Hark! The 87th Precinct Project

A wooden bookcase stuffed full of Ed McBain and Lawrence Block books.

Happy #worldbooksday 2026 everyone. Hope you’ve dressed up your kids as Roger Havilland.

#edmcbain #87thPrecinct

If you need anything ordered to the UK, let me know and I can then ship it on to you (but a cursory look suggests it'd be just as hard to get a copy to come here as it would Germany).

Ooh. 'Bain Blurb

‘The Detectives’ Peter Michaels.

My latest overdue library book

War Stories Magazine showing Men in a machine gun trench and advertising the stories Big Push and The Number Of The Ship Was 13. The image is based on the story Hell at 8 O'Clock.

I wish I could find a digital copy of some of the war stories #EvanHunter wrote. In this issue of this particular magazine, EH has a 'feature-length novel' under his own name *and* a 'feature-length novel' under the name of Hunt Collins as well.

(I bought a Patricia Highsmith)

Ed McBain Ghosts book on a trestle tab at a secondhand book sale

I mean it doesn’t surprise me that the only McBain on the secondhand book stall is Ghosts.

Georges Simenon Maigret’s Little Joke - An Arrow Book 2’6. Cover shows a man in a suit and hat reading a paper in a French street. A dead woman is inset.

Haven’t gone hunting for that yet, but I did find that someone had left a well-loved copy of a Maigret novel on the staff-room bookcase at work. And now it will live with me.

The Hunter Where it all begins: The first book in the action-packed classic crime series that's the basis for the forthcoming film Play Dirty! Richard Stark's Parker novels are the hardest of hard-boiled, classi...

Because I can tell y’all need some serious distraction:

I’ve dropped the ebook price for the first of Richard Stark’s Parker novels, The Hunter, to $2.99. Buy it direct below, or from any major ebook retailer.

You won’t regret it.

To reveal a tidbit of my #EdMcBain research - Evan Hunter sometimes performed in amateur dramatics productions. As part of the Pound Ridge Players, he appeared as Charlie The Burglar in their adaptation of Kingsley's Detective Story.

(Not that I'm suggesting this led to his invention of the #87thPrecinct, because this adaptation was in 1957 when at least three books in the series were already available. It's possible that he selected the play for the group, becoming their chairman the following year.)

To reveal a tidbit of my #EdMcBain research - Evan Hunter sometimes performed in amateur dramatics productions. As part of the Pound Ridge Players, he appeared as Charlie The Burglar in their adaptation of Kingsley's Detective Story.

I'm not one for saying anything about 'worst' books, but the Simenon I've been most disappointed by was Three Bedrooms In Manhattan, which left me cold. I'd not heard of The Snow Was Black. Sounds fascinating!

There are three of them, and Alleline… god, I never get tired of Tinker, Tailor. What performances.

I can guarantee you that we won't be doing the Matthew Hope series!

But we will be doing something soon, so we'll be back to keep people company on their various commutes and travels.

Don't think about it! It's too much, man, too much.

I'm on the lookout for a copy of the SOUTH BANK SHOW dated 6th May 1984 (s7e17) about ED MCBAIN.

I've not been able to find it anywhere - the archive at Leeds Uni has a non-digitised film copy, so that doesn't help. There's a 3 min clip on Youtube that the director shared.

Any help appreciated!

They both look very groovy.

I think I'm due a re-read. It's been a while and I can remember next to nothing about it!

Cover of October 1920's Woman's World. A young couple are together behind the red autumn leaves of a tree. 10c a copy.

Do you think someone has torn off the male character on the front for either love or hate reasons?! (He is wearing a fantastic scarf!)

Ray gives a special mention to McBain's stand-alone novel BIG MAN ('His ticket to success was a gun!'), which originally appeared as a Richard Marsten novel in '59.

Later reissues credit McBain, with Marsten being retired after this book (save for a reprint of an old story in Manhunt in the '60s.)

One of the best!

COMPUTER: ENHANCE

from the story Million Dollar, Maybe 1953, Evan Hunter writes It was the cover of the old Prince. It showed a man with a bare chest, wrestling with an equally nude alligator.

A new favourite Evan Hunter sentence... "equally nude alligator" sounds like one of our podcast episode titles.

Thanks! I’m sure there’ll be more revisions, but not too many more now!

Online Flipbook Created with the Heyzine flipbook maker

A couple of minor updates to the Evan Hunter / Ed McBain collectors guide (online flipbook).

(Because a short story only in UK version of a collection wasn't in my records!)

Feel free to share this link. #books #booksky heyzine.com/flip-book/cb...

Lots of open colour space. Very striking.

Ed McBain's Crime Squad collection. Red paperback. Two men fighting on the cover.

Ed McBain's Homicide Department collection. Blue paperback. A dead women with her shirt ripped open on the cover.

Ed McBain's Ticket To Death collection. Red paperback. In the shape of a gun we see a man holding a woman and a gun.

Ed McBain's Downpour collection. Light blue paperback. A nude corpse covered with a sheet is being inspected by presumably a detective.

And we also have some more from #EdMcBain...

These four collections from the #NewEnglishLibrary were McBain edited collections of #crimefiction stories.

Each book has one McBain story, then a selection from the likes of Craig Rice, Ellery Queen, Fletcher Flora, Robert Bloch and more.

#booksky

Ed McBain's Crime Squad collection. Red paperback. Two men fighting on the cover.

Ed McBain's Homicide Department collection. Blue paperback. A dead women with her shirt ripped open on the cover.

Ed McBain's Ticket To Death collection. Red paperback. In the shape of a gun we see a man holding a woman and a gun.

Ed McBain's Downpour collection. Light blue paperback. A nude corpse covered with a sheet is being inspected by presumably a detective.

And we also have some more from #EdMcBain...

These four collections from the #NewEnglishLibrary were McBain edited collections of #crimefiction stories.

Each book has one McBain story, then a selection from the likes of Craig Rice, Ellery Queen, Fletcher Flora, Robert Bloch and more.

#booksky

Paperback edition of Evan Hunter's Happy New Year, Herbie. Naked female legs lie in party streamers by an empty bottle.

Hardback book, The Chisholms A Novel Of The Journey West by Evan Hunter. The cover is a wagon travelling through a cornfield

New additions to the #EvanHunter / #EdMcBain bookcase.

Today we have 1976's pioneer family tale The Chisholms (later to be the basis for the CBS series of the same name, scripted by Hunter)

and

a UK paperback edition of 1963 short story collection, Happy New Year, Herbie.

#books #booksky