Ed McBain: Calypso (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
A calypso singer fresh off a gig walks home in a downpour, when shots tear through his head like steel rain. A girl out on the street in the same miserable weather doesn't know her final trick will be her last. What brings these two sad ends together... the same gun.

It is stormy in the 87th Precinct and with every hour that passes, every minute the killer stays on the loose, the trail is only going to get colder. But that first clue always leads to another, and Detectives Carella and Meyer find themselves in a dark, twisted world of sex and sadism that ripples through the city's veins like a virus. If they don't find their man soon, the sickness will turn deadly again... and again... and again...

Taut and relentless with the brute force of a bullet to bone, Calypso is one of the darkest entries in bestselling author Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series.

Ed McBain: Calypso. A Novel of the 87th Precinct. Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publ., ISBN: 9781612181592 (March, 2012), 254 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Calypso (UK 1991)

From the Publisher:
What a lousy way to die. Calypso King George Chadderton, murdered on a wet September street in the 87th precinct. Detectives Carella and Meyer shake their heads in the grey drizzle. Cops can do without brains spattered on the sidewalk on a wet city night...

Then there was Clara Hawkins, a black, leggy hooker who ended up the same way. It had to be the same person. Tall, slim and crazy with a Smith and Wesson...

There's gorgeous Chloe, an uptown stripper with a dead husband on her mind... Joey Peace, a small-time pimp with big-time ideas... not to mention a weird lady in black who lives on an island with a caged-up man and a mad alsatian...

Ed McBain: Calypso. A New 87th Precinct Mystery. Pan Books, ISBN: 0330262009 (October, 1991), 192 p., £4.99 (?).

Ed McBain: Calypso (USA 1988)

From the Publisher:
It seemed like an ordinary case. Find out who stiffed C.J., the friendly hooker, and George, the king of...
CALYPSO

But for Detectives Carella and Meyer, it turned out to be a descent into hell -- a dark underworld of sex, sadism, and the savage strains of...
CALYPSO

And that was just the beginning. Because what came next was going to totally blow their minds!
CALYPSO

"TOTALLY DEVASTATING" Publishers Weekly

Ed McBain: Calypso. An 87th Precinct Novel. Avon Books, ISBN: 0380705915 (September, 1988), 193 p., $3.50.

Ed McBain: Calypso (USA 1980)

From the Publisher:
The King of Calypso is stone cold dead. So is his favorite woman.
Detectives Carella and Meyer of the 87th Precinct have a case growing cold as a slab in the morgue. Two corpses shot with the same "38 Smith & Wesson -- one very dead calypso singer and one equally dead prostitute. Before another body hits the pavement, they have to comb every dark alley in a race to stop a warped mind on a fampage of sadistic sex. Their chase leads them into the sleazy world of pimps, hookers and pushers -- and toward a gruesome climax.

"Shows what appalling things can happen when sado-masochistic games go wrong" The New York Times Book Review

Ed McBain: Calypso. The new 87th Precinct Novel. Bantam Books, ISBN: 0553133993 (May, 1980), 193 p., $1.95.

Ed McBain: Calypso (UK 1979)

From the Publisher:
"You know how calypso started? Wit the slaves down there, man. They weren't allowed to talk when they were workin, so they used to sing out all the gossip, foolin Whitey that way. Calypso now -- its whole point is to get people irritated, to get them thinkin about a situation."

Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer of the 87th Precinct were thinking. There is nothing cops like better than continuity, even if it takes a couple of corpses to provide it. Thanks to a few .38 calibre Smith & Wesson slugs, they were looking for a connection between a dead calypso singer and a dead hooker, both of them black, both possibly killed with the same weapon.

The hooker was Clara Jane Hawkins, the singer George Chadderton, self-styled 'King' George of Calypso. Together, Carella and Meyer had hit all of Midtown South's hot-bed hotels and massage parlours and had talked to most of the pimps in the precinct's Lousy List but the connection was still hard to fix.

Was it to do with Chadderton's brother Santo who had so mysteriously vanished after playing bongos in George's band at a charity ballroom filled with 380 masked blondes, some of whom just possibly might have been in wigs? And, looking back into the past, what had become of the girl who at sixteen had been the only one in the world with her own private island?

Ed McBain: Calypso. An 87th Precinct Novel. Hamish Hamilton, ISBN: 024110114X (June, 1979), 201 p., £7.95 (?).

Ed McBain: Calypso (USA 1979)

From the Publisher:
"This is your case," the manual advised, "stick with the investigation." Stick with it in the pouring rain where a man lay with his open skull seeping his brains onto the sidewalk, stick with it in a hospital room reeking of antiseptic, stick with it in a tenement apartment at two in the morning, the clock throwing minutes into the empty hours of the night while a woman wept tears for her man who was dead. Search her closet for the clothing the killer wore. Get her to talk about her husband's possible infidelities. Be a cop.

Being a cop was something Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct knew a lot about. He knew about the careful, painstaking work of tracking down leads that could mean nothing or everything. He knew that cops like continuity even if it takes a couple of corpses to provide it and that right now he and his partner Meyer Meyer had all the continuity they could handle. They had two corpses shot within four hours of each other on the same rainy Friday night with the same .38 Smith & Wesson -- one a calypso singer from Trinidad who had just finished a gig the other a hooker named C. J. who had just turned her last trick. Carella knew they had a case that was growing as cold as a slab in the morgue. He knew that they had a killer loose in the city who had killed once, twice, and perhaps would kill again if he and Meyer didn't follow the leads, didn't stick with the case, didn't get there first...

With this breathtakingly suspenseful novel Ed McBain shows us what the police procedural novel is all about. Whether you're one of the millions of faithful followers of the 87th Precinct or a fan-to-be, from the first terse page of Calypso to an ending that will frighten you out of your skin, you'll know you are in the hands of a master.

Ed McBain: Calypso. An 87th Precinct Novel. Viking Press, ISBN: 0670200301 (May, 1979), 217 p., $8.95.