thriller, and quite prophetic at the same time. Since the book doesn't tell us exactly WHEN in 2001 this was published, I am assuming it was released before September 11th. If so, this humdinger of a book prophecies those events in many ways, eerily so. With deft characterization and typical thrilling plot twists, "Money Money Money" comes across as not only a good escapist romp, but a social commentary as well. A fictional "State Of The Nation" address, if you will. If you haven't read McBain's work yet, I suggest you walk/run/fly to your nearest bookstore and GIT BUSY!
Rating:
Summary: "Money, Money, Money" is 24-carat gold
Review: Ed McBain has written 51 books in his "87th Precinct" series of police procedurals and, somehow, he seems to just keep getting better. This latest novel is a complex but fast-moving tale of bad money -- "superbills", superbly counterfeited hundred dollar bills -- and the trail of death the money leaves behind. As is often the case, McBain's principal detective in the book is Steve Carella who wrestles here not only with homicides but also with some personal demons emerging from his past. And partnered with Carella is the despicable Ollie Weeks -- a racist, sexist, homophobe who happens to be a pretty good detective. And, as usual, the bad guys (and bad women) are quirky and memorable.
If you've never read an Ed McBain novel, "Money, Money, Money" wouldn't be a bad place to start. And then you have fifty more to look forward to.
Rating:
Summary: The master strikes again
Review: Ed McBain is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. His body of work truly makes him a living legend. Whether writing under the name Ed McBain or his alterego Evan Hunter, his name on a book assures it of a certain style and the highest degree of quality writing. His most famous creation has to be the cops in the 87th precinct. Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, Meyer Meyer have been with us for over forty five years. They have aged very slowly over the decades. Yet the all the cases remain immediate to this day. As a body of work, the fifty previous books have been a bit uneven. Some were merely good and some are true masterpieces (such as Nocturne). MONEY, MONEY, MONEY represents the fifty first volume of this classic series. It is not the very best one but still is far better than the vast majority of books written last year. Cassandra Jean Ridley, ex- Gulf War pilot, is trying to make a quick buck. She has agreed to fly drugs out of Mexico under radar for a cool quarter of a million dollars. The work, though not without risk, appears quite easy. In fact, life is great until Cass is robbed by a burgler who makes off with two of her fur coats and some cash she was given. This eventually leads to a run in by the burgler with the treasury department questioning whether the cash is counterfeit. All roads lead back to Cass. Carella and Fat Ollie Weeks investigate the death of a woman mauled and eaten by the lions in the local zoo. Her death appears drug related and after finding the body of a bookseller in Diamondback, the "almost exclusively black section of the city" their investigation takes them to the doors of Wadsworth and Dodds , a book publishing company that sells books that nobody wants to read. One of the major strengths of Ed McBain's writing style is his propensity for creating unforgettable characters. He does so through dialogue and descriptions. For example, Steve Carella is always described as having "eyes that slant downward giving him a sort Chinese appearance, though he certainly wasn't Oriental". Meyer is bald and Cotton has a white stripe through his red hair where he suffered a knife injury many years ago. The dialogue is extremely realistic and powerful. The story is quite fast paced which is another McBain trademark vs. the more languid introspective writing of Evan Hunter. In this volume, however, I think McBain may have been attempting to do a bit too much as another plot gets intertwined into the primary investigation. This leads to some improbable coincidences. Nonetheless, nobody writes as good as McBain even when he is not quite at his best.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny Money and Eerie Similarities
Review: Ed McBain is an undisputed master, but how much story he's crammed into 269 pages is still amazing. Not a wasted page, wasted paragraph, wasted =word=. Fusing fact and urban legend (hopefully urban legend!)into the plot gives the novel a satisfyingly challenging complexity while the eerie foreshadowing of September 11 gives it a chilling reality. We've known these cops so long that we can't help feeling affection even for the most "piggish." Even while we feel Carella's frustration during a meeting in the Loot's office because it derails into the goofiness only those who've worked together a long time can produce, we want a bagel, too. And because we've known them and watched them work all these years, we can worry that one may be thinking of leaving us.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising Way to Die.
Review: Ed McBain is BACK. I've always enjoyed Ed McBain's 87th precinct novels and Matthew Hope novels. This 51st entry is among his best. In the beginning he lets us know the murder victim before she is murdered, and man is she murdered. I was surprised when Carella and Meyer are investigating a homicide at the zoo and the vic turns out to be the female pilot. I just wasn't expecting it. The subplot regarding the terrorist activity is very informative when McBain gives us a brief history on when and how the terrorist regime developed in 1954 and culminated in 1964 in Algiers. Also Carella is on the verge of severe depression over the death of his father and his mother and sister are embracing life at its fullest. And the details McBain shares about how Fat Ollie Weeks judges other fat people harshly and not himself just had me rolling. I hope Ed McBain can keep them coming. Just to name a couple of other great ones I thoroughly enjoyed Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear, Nocturne, Criminal Conversation and Privileged Conversation. Thanks for keeping me so up date.
