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87th Precinct

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Ed McBain
Pseudonym of of Evan Hunter
Né Salvatore Lombino
Other pseudonyms include Hunt Collins, Richard Marsten, Curt Cannon, Ezra Hannon, John Abbott, Dean Hudson, Ted Taine, S. A. Lombino, D. A. Addams
(1926-2005)

The boys of the 87th, from the 1961-62  television series.

Long before Barney Miller, long before Hill Street Blues, Homicide, and NYPD Blue, long before Law and Order This and Law and Order That and CSI Whatever and a million other “police procedurals” in various media flooded the world, there was Ed McBain’s 87th PRECINCT series of books and short stories, which featured a rotating cast of big city police detectives dealing with the various crimes that keep them busy.

Nope. Not a private eye series. Not at all.

But the influence of this series upon not just the Shamus Game, but the entire spectrum of crime fiction cannot be ignored or denied —and hence their inclusion here. The attention and detail to actual police work (as opposed to the laissez faire procedural fudging and convenient incompetence that filled up so much of the genre’s past) that most discerning readers now demand, can be laid at McBain’s feet. No longer can actual procedure or forensics be tossed off without a thought merely to advance a plot; tossed away like a used tissue.

McBain didn’t invent the police procedural, of course. Not by a long shot — he followed in the footsteps of folks like Georges Simenon, Lawrence Treat, Hilary Waugh, and radio’s Jack Webb, among others. But McBain set the gold standard.

The series kicked off in 1956 with Cop Hater, although at the time it wasn’t even supposed to be a series. It was just a one-off police procedural, McBain figured. But his editor disagreed, and had McBain rewrite the ending, so that the “hero,” Detective Steve Carella, didn’t die. McBain didn’t even think Carella was the hero.

So what did he know?

But the long-running series soon came to virtually define the genre. The books generally featured the ensemble cast of detectives in a big city police force, and multiple, often overlapping plot lines. Although the books vary in quality, on the whole this was a major series; a classic of American crime fiction that entertained, enlightened and influenced the genre for over five decades (and counting!).

The series has even been called “the greatest sustained literary exploration of New York City in American literature,” but, of course, the biggest joke is that throughout the entire series, New York City isn’t New York City at all. Instead we’re told that the action takes place in Isola. As the disclaimer in every book reads: “The city in these pages is imaginary; the people and places all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.”

Yeah, right.

Don’t believe ’em. Isola is 100 per cent New York City, all right, only it’s spun about ninety degrees, with only the names changed to protect the guilty. Isola is Manhattan, Calm’s Point is Brooklyn, Riverhead is the Bronx, Majesta is Queens and Bethtown is Staten Island.

The only reason McBain didn’t actually set the series in the Big Apple is that he didn’t want to get bogged down in the minutae of the NYPD’s ever-changing rules and procedures.

Besides Carella, the mostly recurring characters are Carella’s long-suffering (and occasionally endangered) deaf-mute wife Teddy; and:

Cop Hater sold well, and before the year was over, two more titles, The Mugger and The Pusher were published, and that was just the beginning. By the time United Artists released the film adaptation of Cop Hater on October 1, 1958, eight novels had already been published. Always prolific, during roughly the same period, the author continued to write short stories focussing on crime, as well as approximately two dozen science fiction stories and four sci-fi novels as S. A. Lombino, Curt Cannon, Evan Hunter, Hunt Collins, Richard Marsten, D. A. Addams, and Ted Taine.

The film Cop Hater was so followed by The Mugger (1956) and The Pusher (1958). They were okay, but definitely B-films.  Meanwhile, the TV series 87th Precinct made its debut in 1961. It featured Robert Lansing as Det. Steve Carella and Gena Rowlands as Teddy. It also featured Norman Fell, Ron Harper and Gregory Walcott. Although well-received by critics (particularly Rowlands’ performance) it only lasted one season. At least two comic books were rushed out by Dell, rushing to cash in.

