Cop Hater

⚖The case for it

McBain made the precinct the protagonist rather than any one detective, which is the move the whole police procedural was built on afterwards. The unnamed city is a character too, pressed flat by a heat wave that leans on every scene, and the opening description of it at night hooks readers before the plot starts. The squad gets wives and kids and inside jokes so they stop being interchangeable badges, cops who “joke and watch sports, who have wives and children.” “Vivid, precise descriptions, terse and tense dialogue.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The gender politics are dated even for 1956: women arrive as bodies first, and one scene gets singled out repeatedly. The forensic explanations are dropped in as infodumps, to the point that a character has to ask “why are you telling me this, it’s irrelevant information.” The solution “slapped me in the face about 2/3 of the way in,” which drains the rest. The detectives themselves “came across as assholes,” rough with civilians for sport. And the whole thing is grim without relief, a book where “no one in this nameless city was having fun.”

— the honest librarian

4h

honest hours

6

sittings