The detective looks for three classic elements in a crime: means, possibility and motive. But not Steve Carella from the 87th Precinct. When all the puzzle pieces fit together, they create a picture that remains inscrutable as far as he is concerned. So what does it all mean? Carola: „Beat the hell out of me.(Even if you kill me)
We are at the office of the eighty-seventh precinct in the dream city of Isola (Manhattan), setting of the series of police novels written by the American writer Ed McBain, pseudonym of Evan Hunter, between 1956 and 2005. McBain’s main character, agent Steve Carella, is speaking, who is drinking bad coffee with colleague Meyer Meyer, who has the unfortunate double name.
Hidden behind the banality of setting and dialogue is Carella’s vision: the question of what really motivates people is irrelevant, all that matters is the procedure used to unravel a riddle that in fact remains unsolvable.
Existentialist
Deep! Maybe even: ‘life lesson’. And that in pulp fiction? Yes, even if you’re reading a McBain paperback on the beach with your toes in the sand and an involuntary sense in your mind that there’s nothing better in life.
Carella’s ‘even if you kill me’ is an existentialist’s cry for help. How do you explain all the evil that man is capable of? Is there any responsibility?
In this chaos, McBain finds fertile ground for his detectives. The cops, Steve Carella in the lead, are under no illusions that they can get to the root of crimes; all they can do is sort things out, get the facts straight.
McBain was a master at this. He was one of the inventors of the police procedure, a subgenre of crime fiction in which the focus is on the technical conduct of the investigation. His influence extends far, from the Swedish Martin Beck novels (see episode two of Pulp) to iconic television series such as Hill Street Blues (1981 – 1987) and Law & Order (since 1990).
The puzzle pieces reveal that there is no grand design, no logic in what we do
One of McBain’s best books is King’s Ransom (1959). Carella and Meyer Meyer investigate the case of wealthy shoe magnate Douglas King, who refuses to pay a ransom when it turns out that evildoers have kidnapped the wrong son; not King’s but his driver’s. The social and political commentary (Carella: “All this wealth makes me cranky.”) and the clever, flexible plot led Japanese director Akira Kurosawa to memorably film the story in 1963 as High and Low.
The tension revolves around the question of redemption for King, who would rather see the kidnapped boy killed than spend a penny on such inferior people. In King’s words: “I don’t want to help anyone but myself. I am what I amMr Carella.’
That’s how people are, McBain shows. The pieces of the puzzle together reveal that there is no grand design to be found, no logic in what we do.
In the 87th Precinctnovels there is one constant, the city, the pool of destruction. McBain’s narrator: “Dusk falls on the city. Soon it will be dark. It is important to go home quickly.”