Ed McBain: Widows (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
Another summer. Another heat wave. And another murder so brutal it's hard to fathom the cruelty that stalks the city's streets. When Susan Brauer was stabbed thirty-two times with a paring knife, Detectives Carella and Brown find clues that connect her to the senior partner of a prestigious law firm. That connection doesn't happen, however, until he is dead on a city sidewalk.

An unrelated murder -- that of Carella's own father -- has turned the detective's world upside down, and the 45th Precinct's investigation is hitting dead ends faster than a bullet turns a wife into a widow. But the lawyer has left behind a wife, an ex-wife, two grown daughters, and plenty of hidden animosities to fill a detective's notebook. For the men who patrol the city, their personal lives take a back seat no matter how many surprises -- and sorrows -- they find along the way.

A probing, emotionally rich addition to bestselling author Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series, Widows peels back the layers of protagonist Steve Carella's past to deliver a procedural of extraordinary depth and resonance.

Ed McBain: Widows. An 87th Precinct Novel. Thomas & Mercer, ISBN: 9781612181905 (March, 2012), 358 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Widows (USA 2004)

From the Publisher:
The beautiful blonde in the penthouse apartment was dead, her face and body laced with slashes from a paring knife -- grisly evidence of the terrible things the city can do to pretty young women. What sordid web of money, sex, and greed had ensnared Susan Brauer? The stack of unsigned erotic letters in her possession was the first clue. Then the murder of Susan's lover, a married lawyer in his sixties, leads the cops of the 87th to the women left behind: the lawyer's wife, his ex, his daughters. And for Detective Carella, his own father's senseless death in a bakery holdup sears through the intense summer heat -- and sends him on a fevered hunt for the one who made his mother a widow and shrouded his family in grief.

Ed McBain: Widows. A Novel of the 87th Precinct. Pocket Books, ISBN: 0743470761 (November, 2004), 407 p., $7.99.

Ed McBain: Widows (USA 1992)

From the Publisher:
On a warm summer night, not long after the brutal slaying of his sexy blond mistress, twice-married lawyer Arthur Schumacher is gunned down in the 87th Precinct -- leaving behind a collection of pornographic love letters... and a secret that threatens to snuff out the rest of the women in his abbreviated life. Now a grief-stricken homicide cop, battling his own demons of personal loss, must end a maniac's bloody reign before Schumacher's widows follow the butchered barrister to the grave.

"HONEST AND CHILLING... IF YOU'RE A McBAIN FAN YOU'LL LIKE WIDOWS. IF YOU'RE NOT - YOU SHOULD BE!" -- CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

Ed McBain: Widows. The new 87th Precinct Novel. Avon Books, ISBN: 0380713837 (January, 1992), 332 p., $5.99.

Ed McBain: Widows (USA 1991)

From the Publisher:
"Getting a new 87th Precinct novel by Ed McBain is like contemplating a wrapped gift under the tree on Christmas morning. You know it's going to be terrific and you can't wait to open it." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

With the publication last year of Vespers, Ed McBain's already phenomenal career blazed even higher. Vespers was a national bestseller, and People magazine called it one of its ten favorite novels of the year, saying of the entire 87th Precinct series that "each book should be treated as a contribution to a fictionalized history of modern urban police work, a collection that has evolved into our finest procedural series." Cosmopolitan confirmed that Vespers was "gritty, realistic, entertaining, provocative, and puzzling."

Widows, McBain's stunning new novel, is all that and more.

It begins with a beautiful young woman found murdered in a lush penthouse apartment. The only clues are a steamy collection of erotic letters and thirty-two separate knife wounds. Soon the men and women of the 87th Precinct must solve another killing that of the twenty-two-year-old woman's elderly lover. The dead man has left behind four other women, his ex-wife and their two daughters, and his present wife. Four mourners. Four suspects. It's a crime that strikes close to the heart of Detective Steve Carella, whose own mother has become a widow as a result of a senseless and unexpected act of violence.

Widows is an incisive, enthralling story of cops and killers, victims and survivors. It's Ed McBain at his best.

Ed McBain: Widows. A Novel of the 87th Precinct. William Morrow, ISBN: 0688102190 (January, 1991), 332 p., $19.95.