The Con Man (87th Precinct Book 4)

These early Ed McBain novels from the 1950s are now old enough to qualify almost as historical mysteries and the language and attitudes often seem staid, stilted, and outdated.Did policemen really used to talk like that? I remember watching reruns of "Dragnet" years after the series first ran and I seem to recall that Sgt. Joe Friday and his partner did, in fact, employ some of this terminology and exhibit some of those attitudes, so, yeah, I guess maybe they really did talk like that.In spite of the fact that the books feel dated, the writing is so crisp that it draws us in and holds our attention. We feel like time travelers visiting another planet and observing the interaction of the inhabitants there. The books never fail to spark our interest and this, the fourth in the 87th Precinct series, is the best one yet, I think. Each entry has been an improvement upon the last one, which bodes well for my future reading of the series.This story begins with a con man cheating people out of their money, some small amounts and some more substantial. The cop assigned to this case takes that personally and pursues his quarry with a vengeance.Meanwhile, a con man of another and much more sinister sort plies his trade through personal ads in magazines. His goal is to reach lonely women and, after bilking them out of whatever money they may have and convincing them to get a tattoo which he tells them will mark them as his, he poisons them with arsenic and dumps their bodies in the river.But bodies dumped in the river, even when they are weighted down, don't always stay there. And so, the Isola police and Precinct 87 are the unfortunate recipients of a "floater," a badly decomposed body that comes to the surface after being in the water for at least three months. Detective Steve Carella and his partner Bert Kling are assigned to the case and start trying to establish the identity of the dead woman, whose only clothing consisted of a bra and who had no identification, and to work out how she came to be in the water.Before they can solve the first murder, yet another "floater" turns up. The cause of death turns out to be the same - arsenic poisoning - and the woman has a similar tattoo. It looks as though Isola may have a serial killer on its hands.The tattoos turn out to be the definitive clue which helps to break the case, along with the help of a conscientious citizen tattoo artist named Charlie Chen.The Con Man lets us get to know Steve Carella a little better. We also see his wife, Teddy, playing an important role in finally tracking down this con man/murderer. Apparently, they will continue to be at the center of future mysteries in the series.By this time, McBain had really perfected his technique of writing a scintillating beginning to his tales, one that hooks you from the first sentence and keeps you turning pages. It's easy to see why other writers of mysteries, particularly of police procedurals, acknowledge him as the master.

An interesting story. The characters were entertaining. It was a fast read. This is a book you can easily read straight through.

As in most of the 87th Precinct books the detectives are trying to solve a couple of crimes. Carella is trying to catch a murderer that is poisoning women and dumping them in the river. The only clue, a small heart tattoo on the webbing between their thumb and finger with three initials in it. While Carella tries to solve that crime Brown is trying to track down two con men operating in the city. This is also the first book where we really get to know Carella's wife, Teddy. Maybe not quite as good a book as some of the later ones in this series, but still a good read.

A floater. I found talk about the deceased to be interesting. The notes taken. The speculation, especially about the tattoo heart on the hand in the tender spot between the thumb and forefinger. There was one man's anguish that could almost be felt.While I don't appreciate reading extraneous information about individual characters unless the telling is vital to the story, I did enjoy the telling of how Carella feels about his wife. How he always delights in her. With makeup. Without the veneer of makeup. In contemplation. And no, this part wasn't vital to the story. It was just sweet.A con man hitting on both male and female. At times these parts seemed really dragged out, keeping me from wanting to get back to the book. Other times however, it was remarkable and interesting reading how they ply their "trade."While parts dragged, the last part of the book moved along at an increased pace, really livening things up.

I loved the pace and flow, but it was difficult to read the cavalier way the villains dispatched the victims. The method, revolting. Good story!!Buy it, read it and enjoy!!👍🏾🔥👍🏾🔥👍🏾🔥👍🏾🔥

I would probably give it 4 1/2 stars, because at the end of the book I did really like it. I liked the first half/three quarters, but didn't get super involved with the story until the end. The writing is a bit different than I'm used to, but the transitions were fascinating. The story would go from one person to another which might be confusing, except for the way the author wrote it (for example, they all might be loving something - one a child, one a lover, one killing - but it was written with similar words and tone).

