Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

Name: Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
Rating: 3.91 (2587 reviews)
Author: Ed McBain

87th Precinct • Book 11

by Ed McBain

3.91 Goodreads

(2.6K ratings)

Published 1960 Mystery

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Why You'll Love This

A killer is leaving severed hands around the city — no fingerprints, no bodies, no names — and McBain turns that impossible premise into a masterclass in procedural tension.

Great if you want: gritty police procedurals with ensemble casts and real investigative grit
The experience: brisk and unsettling — dark subject matter, but propulsive and lean
The writing: McBain interweaves multiple threads with quiet precision — no wasted scenes
Skip if: you prefer a lone detective hero over a squad-room ensemble

About This Book

When severed hands start turning up across the city — fingertips carefully removed, victims impossible to identify — the detectives of the 87th Precinct face a case built almost entirely on absence. No bodies, no names, no clear motive. Ed McBain takes that void and makes it the engine of the story, building genuine dread not from gore but from the slow, grinding frustration of investigators working with almost nothing. The emotional stakes are quieter than the premise suggests, and that restraint makes them hit harder.

What McBain does brilliantly here, as throughout the 87th Precinct series, is balance procedural rigor with sharp, unsentimental character work. The precinct house feels lived-in, the dialogue crackles without showing off, and the pacing never lets the bureaucratic texture of real police work feel like a chore. This is crime fiction that trusts the process — the dead ends, the paperwork, the incremental hunches — to be as gripping as any confrontation. Readers who appreciate craft over spectacle will find McBain at his most confident and controlled.