To their credit, the comics weren’t quickie recycled TV episodes; in fact, they were relatively “adult” for a “good” publisher like Dell. The first was drawn by Bernie Krigstein, who is so well known for his E.C. horror work, and is truly a bizarre visual excursion. The second deals in great detail with drugs, and may be drawn by one of the artists who also did the Michael Shayne books, another short-lived series which Dell decided to take a similar approach to.

Meanwhile, the film adaptations kept coming. It was the fourth adaptation of an 87th Precinct novel, 1959’s King’s Ransom, that really caused a buzz. Directed by legendary Japanese director Akira Kurasawa, Tengoku To Jigoku (known in English as “High and Low”) and starring Toshiro Mifune, this was no B-film, but a big budget tour-de-force, relocated to Tokyo. Arguably the most acclaimed of McBain adaptations, and one of Kurasawa’s best films, it served notice that not only could a great movie be made from the 87th Precinct, but that Isola itself had become transferable around the globe. In the years to come, Isola would become Montreal, Nice, Boston, Tokyo again, and — if you believe McBain’s claims — the unnamed city that television’s long-running Hill Street Blues was set in.

But beyond that, even with Isola still stateside, the books and stories (and various film and television adaptations) kept coming, regular as clockwork. And McBain played around, endlessly improvising like a jazz man, tinkering with the formula. He killed off characters, he brought in new ones, tackled social and cultural issues, delved into comedy (Fuzz), politics (Hail to the Chief), the supernatural (Ghosts). By the time the final entry in the series, Fiddlers,  came out in 2005, it was the 54th novel in the series; an astounding run that lasted almost fifty years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Most folks know Ed McBain is, of course, the pseudonym of Evan Hunter. But that’s also a pseudonym, it turns out. He was born Salvatore Lombino in 1926. Besides McBain, he has also written under the pseudonyms Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, Richard Marsten, and John Abbott. Hunter’s first book, The Blackboard Jungle, (1954), became the basis for the 50’s film classic of the same name. As McBain, he also wrote a series featuring Florida attorney and P.I. wannabe Matthew Hope. In fact, Steve Carella and other members of the 87th play a pivotal part in the final Hope novel, The Last Best Hope. He’s created some memorable eyes, too, including Ben Smoke, Matt Cordell/Curt Cannon and Dudley Sledge. McBain has won numerous awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the CWA’s Diamond Dagger Award.

   

RUMOUR

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES AND NOVELLAS

COLLECTIONS

FILMS

  

