LONG TIME NO SEE

One of the cops was Italian, but he didn't wear a dirty raincoat. . . the other cop was bald, but he didn't suck lollipops. . . ."" Ed McBain is pushing real, unadorned police blotters, and proud of it, and should be--especially with this latest. The 87th Precinct (Detectives Carella and Meyer) have two blind-people bodies to make sense out of--husband and wife, black and white, throats slit a day apart. The answer, which sneaks up through a Vietnam past, psychiatric records, and ghetto interviews, may be less than a stunning turnaround, but getting there is a steady, pulsing loop: McBain again paces the jog-trot of police work into a mesmerizing, affecting drama where nothing seems staged for effect.