One of Ed McBain's early 87th precinct stories. Amazon offered the entire series on a deal around December 2013 and I passed on all the early ones and only got a couple of the new ones. When I read them I remembered how well these stories were written and how timeless they really are. Thankfully last November they offered many of them again and I bought what I could at the time. This one is really a part of and where Carella's wife takes a stronger part in the series. An excellent story with interlacing plotsand excellent character development.

Ed McBain describes the hunt for con men and murderers while adding real insight into the detectives seeking them. Steve Carella and his fellow detectives are tough but realistically human in dealing with some very clever criminals. Steve's wife is also a key player and her involvement in the chase adds drama and suspense. Great weekend entertainment!

I like this series for the same reason I like the Inspector Banks series. They take me back to the time before too many of the high tech police stuff took over. The short chapters are ideal for my bed time reading habit.Good to see how many of the Americanism which now even get used on BBC News such as 'multiple, moving forward', reaching out' etc etc have not been spawned at the time these novels were written.

Bafflingly - and annoyingly, the book that precedes this: "The Pusher", is not yet available in Kindle, so "The Con Man" references significant events that lose some impact for anyone trying to run through the 87th Precinct titles in e-book format in the right order.That said, The Con Man continues with the high quality standard of storytelling that McBain set in these early, slim,titles. There is a deceptive ease to reading these books, and yet they pack a real punch. The way McBain sketches the city in all its various shades is like something Simenon was doing with his Maigret stories, and it's easy to see why Sjowall and Wahloo copied so shamelessly from McBain's punchy, direct style when writing the Martin Beck thrillers in due course.The only truly baffling thing here is to read Amazon reviews describing McBain's style as old-school and 'boring'. You're kidding me, right? Much of today's crime writing would benefit from the slick, pared down approach that McBain adopted and pioneered when writing about the cops of the 87th Precinct. It's impossible to imagine that much of the stuff being written today will come over as fresh and exciting when read again over fifty years later.

The storytelling is so easy-going, so natural, so apparently effortless, there is a danger of speed-reading it unnecessarily, such is the desire to keep pace with the plot! Even slowing down deliberately every so often, in order to savour the writing, as you might linger over every sip of a good wine, I still managed to read the novel in, for me, record time! The author even succeeds in making police autopsy -routines fascinating and exciting. You sense that every syllable might contain a too-easily-overlooked clue. The deadpan cop-dialogue, the incidental detail of city life in urban America, the pace of narration, the sense that in the midst of civil life, we are surrounded by crime, the small but deadly accurate brush- strokes which bring the characters to life for the reader, all add up to a splendid read. Someone once said that serious readers should not bother with newspapers at all, but instead devote the time saved to reading good literature. If all books read as well as this one, I would definitely have done just that, sooner in life! This is prose/poetry of a very high order, hence the five stars I have awarded it

Whether writing as Ed McBain or Evan Hunter, the author enjoyed great success for his inventive tales and fluent style. Time, though, has moved the police procedural genre a long way forward; the 87th Precinct series has period charm if you are kind or else feels simply dated.Having been a devotee many years ago, I cannot really believe that even then The Con Man was McBain at his best. He has a trick of setting a theme - the city in the rain, for example here - and then knocking off an easy riff for a dozen paragraphs. The result is to stall the narrative and leave this reader anyway irritated.The Con Man is not helped by the major of its two themes - a serial killer of vulnerable women - being not entirely plausible at the outset and close to barmy by its solution. I am sorry to have diluted my admiration for McBain.

I like this series. They are relatively short and deceptively simple police procedurals. In this case the hunt is on for two separate conmen - the big one who romances plain Janes, steals their money and then poisons them and the small one who fleeced a girl of $5. The principle is the same: stealing is stealing. The writing style is spare and factual, much the same as the detectives it portrays but it still conveys so much as I'm sure I felt the April sun described in chapter 1.For those who know the series I don't need to say much more but for those who don't these are the original police procedurals and the blueprint for future generations but they will seem dated as they are a product of their time.