Ed McBain: Tricks (USA 2013)

From the Publisher:
One night. One shift. No rest. Featuring the 87th Precinct's entire cast of characters, this Halloween takes them into the darkest corners of depravity the city has to offer. And sometimes, surviving is the greatest treat of them all.

From a liquor store hold-up ending with a dead owner and four costumed "kids" making off with the money to the pieces of a man showing up around the city, the Day of the Dead is turning the streets into a carnival of violence and murder. Meanwhile, a magician disappears in a stunning final act, and Detective First Class Eileen Burke poses as a hooker to lure in a serial killer. The question is, will the detectives all live to see the dawn of November?

Newsweek declares bestselling author Ed McBain "has virtually reinvented the police procedural." Interweaving rich characters, taut plotting, and sharp dialogue, Tricks is a multi-character masterpiece.

Ed McBain: Tricks. An 87th Precinct Novel. Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publ., ISBN: 9781612181882 (March, 2013), 274 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Tricks (UK 1989)

From the Publisher:
The bloody upper torso of a human body was stuffed into the can, on top of a green garbage bag. It had been severed from the rest of the body at the waist. It had no arms... and no head.

It started with a simple children's game -- then the fake blood turned real. But with the detective force on double strength, the 87th Precinct was ready for all the tricks the Halloween night could throw out of the shadows.

Tricks like a psycopath who's ready to torture and maim .. and a gang of children loose after dark with loaded shotguns. For Detective Steve Carella, tricks like that meant staying lucky... in order to stay alive.

Until the forces of evil suddenly played their toughest hand. Amidst the bloody violence the only winner left would be the one who shot to kill...

Ed McBain: Tricks. The New 87th Precinct Novel. Pan Books, ISBN: 0330305417 (October, 1989), 256 p., £3.50.

Ed McBain: Tricks (USA 1989)

From the Publisher:
"SOME REAL CHILLS AWAIT!" USA Today
It's Halloween night, and hell has opened its gates on the 87th Precinct. It's all tricks, no treats: surprise packages from a killer who specializes in body parts... a mother with a stationwagon full of homicidal trick-or-treaters... and a magician who's done a disappearing act, leaving his wife behind.

TRICKS
"ED McBAIN SCORES AGAIN!... HIS MACHINE-GUN DIALOGUE AND AUTHENTIC ATMOSPHERE KEEP THE READER IN SCREAMING SUSPENSE." Publishers Weekly

Ed McBain: Tricks. An 87th Precinct Novel. Avon Books, ISBN: 0380703831 (January, 1989), 274 p., $3.95.

Ed McBain: Tricks (UK 1987)

From the Publisher:
The bloody upper torso of a human body was stuffed into the can, on top of a green garbage bag. It had been severed from the rest of the body at the waist. It had no arms... and no head.

It started with a simple children's game -- then the fake blood turned real. But with the detective force on double strength, the 87th Precinct was ready for all the tricks the Halloween night could throw out of the shadows.

Tricks like a psycopath who's ready to torture and maim .. and a gang of children loose after dark with loaded shotguns. For Detective Steve Carella, tricks like that meant staying lucky... in order to stay alive.

Until the forces of evil suddenly played their toughest hand. Amidst the bloody violence the only winner left would be the one who shot to kill...

Ed McBain: Tricks. An 87th Precinct Novel. Hamish Hamilton, ISBN: 0241124212 (October, 1987), 256 p., £?.??.

Ed McBain: Tricks (USA 1987)

From the Publisher:
"Ed McBain has virtually reinvented the police procedural... Familiarity with the cops of the 87th Precinct breeds something like devotion: the more we know about them, the more we want to know" -- Newsweek

This tour de force of suspense and surprises takes place in just one shift of duty at the 87th Precinct. But it is Halloween, and the quiet of the early eveningis shattered by a series of sudden, violent incidents:

* All Sergeant Andy Parker has on his mind is getting a date with a suspect he first met nine years ago. Until a liquor store owner is shot and killed by four costumed children who didnt wait for an answer to "trick or treat"
* Investigating a routine call behind a downtown restaurant, Brown and Genero make a grisly discovery: a headless torso stuffed in a garbage can.
* Hawes takes a call from the wife of a professional magician and has an even more elusive problem: Sebastian the Great has concluded his performance at a local school with what looks like his final disappearing act.

Before a night of tricks and illusions is over, Detective First Class Eileen Burke will wait nervously in a hookers' bar in the seediest part of town. If she's lucky shell succeed in getting picked up by a serial killer with a penchant for bad jokes If she's even luckier shelll come out of it alive.

McBain holds up the Precinct like a prism - each facet is another emotion, each turn, another violent, funny, brutal incident. McBains 87th Precinct never ceases to fascinate and engage us.

Tricks is Ed McBain at his very best, proving beyond all doubt that "he is the creator of the most starkly realistic police procedurals in contemporary literature" (Chicago Sun-Times Book Week).

Ed McBain: Tricks. An 87th Precinct Novel. Arbor House, ISBN: 0877959277 (October, 1987), 247 p., $16.95.