Jigsaw (87th Precinct) [Paperback]

Another outstanding entry in the 87th Precinct police procedurals. This one will keep you up all night.

"Jigsaw" is a solid, tightly-wound suspense yarn in the 87th Precinct series that presents an intriguing mystery and unravels it in slow, clever degrees. It also showcases Ed McBain in somewhat lunkish form as he presents the new realities of his fictional burg of Isola at the time of the book's publication in 1970.

It starts with a call to an apartment building. Two men lie dead, each having caused the death of the other. In one stiff's clenched hand is an oddly cut piece of a photograph. Later in the squadroom, an insurance investigator shares the story of a holdup gang who robbed a bank six years ago and, before being killed in a shootout with police, cut up a photograph showing where the haul was secreted. Each gave a piece to a trusted friend or family member known only to him. Now someone wants to put the pieces together, and piece holders are starting to die.

Why did the robbers create such an offbeat plan? McBain sums it up as "the Game Aspect", a form of scheming as endemic to the criminal mind as crime itself. Or maybe McBain alter ego Evan Hunter read a few pirate stories in his youth. Either way, it's enjoyably rendered, especially as we see the puzzle pieces come together in the form of real photographic images printed on the page.

McBain puts Detective Arthur Brown at the forefront of this case. Brown is best-described as the black guy at the 87th Precinct, though Brown himself doesn't like being called that. He has a problem with racial nomenclature. So does McBain, who calls Brown a lot of things through the mouths of various characters and in his own narration that come off offensively today. McBain makes clear Brown's skin color is no big deal, yet it's the only thing about the guy McBain seemed to find interesting, at least in this installment of the series. The result is as frustrating as it is offputting.

A harsher than normal tone predominates here, especially strange since the one case before the 87th Precinct detectives is fairly tame. At one point, the reader is treated to an extended melisma of wanton rape and murder having nothing to do with the main plot. Some attention is also paid to the homosexual community of Isola, with McBain using words I'm sure he regretted a decade or two later. McBain enjoys the chance to be more explicit in his narratives than he could be in the 1960s or 1950s, but like a kid with a new toy, he had yet to figure out how to get the best use from it.

There are good things, too, as there almost always are in McBain books. I really enjoyed "Jigsaw's" stock of supporting players. McBain always did good characters and we get three splendid ones here, beginning with the insurance investigator, Irving Krutch, who flashes an alligator smile and a tendency to refer to himself in the third person. "It helps me to be objective," he explains. Also memorable: a faded prostitute named Dorothea who holds a piece of the puzzle she barely remembers, and a thug named Weinberg who forms an uneasy alliance with Brown while the latter is working undercover.

I enjoyed "Jigsaw" enough to read it in one day, and it's valuable especially to McBain fans like me who enjoy plotting the evolution of the series. But it's a few pieces short of being one of McBain's more memorable stories.

A man is found dead with a piece of a picture in his hand. This piece is part of a puzzle that shows where money from a robbery, of seven years ago, is located. The piece turns out to be one of eight pieces held by different people. There is also a list of names that have been torn into two pieces. People that hold the pieces are turning up dead. Arthur Brown and Steve Carella try to solve the mystery. They are assisted by Myer Myer and Cotton Hawes. A former insurance investigator is involved. Brown gets beaten up but through it all the 87th comes through. The book is a little slow moving at times, not hardly as good as most of the other McBain book I have read. It will still hold your attention and is well worth the read.