Rating: 
Summary: Money Makes The Eight-Seven Go Round
Review: Ed McBain's 51st entry in the 87th Precinct series shows the author in fine fettle, robust even. It's an enjoyable, somewhat unusual novel, a good page-turner as McBains nearly always are. If it's less than his best, it's not from lack of trying. Someone is moving funny money through the streets of Isola. A woman gets fed to the lions. A guy turns up dead in a garbage can. A peaceful burglar gets an odd visit from a Secret Service agent. A group of terrorists from the Middle East plot an explosion at a city landmark. Just another day at the office for the 87th Precinct. There's a lot to chew on here, and like the poor woman in the lions' cage, it ends up getting scattered in many directions. Focus is usually one of McBain's strengths, but after a promising start, it kind of gets lost. Perhaps it is because he wanted to tell a story that had little to do with the 87th Precinct, a story about counterfeiters and spies and terrorists. The novel begins rather oddly on a dirt runway in the American Southwest, and the 87th Precinct detectives don't even show up until the book is well underway. They take a back seat for much of the ensuing narrative, while McBain focuses his attentions on one of his more interesting villains, a nasty coked-out drug dealer named Wiggy The Lid, and a white-shoe publishing house where all is not as it seems. Even this gets tangled up, however. I'm not sure I understand what happened in the novel, why this person did that, but as best I can tell, the pieces don't all connect in the end the way these books usually do. The resolution feels muddy. There's some noises made about government conspiracies, which frankly reeks of Oliver Stone paranoia but grabs you all the same, then it's just dropped without further mention. "Money, Money, Money" feels like an experiment, at times a worthy one, but as a novel it's more than a den of lions can chew on. The introduction of a terrorist subplot is notable. The copyright of "Money, Money, Money" is 2001, and I suspected McBain threw the subplot in because of a wish to acknowledge 9/11. Yet "Money, Money, Money" hit the bookstores earlier that summer, which renders his take on a group of al-Qaeda operatives plotting to detonate a bomb in a concert hall rather eerie. "We are teaching them we can strike anywhere, anytime," the terrorist leader explains. "We are telling them they are completely vulnerable." More eerie is the fact this subplot has no apparent purpose in the novel. It doesn't connect with the other plot threads, except that it seems this particular al-Qaeda group has the benefit of counterfeit cash in funding their deadly work. McBain just throws the terrorist plot in there, it seems, because he sensed it was something important that needed to be dealt with. He was right, of course. But "Money, Money, Money" is not a better book for this Nostradamian turn. It's certainly interesting, vibrant, readable, at times funny, with Fat Ollie Weeks, the miserably uncouth and bigoted cop, getting more center-stage attention than usual. Reading "87th Precinct" novels is always worthwhile, and this is no exception. But this is no standout, either, however elevated its ambitions.
Rating:
Summary: Timely novel about the consequences of greed.
Review: Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels are always entertaining. He places quirky characters in dangerous situations. Yet McBain leavens the intensity of the narrative with delightful and irreverent humor. Cass Ridley is a tough woman. She is a female pilot who served with the 101st Airborne in the Persian Gulf War. She has decided to make some easy money by becoming a courier in a drug deal that takes place in Mexico. Cass makes a tidy sum from the drug deal and she goes on a spending spree. Another quirky character is Texas-born Wilbur Struthers, a peace-loving man who burglarizes apartments for a living. He decides to burglarize Cass Ridley's apartment, and then things get complicated. It seems that some of the money that Cass "earned" and that Will steals may be counterfeit. A murder ensues, which involves the detectives of the 87th precinct as well as Fat Ollie Weeks, of the 88th Precinct. It seems that the aforementioned drug deal is part of an elaborate scheme, involving enormous sums of money. The action becomes complicated, and it is sometimes difficult to keep the characters straight without a scorecard. A series of violent confrontations leads to more bloodshed. The humor is provided by Fat Ollie Weeks, who eats almost without stopping, and who is sloppy as well as morbidly obese. He is an unabashed racist and he hates all minority groups equally. Weeks is completely oblivious of how obnoxious he comes across to almost everyone that he meets. Ironically, as gross as he is as a human being, Weeks is a first-rate detective. The book's timeliness stems from a plot dealing with Arab terrorists who intend to blow up a public building. What keeps "Money, Money, Money" from realizing its potential is the convoluted plot that has one too many twists and turns. Not only is there a counterfeiting plot, but there is also a plot about a drug addicted dealer named Wiggy who takes on a bunch of felons, much to his regret. This, plus the terrorist plot, sinks the narrative under its own weight. McBain juggles all these narrative balls competently enough, but the four or five plot lines do not add up to a coherent whole. McBain's writing style is so fluid and effortless that he is always a pleasure to read. However, in the case of this novel, fewer complications would have added up to a more satisfying novel.
