Nocturne

April 28, 1997
87th Precinct stalwarts Carella and Hawes, appearing in the 48th entry in this still vibrant series, catch the case of Svetlana Dyalovich Helder, an elderly Russian woman shot to death at her modest apartment. In her youth an acclaimed pianist who played the great concert halls of America and Europe, Svetlana, at the time of her death, lived on welfare, drank too much and listened to old 78 rpm recordings of her glory days. The murder motive looks like burglary until Carella and Hawes learn that Svetlana had withdrawn $125,000 from her bank hours earlier. A neighbor reports having seen a tall blond man at Svetlana's door shortly before the murder. After the shooting, a blond man delivered a package to the hotel where Svetlana's granddaughter, Priscilla, stayed. Meantime, over in the 88th, "Fat Ollie" Weeks investigates the deaths of a pimp and a drug dealer. That leads to a sexually mutilated hooker, also killed the night before, and a bookie who remembers a tall, blond bettor looking for a gun. As the cases converge, McBain serves up his usual mix of urban insights, terrible jokes, sex, violence and dialogue that crackles from every page. Followers of this 40-year-old series will be satisfied, as always, and new fans will be captured by this latest example of McBain's enduring virtuosity.

January 1, 1997
A veteran of the venerable 87th investigates the death of a concert pianist.

April 15, 1997
Fans of McBain's 87th Precinct series will find this forty-eighth installment as taut and intricate as its predecessors. But there are also some surprises: this time around, McBain displays a rather impish sense of whimsy. Investigating the murder of a once-famous concert pianist, Detectives Carella and Hawes encounter an odd clue that puts them in mind of a certain Alfred Hitchcock movie. Those readers who know McBain's film credits will enjoy the running in-joke (no one can remember who wrote the movie); others may be confused. On the other hand, another case involves the brutal murder of a prostitute, and McBain describes her last moments in graphic sexual language that may shock some readers. The 87th Precinct novels have never been pretty, but this one is more explicit than most. As always, the appeal of the novel is in its small details, and in the way McBain constructs a mystery that is at once baffling and entirely rational. An excellent (though, in some ways, quite different) addition to the series. ((Reviewed April 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)