Ed McBain
Cop Hater
1956, Signet
The heat wave that takes over the city here is a primitive metaphor for the pressure that the 87th Precinct feels, from the press, from the public and from themselves, to crack the case of a shooter who’s popping off plainclothes police detectives brazenly in the streets.
That’s not a putdown.
This is a primitive book and it doesn’t ask for you to think of it as anything but that. Its meat is the investigation procedural, an almost journalistic account of how fingerprints are read and how two strands of hair and a blood pattern on a sidewalk can reveal ten facts about an escaped perpetrator. Its characters are mere side items. Guys with guns and women with secrets.
Caveman author Ed McBain beats us silly with his steamy atmosphere.
Open up the book randomly:
“The fans did not help the heat at all. The fans circulated the suffocating breath of the city, and the men sucked in the breath and typed up their reports in triplicate, and checked their worksheets, and dreamt of Summers in the White Mountains, or Summers in Atlantic City with the ocean slapping their faces.” (pg. 55)
“Bush never wore undershirts. He did not believe in the theory of sweat absorption. An undershirt, he held, was simply an additional piece of wearing apparel, and in this weather the idea was to get as close to the nude as possible.” (pg. 71)
“The cool relief the rain had brought lasted no more than ten minutes. At the end of that time, the streets were baking again, and the citizens were swearing and mumbling and sweating. Nobody likes practical jokes. Even when God is playing them.” (pg. 97)
“The three funerals followed upon each other’s heels with remarkable rapidity. The heat did not help the classical ceremonies of death. The mourners followed the caskets and sweated.” (pg. 115)
Then, there’s the paragraph on page 127 in which McBain breaks down the exact elemental make-up of human sweat, down to the “urea, albumin and formic, butryic and acetic acids”.
No doubt about it, it’s hot as fuck. And this was 1956, when a cop’s salary didn’t always cover air-conditioning, I guess, so everyone nips at the cool air from small fans and iceboxes.
I read this in two days in a sweaty Texas June. Probably should have saved it for a January ice storm, to help warm up.