What private eye fiction owes to Chandler and Hammett, the police procedural arguably owes to Ed McBain.  McBain ranks among the most prolific of crime writers, with his 87th Precinct series weighing in at 55 volumes, functional standalones which form part of a greater whole, a lengthy saga which shifted in mood and tone over the half-century it spanned.

This, the first step in the thousand mile journey of the 87th Precinct series, opens with the murder of Detective Mike Reardon, sparking an investigation which is barely off the ground before two more police officers are murdered.  The squad, having lost friends and comrades, embark on a desperate quest to catch the killer before more of their number die.In Cop Hater, we are introduced to the men of the 87th Precinct, their wives, girlfriends and, most importantly, their work.  Chief among them is Detective Steve Carella, although this is something of an ensemble piece, the squad room functions as a collective, allowing McBain to focus on procedure over characterisation.  The machismo of the Precinct is intense, with all the testosterone of a Mickey Spillane novel, but none of the arrogance.  The wisecracks are frequent and make for some of the best dialogue in the genre, its edge relatively unscathed by the five decades since publication.

A macho squad needs love interests of course, and McBain more than obliges.   Gender roles are ascribed with all the rigidity of prison cell bars; while the men of the 87th go out to work, their womenfolk linger alluringly at home.  Each female character is written in the style of a 50s bombshell, all possessing Mansfield-esque curves, shoehorned enthusiastically into lacy lingerie.  Despite their stereotypical sex appeal though, there is genuine tenderness and affection between the male and female characters, notably between Carella and his fiancee Theodora.

In terms of procedure, McBain uses the entire investigative arsenal (such as it was during the 1950s); old fashioned theorising works alongside fingerprinting, myriad forms of trace evidence analysis, pounding the street, and interrogations, to give a rich picture of police work far removed from the narrow specialisations of the modern era.  Appropriately, there is a fly-on-the-wall feeling to Cop Hater, allowing us to peer over the shoulders of the squad as they go about their investigations.  McBain freely admitted he considered himself a cinematic writer, and as he casts a literary eye around the squad room, the roots of innumerable televised procedurals can be found in his work, not least NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street.

McBain also explores that most prevalent of crime themes, that of urban living.  The novel opens during a sweltering summer, where tempers fray in tenement blocks, and the genuine problems stemming from an overheated city are examined in depth -

The police had problems.  The police had traffic problems because everyone who owned any sort of a jalopy had put it on the road. The police had fire-hydrant problems because kids all over the city were turning on the johnny pumps, covering the spout with a flattened coffee can, and romping about beneath the improvised shower.  The police had burglary problems, because people were sleeping with their windows open; people were leaving parked cars unlocked, windows wide; shopkeepers were stepping across the street for a moment to catch a quick Pepsi Cola.  The police had floater problems, because the scorched and heat weary citizens cometimes sought relief in the currents of the rivers that bounded Isola – and some of them drowned, and some of them turned up with bloated bodies and bulging eyes.

With only a few lines across a few paragraphs, McBain creates a convincing account of the modern metropolis, with all its grime, frustration and criminality.  The fact that he chose to create the fictional city of Isola for the squad to inhabit ensures a degree of transferability, but there was never any real doubt that Isola was New York but for the taking of a few geographical and cultural liberties.

Like many opening salvos, Cop Hater is not perfect.  In places, McBain’s prose can be cumbersome and heavy with repetition; it lacks the refinement of much of the work that came after it.  However, everything that came after it owes Cop Hater a debt of gratitude; to read Cop Hater is to take a look at a foundation stone of an entire genre.

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