Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here!

Name: Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here!
Rating: 3.93 (2172 reviews)
Author: Ed McBain, Dick Hill

87th Precinct • Book 25

by Ed McBain, Dick Hill

3.93 Goodreads

(2.2K ratings)

224 pages Published 1968 Mystery

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Why You'll Love This

McBain runs seven separate crimes through one precinct in a single day — and somehow makes them all feel urgent.

Great if you want: procedural realism with a rotating cast of street-level cases
The experience: fast and fragmented — a mosaic that snaps together by the end
The writing: McBain weaves multiple storylines with crisp, unsentimental prose
Skip if: you prefer one central mystery over interlocking episodic plots

About This Book

One precinct. One city. One relentless twenty-four hours. In this installment of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series, the city refuses to pause long enough for anyone to catch their breath — a murdered dancer, a firebombed church, armed robbers in Halloween masks, and a dozen other crises pile up across a single day and night. McBain isn't interested in tidying everything into a neat single-plot thriller; he's after something truer and more unsettling — the grinding, overlapping reality of urban police work, where the serious and the absurd arrive at the same door simultaneously. Underneath all the noise, a quiet threat builds toward something personal and dangerous.

What makes reading McBain so rewarding is his structural confidence. He weaves multiple storylines without losing tension or coherence, shifting between detectives and cases the way a seasoned cop shifts focus — economically, without sentimentality. His dialogue crackles with authenticity, his pacing never wastes a scene, and his refusal to glamorize the precinct gives every small moment unexpected weight. After twenty-five books, he still makes the 87th feel lived-in rather than formulaic, and that's no small thing.