Like Love
87th Precinct • Book 16
by Ed McBain, Dick Hill
Why You'll Love This
Three deaths dressed up as accidents — and the detectives who refuse to believe in coincidence.
- Great if you want: classic procedural grit with a tight, no-fuss cast
- The experience: brisk and punchy — built for readers who hate filler
- The writing: McBain layers street-level realism with dry, unsentimental wit
- Skip if: you expect deep character arcs — plot drives everything here
About This Book
In the 87th Precinct, spring arrives with a body count. A young woman falls from a window, a salesman is blown apart, and two figures are found dead together in what looks like a lovers' pact — but detectives Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes aren't buying any of it. Ed McBain drops his squad room veterans into a season that's supposed to mean renewal and instead delivers violence dressed up as coincidence, forcing them to untangle what people do to each other when desire, desperation, and deception all converge at once.
What makes McBain consistently rewarding at this point in the 87th Precinct series is his refusal to let the procedural mechanics crowd out the human texture. The precinct breathes like a real place, and the detectives feel like men worn down by exactly the right amount of the job. Like Love is lean and economical — under two hundred pages that don't waste a single one — and it balances dark material with a quietly affecting emotional undercurrent, particularly around Hawes, whose personal life gives the story unexpected warmth without softening its edges.
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