BLOOD RELATIVES (1975) *****
by Ed McBain
This paperback edition published by Pan Books, 1977, 157pp
First published in 1975
© Ed McBain, 1975
ISBN: 978-0-3302-5177-5
Blurb: Saturday night was party night on the Precinct. Hurrying home in the rain, two teenage girls shelter in the hallway of an empty tenement. The perfect backdrop for a knife-carrying sex attack. Seventeen-year-old Muriel was stabbed to death and her cousin Patricia got away with a slashed cheek. When she ran into the station house, Kling watched the bloody hand-prints appear on the glass-panel door. A messy start to a case that got messier – every time Patricia changed her story…
Comment: The 30th book in McBain’s 87th Precinct series is one of his very best. The story hooks you in from the start and Carella’s dogged investigation of the killing enables him to piece the mystery together leading to a very satisfying conclusion. The book is superbly paced and makes for riveting reading. As ever, McBain’s feel for character and dialogue is exemplary. The book adopts the style of McBain’s early novels by concentrating on one case and focusing on the detectives’ investigation – there is no room for the domestic side of their lives here. The result is a concise, sharp and absorbing mystery. Classic McBain. The novel would be adapted for the big screen in 1977, with Donald Sutherland playing Carella in a Canadian production directed by Claude Chabrol.