Nocturne (Hardcover)

Ed McBain's novels of crime and detection have made him the most admired and most imitated popular novelist of our time. The creator of the classic series of cops at work The 87th Precinct novels (Mr. McBain continues to explore the turf that, in the words of the New York Times Book Review, "he owns.") In his new novel, Ed McBain returns to the 87th, where with passion, razor-sharp literary skill, and characters marked by their originality and humanity, he tells a story as complex as a fugue and as elegant as a... Nocturne

Once she had filled the concert halls of Europe with beautiful music. Once her name had been in headlines, her performances heralded in newspapers around the world. Now she lay dead on the cold floor of a cold apartment on the coldest night of the year: a little old woman with a shattered bottle of cheap liquor by her body and two fatal gunshot wounds to her chest. Svetlana Dyalovich, found dead at midnight, was one more homicide in one more endless night in the city.

For detectives Carella and Hawes, no murder is ever routine, and while this one looks at first like a robbery, the evidence doesn't add up. And when Carella and Hawes interview Svetlana's hard-edged, lounge-singing granddaughter -- a woman accompanied by two armed bodyguards -- they start looking for a missing envelope full of money and for a killer who had more than robbery on his mind.

Like a concert grand under the hand of a virtuoso, Nocturne sounds a multitude of moods and notes -- from nightclubs to cockfights, from fish markets to crack deals, as witnesses are interviewed, a stolen gun is traced, and a police lab churns out microscopic evidence that sends the cops back out to the streets. And while the cops of the 87th use their skill and method, a melody of tragedy and chance unfolds. For in Nocturne only some victims are innocent, only some of the victimizers are criminals, and the final chord will resound long after the tale is told.

PRAISE FOR ED MCBAIN AND THE 87th PRECINCT SERIES

"The author delivers the goods: wired action scenes, dialogue that breathes, characters with heart and characters who eat those hearts, and glints of unforgiving humor....Ed McBain owns this turf."
-New York Times Book Review

"Amazing...McBain's telegraphic style gives his story a hard, reportorial surface. Characters are caught in a few memorable strokes; things happen economically. What is surprising in such terse circumstances is how much you have felt, or have been led to understand that the characters were feeling."
-Los Angeles Times

"McBain redefines the American police novel...He can stop you dead in your tracks with a line of dialogue."
-Cleveland Plain Dealer