Tricks

Name: Tricks
Rating: 3.95 (1454 reviews)
Author: Ed McBain

87th Precinct • Book 40

by Ed McBain

3.95 Goodreads

(1.5K ratings)

256 pages Published 1987 Mystery

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Why You'll Love This

Halloween night in the 87th Precinct means every detective on the squad is fighting a different kind of monster — and not all of them make it to morning.

Great if you want: a sprawling ensemble procedural with real stakes and atmosphere
The experience: relentless and kaleidoscopic — multiple cases collide across one dark night
The writing: McBain weaves threads with surgical precision, each voice distinctly his own
Skip if: you're new to the series — forty books of context enriches everything here

About This Book

Halloween night in the 87th Precinct, and the city has gone genuinely, terrifyingly strange. Multiple cases unspool simultaneously across a single shift — a robbery gone bloody, human remains turning up in pieces, a magician who vanishes in ways no one can explain, and a detective working undercover as a killer hunts the streets. McBain isn't interested in tidy, one-case-at-a-time police work; he's after the chaotic, punishing reality of a precinct where the violence never politely waits its turn. The stakes are immediate and personal, and not everyone is guaranteed to make it to sunrise.

What distinguishes Tricks as a reading experience is McBain's mastery of controlled chaos — he juggles half a dozen storylines with such clean, confident prose that the complexity never feels like work. The entire ensemble cast gets room to breathe, and the Halloween backdrop isn't just atmosphere; it sharpens the book's themes of disguise, illusion, and what hides behind ordinary faces. Forty books deep into this series, McBain writes with the assurance of someone who knows exactly how much tension a sentence can hold before it snaps.