Great! McBain is an acknowledged legend in the crime fiction field, so no surprise I guess. But this is my first McBain book and while I've read my share of hard-boiled novels, I'm not a crime fiction reader per se. But I do know enough to tell you that this book is unqiue, as are all the books in the "87th Precinct" series, of which this book is a part. Nocturne doesn't follow a single detective or detective pair in the way traditional detective stories and crime thrillers. Instead, it tracks the way crimes and evidence trails develop over the course of contiguous workdays, with different detectives and teams working towards the same goal. There is something very real feeling about this, as the culture of the precinct, the reality of work schedules, and the different personalities and styles of several different detectives all coalesce into a cohesive crime narrative. I think writing teachers would probably caution young writers about potentially dissipating reader sympathy for your main characters by having too many protagonists, but in McBain's hands, this structure is extremely fun. The crime and its solving take center stage, as opposed to the personality of the crime fighter. It's not Sherlock Holmes' eccentricities and talents that drive this story, but rather the crime itself and our desire to see the way a variegated team of average detectives manage to solve the puzzle. Don't get me wrong, McBain is a master at infusing personality into his characters. As all great characters do, they seem unique while also feeling real. I'm just saying in this solar system, the thing that all the planets revolve around is not the personality of some central star, but rather the crime itself and the way it brings various players into its orbit. In the end, the characters feel real and the narrative is totally compelling, and that's a great credit to McBain's style and this unique contribution to the very crowded, crime fiction genre.
Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes are working the graveyard shift when they catch two squeals: one is the murder of a poor elderly citizen (and her cat), which seems to be a botched robbery, but nothing is missing. The victim turns out to be a once renowned classical pianist, but is complicated when the detectives discover she had withdrawn $125,000 from her bank on the day she was murdered. And, the money is missing. Her estranged granddaughter gets a note to look in a locker, where her guys report there is only $5,000 and a note that this money is to help her career. Steve and Cotton follow a twisted path of the murder weapon to find the killer. At the end of their shift, a murdered prostitute is found in an alley. Eventually, ace detective "Fat Ollie" Weeks links her death to the killing of a pimp and drug dealer. Despite his feeling that the world is a better place without the two, Ollie tracks down the perpetrators to their unusual lair. I liked some of the imagery of Isola in this one.
What do You think about Nocturne (1998)?
I think this was the case of an average book in a below-average series. The story was meant to be shocking but it was more just violent and mean-spirited with lots of people who I did not care about running around like crazy until the case was solved. There were actually two cases but they were related only by the cops who were investigating them. In the end you felt sorry for the killer in one and the others were too drunk to know what they were doing until it was too late. All-in-all a grim and not very entertaining story.
—Jim
I wanted to like this more than I did. Its redeeming feature was the snarky editorializing done by almost all the characters. However, the story did not hang together well enough, and I am always disappointed when I guess who done it before the end...that's a sign of a not-too-smart mystery. And there was a whole 'nother murder in the middle of the first story, which never did connect up....and the suspense involved in a good whodunit just never materialized. If this was really a novel about the 87th Precinct, I would expect to have a better grip on the players in the 87th, and be able to distinguish them from the "eight eight"...but I couldn't...the strongest impressions came in a very violent hooker sex-murder scene, several drug references, and some nice writing depicting a fish market. I'm disappointed...I wanted the story to outweigh the horror, but it doesn't. I'm learning I like courtroom drama better than graphic tales of murder.
—Alcornell
