“I got my candy, you got yours.” Don’t we all?

Evan Hunter wrote the first half, Ed McBain the second (even though they are one in the same person!) Evan's half is about a man who really wants to have sex and goes to great lengths to get it. Ed's half is about the investigation into the homicide of a sex worker who may, or may not, have run into the man from Evan's half! It's a strange set up, but it totally works, and both parts are pretty good. The first half is all about sex, the second half is more about police procedure. And there's a good twist at the end! And I really liked the phone call at the end, end! Good read! ( )

Evan Hunter (The Blackboard Jungle) and Ed McBain (The 87th Precinct police procedurals) are one and the same, so it’s perhaps unusual that the two would collaborate on this compulsive novel of obsession. Writing as Hunter (his real name) the first part follows Benjamin Thorpe, a successful Los Angeles architect in New York for an opening. Thorpe has a problem. He’s obsessed with sex (a warning to those who can’t handle it – the novel gets graphic — now that remark should raise our circulation stats 50%), and he is determined to indulge his fantasies before he returns home to his wife in California. His usual contacts don’t pan out, nor does a woman he meets in the hotel bar, so he ends up in a massage parlor, where because of his drunkenness he can’t perform as he’d like, so when his time is up and he hasn’t been “completely satisfied,” he gets angry demanding more time. The manager throws him out and down the stairs where he is then mugged and robbed by two men on the street. McBain then takes over in the second part and we follow the investigation of Detective Emma Boyle of the Special Victims (read Rape) unit and her investigation partner from Homicide into the murder and rape of a young prostitute from the massage parlor where Ben Thorpe had spent the evening before catching his flight back to L.A. McBain/Hunter is a master at vividly conveying the ups and downs of a routine investigation – his series with Detective Steve Carpella of the 87th squad in a fictitious city called Insula, but clearly meant to be New York, are classics. The evidence begins to point to Ben Thorpe as the culprit. Every character in the book seems to have some sort of sexual hangup, but until the last couple of chapters when Emma finds some laundry back from the dry cleaners, the identity of the is murderer unclear. It’s an excellent read. ( )

A friend lent me this so I'll do things better the next time I write a McBain homage. (To be honest, I don't like rewalking paths I've trod before, so The City in These Pages (GRATUITOUS PLUG) is going to be it for the McBain homages . . . unless, of course, someone waves a fat cheque . . .) The book's conceit is obvious: this is the first and only collaboration between Sal Lombino's two major noms de plume. In its first half, written by Hunter, sex-addicted LA architect is on the loose overnight in NYC after a business meeting, and during his trawling of the sexual underworld as he attempts to get laid he puts himself in just the right places at just the right times to be regarded by the cops, as they investigate a homicide the following day, as Suspect #1. Of course, he's back in LA by now and unaware of any of this . . . unless, of course, he actually did kill the dead prostitute (it says a lot for McBain/Hunter's skill that this is always a possibility). In the second half of the book, written by McBain in something approaching 87th Precinct style, Emma Boyle of the NYPD's Special Victims Unit is called in to help with the homicide investigation and unravels the crime.

A real page-turner, as you'd expect. Pretty damn' raunchy in places, too.
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Two linked short novels, by Evan Hunter and Ed McBain (two pseudonyms of the author). The first is an extremely violent and sex-oriented mainstream story. The second is police procedural. It may seem at first that it is padded but that is because of the "thick description" style of characterization. There are some major faults, including some balony pop psych. The first is very strong but the ending of the second is very weak. ( )