Heat

The officers report to a location of a homicide or a suicide. One of the officers is encountering friction with his wife, a model, who doesn't understand the necessities of police work conflict with a social calendar. The writing is sharp and competent. The reader is brought into the story immediately. The deceased had been an alcoholic. He was in his second marriage. Two years previously his father had committed suicide by gunfire. He had remarked recently that his father had the right idea. His wife had been away from him for a week. When Halloran left prison after twelve years he went to look up his daughter Moira. The death being investigated becomes less a matter of self-infliction as it is learned that the deceased person had a phobia about swallowing pills. Halloran is part of the action because he has an insane amount of resentment against one of the officers that he intends to discharge. The officers continue to puzzle out the facts surrounding the death of the alcoholic. It seems his father had left him a substantial number of valuable paintings. The targeted police officer is stalking his wife. He and his wife talk. He is in homicide, nagging that thing called death around the clock. The author links up all of the strands of the story to a successful conclusion. The pseudonymous writer wrote a number of works in different genres. His professionalism shines through in this effort. The story is satisfyingly complex and is told in a compelling, brisk and terse way.

1981's "Heat" is a typically energetic 87th Precinct page-turner in which, atypically, the main mystery of the story becomes secondary to a riveting subplot. If not for the fact readers of the McBain crime procedural series have developed a bond with the 87th Precinct detectives, this narrative imbalance might pose more of a problem. Instead, it works well, sneaking up and pulling on your attention like a treacherous undertow.Bert Kling has a problem. He's married to a beautiful model, only now he is aware there may be more going on in her life than he previously knew. A comment by a drunk girl at a party makes him wonder if she's having an affair, and Kling eventually decides to use his detective skills to find out, despite warnings from his partner, Steve Carella, to talk it out with her instead."Carella could have told him that in any marriage there was a line either partner could not safely cross," McBain writes. "Once you stepped over that line, once you said or did something that couldn't possibly be taken back, the marriage was irretrievable."But Kling has to know, though, and so does the reader. McBain strings you along in two different ways, one by giving us a strong idea right away of what is going on but stirring just enough doubt to muddy the waters, and second and even more successfully, by having Kling compromise his police ethics in search of the truth. Like McBain says, there are lines of privacy in life, and crossing over them can be destructive. But there are prices to be paid for not crossing those lines, too.There's also a killer hunting Kling, not adequately developed in the short space of the book but leading to some interesting moments, particularly as this begins to intersect with Kling's own investigation of his wife.The main business of this novel, the investigation by Carella into the apparent suicide of an alcoholic artist, is a well-thought-out crime drama with some arresting incongruities, but it is almost too sedate to keep pace with either of the Kling subplots. If it was a suicide, the guy didn't leave a note, and that, McBain writes, "was like a pastrami sandwich without a pickle." So Carella talks to several people who knew the artist, none of whom are surprised or sorry the man is dead.This would probably rate a good "Columbo" episode on its own. Again, McBain here introduces the question of whether to believe the worst in people (though for Carella, unlike Kling, it is his job to thoroughly eliminate the possibility of murder.) Since the wife is a key suspect, it also opens up the question of marital loyalty (How well do we know the people who share our lives, really?) in a way similar to the Kling subplot.McBain was beginning to carve out some exciting new ground for the 87th Precinct, in terms of the lives of the characters and the city they serve, and the 1980s would see many of the best novels in the series, like "Ice," "Poison," "Tricks," and "Lullaby." If "Heat" isn't quite in their category, it still is

This is the usual excellent mystery from McBain, but the murder almost takes a back seat to Bert Kling stalking his wife when he fears she's cheating on him. To make matters worse, Kling is being stalked by an ex-con bent on revenge. Rather than romanticize Kling, McBain shows him on a slippery slope which finally has him perjuring himself to obtain a search warrant for the suspected lover's home. The murder is resolved by Steve Carella, but the reader finds himself more wrapped up in the continuing tragedy of Bert Kling.

Ed McBain manages to fill the short space of two-hundred pages (exactly) with a normal 87th Precinct corpse, and the mystery that follows, plus two side stories-how Bert Kling is trying to hold on to his model wife, and how an ex-con psycho is out hunting for him. Try this, you won't be disappointed.