Rating:
Summary: Follow the Money
Review: How does he do it? This 51st 87th precinct mystery has all the snap and crackle of a brand new series and is as up to date as the evening news. Edgar-nominated "Money, Money, Money" effortlessly weaves an eerily prophetic terrorist plot, a CIA-like sting, a routine burglary, and a complex drug empire into an explosive read. The dialogue is crisp and frequently hilarious. The only thing that stays the same is the perennial youthfulness of the continuing characters. To those of us who have read all or almost all of the series, it does bring a smile to read that Bert Klinger, who was a rookie detective since 1960, has no memory of pop stars pre-1970. Steve Carella displays some rarely seen human failings. He cannot get over his bitterness at his father's violent death and refuses to accept his family's moving forward with life. Also, he exhibits a classic case of job burnout. My secret favorite, the despicable Ollie Weeks carries his non-political correctness to new heights. The purity of his intolerance is breathtaking; not one minority group does he find acceptable. His manners and appearance are atrocious, and his one saving grace is he that he is an excellent cop. It is hard to rank the villains in this story except the amoral, cold-blooded egocentric CIA-types. The burglar is a quite likeable guy, the drug dealers are frequently funny in their ignorance and casual violence, and even the terrorists are given human faces. How McBain set up Ollie Week's (of the 88th precinct) participation in the investigation has to be an instant classic. The initial incident is the zoo lions eating a human body. The zoo, more precisely the lion's veldt, is the dividing line between the 87th and 88th precinct. One young lion carried off the victim's leg to a private corner. Therefore, it was decided that ¼ of the crime took place in the 88th precinct, Ollie's responsibility. I would rank "Money, Money, Money" right up there with my all-time favorite 87th Precinct mystery, "Kiss." A real pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: Follow the Money
Review: How does he do it? This 51st 87th precinct mystery has all the snap and crackle of a brand new series and is as up to date as the evening news. Edgar-nominated "Money, Money, Money" effortlessly weaves an eerily prophetic terrorist plot, a CIA-like sting, a routine burglary, and a complex drug empire into an explosive read. The dialogue is crisp and frequently hilarious. The only thing that stays the same is the perennial youthfulness of the continuing characters. To those of us who have read all or almost all of the series, it does bring a smile to read that Bert Klinger, who was a rookie detective since 1960, has no memory of pop stars pre-1970. Steve Carella displays some rarely seen human failings. He cannot get over his bitterness at his father's violent death and refuses to accept his family's moving forward with life. Also, he exhibits a classic case of job burnout. My secret favorite, the despicable Ollie Weeks carries his non-political correctness to new heights. The purity of his intolerance is breathtaking; not one minority group does he find acceptable. His manners and appearance are atrocious, and his one saving grace is he that he is an excellent cop. It is hard to rank the villains in this story except the amoral, cold-blooded egocentric CIA-types. The burglar is a quite likeable guy, the drug dealers are frequently funny in their ignorance and casual violence, and even the terrorists are given human faces. How McBain set up Ollie Week's (of the 88th precinct) participation in the investigation has to be an instant classic. The initial incident is the zoo lions eating a human body. The zoo, more precisely the lion's veldt, is the dividing line between the 87th and 88th precinct. One young lion carried off the victim's leg to a private corner. Therefore, it was decided that ¼ of the crime took place in the 88th precinct, Ollie's responsibility. I would rank "Money, Money, Money" right up there with my all-time favorite 87th Precinct mystery, "Kiss." A real pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Money,Money,Money
Review: I always look forward to a new 87th Precinct novel,and this time was no exception. After reading it I was very disappointed,and felt it lacking in all that made the 87th Precinct our favorite for so long. This book focuses primarily on Steve Carella and Fat Ollie Weeks.All our old familiar characters play little or no role in this book. In fact,Fat Ollie seems to have the star billing this time,and he's with the 88th Precinct. There is drug smuggling,drug dealing,terrorists,counterfeit money,the Secret Service and the Treasury Department all thrown into the plot. Each of the many characters develops a subplot of their own, which all melds into the whole. They are mostly underdeveloped, so you cannot get a real feel for them as individuals. There are also so many peripheral people introduced into the story that it muddles up its entirety. Carella and Fat Ollie are the only ones we can feel due to our vast,past knowledge of them. Just when you think,perhaps,it is all coming together,the book ends,leaving you wondering if McBain couldn't tie it all up satisfactorily. Being the well-seasoned writer that he is,this is most likely a prelude to his next book,continuing on with these elusive characters,who are still among the living,that seemed to disappear without our knowledge of what happened. McBain,again,graced us with his very witty repartee between the characters. It was just not enough to hold this convoluted book together.
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