  • COP HATER | Buy this DVD | Watch it now!
    (1958, Barbizon/United Artists)
    75 minutes
    Black & White
    Based on the novel by Ed McBain
    Screenplay by Henry Kane
    Directed by William Berke
    Produced by William A. Berke
    Associate producer: Lee Gordon
    Original music by Albert Glasser
    Actually set in Manhattan
    Starring Robert Loggia as DETECTIVE STEVE CARELLI
    Also starring Gerald S. O’Loughlin, Shirley Ballard, Russell Hardie, Hal Riddle, William Neff, Gene Miller, Vincent Gardenia, Jerry Orbach
    Loggia’s first appearance as “Carelli, with Jerry “Law and Order” Orbach making his debut as gang leader, “Mumzer.”
  • THE MUGGER | Buy this DVD | Watch it now!
    (1958, Barbizon/United Artists)
    74 minutes
    Black & White
    Based on the novel by Ed McBain
    Screenplay by Henry Kane
    Directed by William Berke
    Produced by William A. Berke
    Associate producer: Lee Gordon
    Original music by Albert Glasser
    Actually set in Manhattan
    Starring Kent Smith, Nan Martin, James Franciscus, Stefan Schnabel, Dick O’Neill, John Alexander, Arthur Storch, Bert Thorn, Albert Dannibal, Dolores Sutton, Beah Richards, George Maharis, Michael Conrad
  • THE PUSHER
    (1960, Milford/Carlyle Productions)
    Black & White
    Based on the 87th Precinct novel by Ed McBain
    Screenplay by Harold Robbins
    Directed by Gene Milford
    Produced by Sidney Katz, Gene Milford
    Starring Robert Lansing as CarelliKathy Carlyle, Felice Orlandi, Douglas Rodgers, Sloan Simpson, Sara Amman, Jim Boles, John Astin
  • TENGOKU TO JIGOKU | Buy this DVD | Buy the Blu-Ray | Watch it now!
    (English title: High and Low; aka “Heaven and Hell,” “The Ransom”)
    (1963)
    Based on the novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain
    Written by Kira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisaita & Ryūzō Kikushim
    Directed by Akira Kurasawa
    Set in Tokyo
    Starring Toshiro Mifune
    Mifune plays a wealthy business executive whose chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by a gang of criminals who mistake the boy for Mifune’s kid. Now he has to decide whether to pay the ransom for somebody else’s child, or use the dough to close a critical business deal. The most acclaimed of all McBain adaptations.
  • SANS MOBILE APPARENT | Buy this DVD 
    (aka “Senza movente,” “Without Apparent Motive”)
    (1972, Cinétel/Euro International Film/Président Films)
    100 minutes
    Based on the novel “Ten Plus One” by Ed McBain
    Screenplay by Philippe Labro, Jacques Lanzmann
    Directed by Philippe Labro
    Produced by Jacques-Eric Strauss
    Original Music by Ennio Morricone
    Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant as Stéphane Carella
    Also starring Dominique Sanda, Sacha Distel, Carla Gravina, Paul Crauchet, Laura Antonelli, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Stéphane Audran, Gilles Ségal, Pierre Dominique, Erich Segal, Jean-Jacques Delbo, André Falcon
    French/Italian co-production about an investigation into a string of murders comitted in Nice. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the lead detective “Stéphane Carella.”
  • FUZZ | Buy this DVD  | Buy the Blu-Ray
    (1972, United Artists)
    92 minutes
    Screenplay by Evan Hunter
    Based on the novel by Ed McBain
    Directed by Richard A. Colla
    Produced by Jack Farren
    Starring Burt Reynolds, Jack Weston, Tom Skerritt, Yul Brynner, Raquel Welch, Peter Bonerz, Steve Ihnat, James McEachin, Bert Remsen
  • LES LIENS DU SANG | Buy this DVD
    (aka “Blood Relatives”)
    (1978, Cinevideo-Filmel/Classic Film Industries)
    100 minutes
    Based on the 87th Precinct novel, Blood Relatives, by Ed McBain
    Screenplay by Sydney Banks, Claude Chabrol
    Directed by Claude Chabrol
    Produced by Denis Héroux, Eugène Lépicier
    Associate producer: Claude Léger
    Executive producers: Michael Klinger, Julian Melzack
    Set in Montréal
    Starring Donald Sutherland as Carella
    Also starring Aude Landry, Lisa Langlois, Laurent Malet, Stéphane Audran, Walter Massey, Micheline Lanctôt, Donald Pleasence, David Hemmings, Ian Ireland, Guy Hoffman, Marguerite Lemir, Gregory Giannis, Jan Chamberlain
    Canadian/French production with Donald Sutherland as Carella. Isola becomes Montreal, where it was filmed. Akira Kurosawa (who directed  High and Low, proclaimed this film “the best of all Ed McBain adaptations”.
  • KÔFUKU
    (aka “Lonely Heart “)
    (1981)
    105 minutes
    Based on the 87th Precinct novel Lady, Lady, I Did It by Ed McBain
    Screenplay by Shinya Hidaka
    Directed by Kon Ichikawa
    Cinematography Kiyoshi Hasegawa
    Produced by Hitoshi Ogura, Toshio Sakamoto
    Starring Yutaka Mizutani, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Rie Nakahara
  • HIGHEST 2 LOWEST
    (2025, AppleTV+/A24)
    Based on the novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain
    and the 1963 film High and Low by Kira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Eijiro Hisaita & Ryūzō
    Screenplay by Alan Fox
    Directed by Spike Lee
    Starring Denzel Washington
    Also starring Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice, ASAP Rocky, Ilfenesh Hadera, Kevin D. Benton, José Báez, Parade Gore, Evyn George, Holden Goodman, Manny Joseph

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HUH?

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Report submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Comic info contributed by Don McGregor. Web links provided by Bluefox808, who frequently finds himself in an Isola state of mind…

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