LIGHTNING (1984) ****
by Ed McBain
This paperback edition published by Pan Books, 1986, 267pp
First published in 1984
© Hui Corporation, 1984
ISBN: 978-0-3302-9087-8
Blurb: The city can be a strange place, full of odd sights. Sometimes chilling sights. But nothing could prepare the detectives of the 87th Precinct for the sight of a murdered young woman, a member of a local college track team, hanging from a lamppost. Nor could they be ready for the news that the same night, another woman is raped for the third time―by the same man. Two cases, two perpetrators, one chilling evening. Can the detectives of the 87th, with help from Fat Ollie Weeks and Rape Squad Decoy Eileen Burke, put them behind bars for good? The team doesn’t have much time, because it only takes a moment for lightning to strike again.
Comment: The 37th of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels continues in the more expansive vein started with the previous year’s Ice. This time the theme is around the various interpretations of lightning – here indicating speed, happenstance and the weather. McBain sets out two separate plot lines. The first is around the murders and hanging of promising young female athletes, the second concerns a serial rapist. The two plots are woven together by sharing similar themes of twisted obsession driven by personal sacrifice or loss. McBain makes it personal to the detectives by focusing on rape decoy Eileen Burke, who is balancing her pride in her job with the lurid nature of what she has to contend with on a day-to-day basis and her burgeoning relationship with her colleague Bert Kling. Carella and Hawes lead the investigation into the hanging bodies, which follows a traditional, procedural route to its conclusion. There is also a brief interlude with Carella’s deaf-mute wife seeking employment only to herself be subjected to unwanted advances. We get to become re-acquainted with 83rd Precinct Detective Fat Ollie Weeks, who assists Carella and Hawes, and is also looking to sue the producers of “Hill Street Blues” for a character having a similar name and modus operandi. These scenes are very funny – McBain at the time had been piqued by the TV programme using a lot of his ideas without referencing his books as a source. Rather than sue, he decided to bring attention to this through his characters. He also has some fun with bald detective Meyer Meyer, who has taken to wearing a wig. Some will point to the added graphic nature of some of the scenes as McBain bowing to pressure from publishers to make his books spicier, but that said they remain at the top of their genre and McBain’s strengths are still very much in evidence. The closing scene of the book leaves us on a cliffhanger that will lead into the next, the first instance of this happening in the series.
