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.