LONG TIME NO SEE (1977) ***½
by Ed McBain
This paperback edition published by Pan Books, 1979, 255pp
First published in 1977
© Ed McBain, 1977
ISBN: 978-0-3302-5657-2
Blurb: It’s a cold November when James Harris takes his dog, Stanley, for their usual rounds of panhandling. Blind since Vietnam and married to a blind woman as well, James realizes his disability pension and her part-time job go only so far. The money he makes on the streets is desperately needed―yet it’s still not enough. But after today it won’t matter…When Detective Steve Carella finds James’ wife murdered as well, her throat slit like her husband’s, it is no longer a random crime. And when another blind woman turns up dead, all Carella has to go on is the nightmare James told a psychiatrist after coming home from the war ten years ago. What he finds is a labyrinthine trail of betrayal, sex, and a secret worth killing to keep buried.
Comment: The 32nd book in McBain’s 87th Precinct series is a turning point for the series. From here on in, the books become longer and the language a little coarser. McBain uses the larger page count to share more detail about the city and the characters of the police detectives, along with sharing their personal lives. He would also go on to increasingly embellish his tales with multiple cases or sub-plots. Here, however, he sticks with the one central case – the murders of a blind couple. As a result of the additional room that McBain has been given by his publisher (or been requested to fill), the mystery’s solution is more protracted, despite being no more complex than those in the more efficiently written earlier entries. There are occasional descriptive passages, which no doubt add colour to the setting and characters, but take some of the pace out of the story. That said, McBain’s conversational writing style remains engaging and his use of dialogue is as masterful as ever as he guides Carella toward the solution – the key of which lies in the interpretation of the blind victim’s nightmares. Another solid entry in the series, and a watershed book that would lay the foundations for the rest of the series.
