The Mugger

Name: The Mugger
Rating: 3.89 (5007 reviews)
Author: Ed McBain

87th Precinct • Book 2

by Ed McBain

3.89 Goodreads

(5.0K ratings)

160 pages Published 1956 Mystery

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Why You'll Love This

A mugger who bows and says 'Clifford thanks you, madam' after every attack is either brilliant, unhinged, or both — and the 87th Precinct has to figure out which before he kills again.

Great if you want: classic procedural crime fiction with sharp ensemble detective work
The experience: lean and fast — a tight crime read you finish in one sitting
The writing: McBain builds atmosphere through clipped dialogue and precinct-level grit
Skip if: you expect complex psychological depth over plot momentum

About This Book

A mugger who bows to his victims and leaves a calling card—his name, delivered with mock courtesy—sounds almost theatrical until the women start ending up in the hospital, and then in the morgue. In the 87th Precinct's second outing, Ed McBain plants a killer in the urban dark and watches his detectives scramble to find a man hiding behind a bizarre signature. Young patrolman Bert Kling takes the case personally when the victims stop being strangers, and that personal investment gives the story a tension that never quite lets up—the kind that comes not from spectacle but from watching someone walk too close to the edge.

What McBain does here, still early in the series, is build a precinct that feels genuinely lived-in—cops with bad coffee and worse hours, a city that doesn't stop for anyone's grief. The prose is lean and unsentimental, cutting between procedure and character with the confidence of a writer who already knows exactly what he's doing. At 160 pages, nothing is wasted. McBain understood that compression is its own kind of pressure, and The Mugger delivers a tight, atmospheric read that earns every one of its pages.