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A review by soris
Cop Hater by Ed McBain
2.0
Stephen King brought me here, when he mentioned in one of the Bill Hodges books that Bill reads only two detective story authors: Michael Connelly and Ed McBain. I love Connelly's Bosch books, so I figured I'd give Ed McBain a shot as well.
I'm not going to judge the man's entire extensive catalogue based on the first book of the series, so I'll just say that this particular book was kind of rough. It's in that awkward spot of taking place in the late 1950s, which is not quite old enough to feel quaint and historical like the Sherlock Holmes stories, and instead just feels outdated. As advertised, all the procedural stuff feels very accurate to how it was in the 1950s, so even though the methods in the books feel quite outdated, my problem isn't with them. Sadly, the book's views on women are equally outdated, as they feel like they're in the book only to be effectively furniture, or to vex the main characters -- all men -- who can't understand why they're so mean or cruel or inscrutable in their mysterious femininity.
To compound matters, the actual mystery itself isn't terribly entertaining. Some lunatic seems to be gunning down cops in the streets, and the detectives of the 87th are floundering about as they try to solve the cases. Now, this is probably quite realistic, but it doesn't make for a terribly entertaining crime story when the cops are clueless for 90% of the book and then end up solving the case through sheer dumb luck. Again, based on stuff in factual books like Homicide, this feels like it probably happens quite often to detectives, so points to McBain for keeping it real, but in this book it just feels awkward and out of nowhere. Like McBain had a hard page limit and suddenly realized he was 5 pages away from hitting it and had to wrap things up immediately.
Still, problematic areas aside, I am a sucker for accurate procedural stuff and have been trying to find more of the good stuff for a while now, so I guess I'll give McBain a second chance and see if this was just the awkward first effort, or if the reputation these books have is overblown.
I'm not going to judge the man's entire extensive catalogue based on the first book of the series, so I'll just say that this particular book was kind of rough. It's in that awkward spot of taking place in the late 1950s, which is not quite old enough to feel quaint and historical like the Sherlock Holmes stories, and instead just feels outdated. As advertised, all the procedural stuff feels very accurate to how it was in the 1950s, so even though the methods in the books feel quite outdated, my problem isn't with them. Sadly, the book's views on women are equally outdated, as they feel like they're in the book only to be effectively furniture, or to vex the main characters -- all men -- who can't understand why they're so mean or cruel or inscrutable in their mysterious femininity.
To compound matters, the actual mystery itself isn't terribly entertaining. Some lunatic seems to be gunning down cops in the streets, and the detectives of the 87th are floundering about as they try to solve the cases. Now, this is probably quite realistic, but it doesn't make for a terribly entertaining crime story when the cops are clueless for 90% of the book and then end up solving the case through sheer dumb luck. Again, based on stuff in factual books like Homicide, this feels like it probably happens quite often to detectives, so points to McBain for keeping it real, but in this book it just feels awkward and out of nowhere. Like McBain had a hard page limit and suddenly realized he was 5 pages away from hitting it and had to wrap things up immediately.
Still, problematic areas aside, I am a sucker for accurate procedural stuff and have been trying to find more of the good stuff for a while now, so I guess I'll give McBain a second chance and see if this was just the awkward first effort, or if the reputation these books have is overblown.