Shotgun

Name: Shotgun
Rating: 3.88 (1331 reviews)
Author: Ed McBain

87th Precinct • Book 23

by Ed McBain

3.88 Goodreads

(1.3K ratings)

188 pages Published 1969 Mystery

Get the Book →

Kindle, paperback, or hardcover · Prefer listening? Try the audiobook →

Why You'll Love This

A psychopath with a type, a precinct under pressure, and McBain's 23rd proof that procedural fiction doesn't need flash to cut deep.

Great if you want: gritty, no-nonsense police work with real human stakes
The experience: lean and propulsive — 188 pages that don't waste a single one
The writing: McBain keeps prose cold and precise, letting tension do the work
Skip if: you expect deep character arcs — the ensemble stays deliberately spare

About This Book

A psychopath with a type — wealthy, attractive, and targeted — is moving through the city, and the detectives of the 87th Precinct are racing to stop him before another woman dies. "Shotgun" keeps the pressure constant, placing Steve Carella and his colleagues in that familiar exhausting grind where every lead costs time they don't have. McBain never lets the stakes feel abstract; the threat is specific, the victims are real, and the urgency cuts through every scene.

What distinguishes this entry in the long-running 87th Precinct series is how efficiently McBain works within a tight page count. At under 200 pages, nothing is wasted — the prose is lean without feeling stripped, the procedural detail grounds the story without slowing it, and the ensemble dynamic gives the investigation texture that a single-detective narrative rarely achieves. McBain understood that police work is collaborative and often unglamorous, and that authenticity is more gripping than spectacle. Readers who appreciate crime fiction that respects their intelligence will find this a satisfying, sharply constructed entry in one of genre fiction's most durable series.