I began reading the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain nearly 40 years ago, having stumbled upon them entirely by accident in a library. McBain (real name Evan Hunter) is widely seen as the inventor of the ‘police procedural’ — a new genre of crime fiction that has become immensely popular. Over the decades, I read dozens of his books in no particular order as I found them in second-hand bookshops and libraries. I even got to meet the author briefly in London just a few years before he passed away. And now, never having read the books in any order, I thought it might be interesting to read them in sequence — in some cases, for a second time. Cop Hater is the very first book in the series, first published in 1956.

Someone is killing police officers, using a .45 handgun. But all is not as it appears. The officers are not in uniform when they are gunned down on the street. They are all detectives and they all work in the 87th precinct of a fictional city obviously based on New York. The main character in the series, detective Steve Carella, is introduced here, as is the woman who is the love of his life, Teddy (Theodora).

In a short introduction to the book, McBain recounts how it was written and reveals his original big idea. Instead of writing crime fiction with a genius detective as the hero, McBain wanted to create a team of heroes: the detectives of the 87th precinct. After writing more than 50 more novels over the course of more than four decades, it turns out to have been a very good idea.

I can’t wait to read the next book.