American Mystery Classics Double Feature: ED MCBAIN aka EVAN HUNTER

[dulcinea3]

Last night I read the short story by Ed McBain Sadie When She Died.  I was confused yesterday when I saw it listed as a novel in one of Becke's posts.  In the Great Detectives anthology I have, there is an introductory page for each author, and it says that McBain would start his 87th Precinct stories by making up a title and then write a story to go with that title.  It says that he must have especially liked this title, because he used it for a short story and then later reused it for a full-length novel (it doesn't say if there is any connection between the two plots).  I enjoyed the story.  At first, the murder seems like an open-and-shut case, but Carella immediately has a hunch, which seems rather far-fetched, and of course, in the end it turns out he is right.  I also thought the way that the title was worked into the context was clever (don't want to give away spoilers).

I didn't know that McBain wrote under another name.  The Blackboard Jungle is a great movie, and of course The Birds (based on a Daphne du Maurier story) is a classic!  I have also seen some of the other movies and TV movies that he wrote the screenplays for.

[becke_davis]

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dulcinea3 wrote:

Last night I read the short story by Ed McBain Sadie When She Died.  I was confused yesterday when I saw it listed as a novel in one of Becke's posts.  In the Great Detectives anthology I have, there is an introductory page for each author, and it says that McBain would start his 87th Precinct stories by making up a title and then write a story to go with that title.  It says that he must have especially liked this title, because he used it for a short story and then later reused it for a full-length novel (it doesn't say if there is any connection between the two plots).  I enjoyed the story.  At first, the murder seems like an open-and-shut case, but Carella immediately has a hunch, which seems rather far-fetched, and of course, in the end it turns out he is right.  I also thought the way that the title was worked into the context was clever (don't want to give away spoilers).

I didn't know that McBain wrote under another name.  The Blackboard Jungle is a great movie, and of course The Birds (based on a Daphne du Maurier story) is a classic!  I have also seen some of the other movies and TV movies that he wrote the screenplays for.

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I think he was kind of the Stephen King of his era - anyone who read mysteries knew his name back in the Sixties. And like King, a lot of his stories were made into films and TV shows.