Three Blind Mice

Rating:
Summary: Try it, you will like it.
Review: Ed McBain's "Matthew Hope" series is one of the more entertaining and engaging mystery series set in that most murderous of states - Florida! Well, not actually perhaps, but if one reads the vast number of murderous tomes and series set in the sunshine state one might get that impression. Like John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiassen, James Hall, Lawrence Shamus, Dave Barry, Tim Dorsey, and others MacBain makes good usage of his setting. Lead character and protagonist attorney/P.I. Matthew Hope's adventures aren't as madcap and humorous as those of some of the other authors mentioned above, but he is definitely hard boiled and suspenseful.

In this novel Hope is engaged to defend Stephen Leeds, a man accused of murdering three Vietnamese immigrants who have just recently been acquited of raping Leeds' wife Jessie. When the men are found murdered and mutilated shortly after Stephen had publicly threatened to kill them, everyone assumes that he is guilty. Evidence found at the scene seems to clinch the matter, but Hope takes on the case and begins to investigate, along with his assistants. As is usual in a MacBain novel, you learn quite a lot about the various characters along the way, making them and their motives believable. I recommend all of the Matthew Hope series. While this one isn't his best, it is still a good pager turner. Recommended.

Four Stars.

Rating:
Summary: Hope takes on a hopeless case in the sunshine state.
Review: Ed McBain's "Matthew Hope" series is one of the more entertaining and engaging mystery series set in that most murderous of states - Florida! Well, not actually perhaps, but if one reads the vast number of murderous tomes and series set in the sunshine state one might get that impression. Like John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiassen, James Hall, Lawrence Shamus, Dave Barry, Tim Dorsey, and others MacBain makes good usage of his setting. Lead character and protagonist attorney/P.I. Matthew Hope's adventures aren't as madcap and humorous as those of some of the other authors mentioned above, but he is definitely hard boiled and suspenseful.

In this novel Hope is engaged to defend Stephen Leeds, a man accused of murdering three Vietnamese immigrants who have just recently been acquited of raping Leeds' wife Jessie. When the men are found murdered and mutilated shortly after Stephen had publicly threatened to kill them, everyone assumes that he is guilty. Evidence found at the scene seems to clinch the matter, but Hope takes on the case and begins to investigate, along with his assistants. As is usual in a MacBain novel, you learn quite a lot about the various characters along the way, making them and their motives believable. I recommend all of the Matthew Hope series. While this one isn't his best, it is still a good pager turner. Recommended.

Four Stars.

Rating:
Summary: Try it, you will like it.
Review: This is the first McBain book I have ever bothered to read even though I have been aware of McBain for years. I really enjoyed this novel and look forward to reading the other 12 Matthew Hope novels. Why McBain stopped writing Mathew Hope novels after 1998, I don't know, but it would be nice if he started up again.
Read this one, then enjoy watching the TV movie based on it.

Rating:
Summary: Matthew Nearly Hopeless In Weak Story
Review: What is it about Ed McBain and romance? It can turn him from Mickey Spillane to Maurice Chevalier in a matter of two or three pages. Here we are treated to a pair of romances, one involving Florida defense attorney Matthew Hope and a Vietnamese interpreter, the other involving a private investigator and a woman who works at the Calusa Tax Collector's office. There's also a murder, of three restaurant employees who raped a woman and then beat the rap.

The Matthew Hope books, which seem to have been brought to a close by McBain in 1998 with the release of "The Last Best Hope," was an excursion on the other side of the criminal justice system by McBain, writer of the "87th Precinct" series of police procedurals. It was a detour in tone, in tempo, in setting, and in character, but for some reason, the Hope novels I read never seemed to benefit from this fresh approach. Unlike the "87th Precinct" books he was writing concurrently, McBain seemed to plot these ones by the numbers, with little interest in what made people tick, until it came to a romantic situation. Then his focus would bore in on cute meets, long walks on the beach, and post-coital cuddles of quiet satisfaction. Often he throws in lovers of different ethnic backgrounds, showing what a liberated guy he is and all that. Meanwhile the killer continues to kill and the reader gets frustrated. Love makes the world go round, but it is more likely to make a good mystery go down the drain.

The mystery here, published in 1990, is one of McBain's weakest. It's not terribly clever in its set-up, and an attempt to set up a red herring is transparent. Hope seems unable to see things about his client, the jailed husband of the raped woman awaiting trial for the murders, and those closest to him which any mystery-versed reader will pick up on fast. At one point, when finally confronting the killer, he does so in a stupid, self-exposing way, without backup, despite the fact he knows someone else doing the same thing ended up losing his life.

The romances, picked up suddenly in the middle of the narrative, aren't resolved in any way. About the only thing unique is that one of the romances doesn't wind its way into the bedroom, as the couple want to take things slow for a while. The woman, it turns out, is a virgin, which makes her quite an exotic female in the McBain canon.

But this book is not for McBain virgins, or you may lose interest in reading his other, and for the most part, much better books. Then you really would be losing out on something.