Rating: 
Summary: Really, very entertaining.
Review: This was my first McBain book and I loved it. As an old-time fan of Joseph Wambaugh, I found much entertainment in the character, Fat Ollie. He was animated, but real. I find myself chuckling as I think about him, even while I write this review. The plot was interesting, although the Al-Qaida connection is very spooky (released before 9/11). I am headed out to get another McBain book as soon as I'm done with this review (Fat Ollie's Book)
Rating:
Summary: Really, very entertaining.
Review: This was my first McBain book and I loved it. As an old-time fan of Joseph Wambaugh, I found much entertainment in the character, Fat Ollie. He was animated, but real. I find myself chuckling as I think about him, even while I write this review. The plot was interesting, although the Al-Qaida connection is very spooky (released before 9/11). I am headed out to get another McBain book as soon as I'm done with this review (Fat Ollie's Book)
Rating: 
Summary: A Darkly Prophetic 87th Precinct
Review: Too true, too close. If you have never read an Ed McBain/87th Precinct Novel, where have you been? If you haven't, this is probably not the place to start - as the author trusts that we have remembered his unforgettable characters sufficiently that pains are not taken to re-introduce them. Money, Money, Money, published in August, 2001, is his first foray into the murky world of international terrorism. . Here are some disconcerting excerpts. For reasons perhaps now lost, way back 50 books ago the author re-named the New York City boroughs and other areas for purposes of his tales: "The drive to Calm's Point took him half an hour from the North Side of the city to the bridge and over it into a community only recently reclaimed from urban decay. Hillside Commons consisted of low-rise tenements which had been inhabited by runaway hippies during the Sixties and Seventies, immigrant Hispanics in the early Eighties, Koreans in the Nineties, and now - here in the bright new millennium - upwardly mobile Yuppies yearning for a glimpse of the distant towers across the River Dix. p. 80 "He had been trained in Afghanistan, was said to have links with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad." p. 159
"It was his own belief that only MAJOR attacks of terrorism would leave any impression at all on the forces of evil polluting the Arab world. Only desperation measures would provoke wholesale departures. The withdrawal of all U.S. and western forces from Moslem countries in general and from the Arabian Peninsula in particular was the stated goal of al Quaida. Killing all Americans, including civilians, everywhere in the world was merely a means toward this end. p. 162 Some prior reviewers have said that the plot in this newest 87th Precinct tale is too much of a stretch. I suggest that maybe things might have been different on September 11, 2001 if more Security Personnel, Air Traffic Controllers and passengers had read Tom Clancy novels. Would they have acted differently? The ending in this installment of the 87th Precinct saga leaves a lot of loose ends and one wonders if sequels will undergo change in light of the recent events, which have, forever and ill, redefined our view of the possibility and extent of evil. God Bless America.
Rating:
Summary: Very good novel
Review: Very good crime writing, I enjoyed reading this book very much. The theme of the story (drugs smuggling) evolves towards anti-American terrorism, which was somehow disappointing since there is enough fuss about that already. It was my first Ed McBain book and I'll certainly read more...
Rating:
Summary: Great, great, great!
Review: When I first read an 87th precinct novel, I didn't like it. Not enough character development. Later, I went to a book sale at the library, got three of them in one book for a quarter. After reading all three, I got to know the detectives and their back stories. Steve Carella is the center of the stories. He's got a deaf mute wife and a son and a daughter, fraternal twins. He also has a chip on his shoulder over the way his father died (in a stick-up) and how the case was handled. Meyer Meyer is Carella's bald, Jewish sidekick, and Burt Kling is the youngest member of the squad and the resident lady's man. There's a black detective named Brown.
Another amazing thing about these books is that McBain has invented his own city. Of course, it's based on New York. I read someplace that he did this to avoid research. There's always some eagle-eyed reader who knows New York better than the writer.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY is exactly what it sounds like. Everybody's after a big stash. A cocaine deal unravels and the abused parties are all out to get their money back. A retired Gulf War pilot is the most interesting of those involved. She makes Kinsey Millhone look like Little Orphan Annie. Fat Ollie Weeks draws jurisdiction in one of the ensuing murders. One of the culprits is literally thrown to the lions. Fat Ollie is one of my favorite recurring characters. McBain is having fun thumbing his nose at the PC police. Ollie hates everybody; he even does a W.C. Fields impression.
Another satirical element is the front for the cocaine operation. Would you believe a publishing house?
Every once in a while I hit a bad stretch where every book I buy stinks, but I'm too cheap to quit reading. The problem is always easily remedied, though, if there's an 87th precinct novel at hand.
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