NOCTURNE

by Ed McBain ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1997

Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes have pulled the night shift, so they're on call when long-retired concert pianist Svetlana Dyalovich gets drilled twice inside her apartment door. An interrupted burglary? Then why did the burglar also shoot her cat--and how did he know that Mme. Dyalovich had just drawn her life's savings from her bank earlier that day? While the boys of the 87th precinct are puzzling over these questions--and the pianist's granddaughter, lounge singer Priscilla Stetson, is trying to track down the legacy her grandmother promised her--their neighbors over at the 88th have their own case: a horribly mutilated hooker, her slashed pimp, and a drowned crack dealer, all killed after a wild debauch by three cherubic prep-school kids. Longtime fans of this venerable series (Romance, 1995, etc.), knowing better than to assume the cases will be connected--they crisscross at several places but never exactly shake hands--will feel luxuriously at home in fictional Isola, where taxi drivers fall prey to the temptations of the flesh, voodoo priestesses stand on their civil rights, cockfighters invoke the example of the Founding Fathers, and leaving your car at a gas station to be serviced is a bigger mistake than you can imagine. McBain seems to be saving his tightest plotting these days for his Matthew Hope series. But if shaggy storytelling doesn't bother you (here the whole 87th gets upstaged by the 88th), his 47th tour of Isola is as exuberant as his best.

Pub Date: May 15, 1997

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Warner

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997

Categories: FICTION