Forgotten Book Friday: Killer’s Wedge and ’til Death By Ed McBain

Ed McBain tries something with his wrap up to the Killer cycle.  He gives Steve Carella a locked room mystery.  Of course, we don’t know that until about a fourth of the way through the book.  Because Virginia Dodge is holding the 87th Precinct hostage.  All we know about Carella is that his wife, Teddy, is pregnant.  And Virginia Dodge wants to kill Carella.

Seems Carella sent her husband up a while back, and Mr. Dodge died in prison.  Virginia’s warped sense of justice demands she shoot Carella.  She shows up at the 87th with a gun and a bottle of what she claims is nitro.  Meanwhile, Carella’s studying what should be a slamdunk suicide only to find it not adding up.  Old Man Scott appears to have hung himself and left $750,000 to his sons, along with Scott Industries.  The setup looks legit.  Scott tied one end of the rope to a door knob and hung himself so the door remained locked.  It’s the little details, like the weight of the body keeping the door locked and three strong sons unable to open it, that bug Carella.

Back at the station, Mrs. Dodge has a gun pointed at a bottle of nitro and is effectively running the 87th Precinct, much to the chagrin of Lt. Byrnes.  Byrnes tries dropping hints to the desk sergeant, who is unaware of the situation.  Meyer Meyer, he of the practical joking father who named him, tosses a hastily typed note out the window in triplicate.  All these efforts fail, as do Cotton Hawes’ attempts to sneak up on Virginia.  His final plan involves convincing himself the bottle is water.  Is it?

It’s Carella who ultimately finds out.

How’s that for a useless spoiler.

McBain follows this up with Til Death, where Carella’s little sister gets married.  Only someone wants to kill the groom.  Carella calls in 87th regulars Bert Kling and Cotton Hawes (who surprisingly has a steady girlfriend he picked up in Lady Killer) on their day off to play bodyguard.  It becomes apparent there are two killers gunning for Tommy Giordano, Carella’s soon-to-be-brother-in-law.  One is a Korean War vet who blames Tommy for the death of his buddy.  It’s Meyer Meyer and hardluck Detective Bob O’Brien who end up chasing him down.  Carella has a near-death experience with a tampered limousine that makes him suspect the best man (who ironically tells the groom he needs to write him out of his will now that he’s a married man – Never give a cop your motive, even if you don’t have one).  Subsequent incidents, however, including a murder in the woods near the house, have Carella stalking Ben Darcy, the naive, monumentally stupid neighbor boy still carrying a torch for Carella’s sister Angela.

Both novels are products of their time.  Cell phones are glaringly absent, and typewriters are glaringly present in both books.  As with previous 87th Precinct novels, police procedure is pre-Miranda.

Still, McBain handles his ensemble cast deftly, giving virtually every 87th regular a larger role.  Cotton Hawes days as the series action hero are far from over, but his womanizing days are in decline.  And Meyer Meyer comes into his own as the 87th’s designated comic relief.