Poison by Ed McBain
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'Twas brilliant when the slimy toads, set fire to Gimbel's underwear. Aunt Mimsy was in Borough Park, and the Nome rats ate her there."

I enjoyed this funny tribute to Lewis Carroll more than the police procedural aspects in Ed McBain's Poison, the 39th installment in the famous 87th Precinct series. The moderately interesting plot begins with Monoghan and Monroe, McBain's cliché Homicide detectives, looking at the dead body, lying "in his own vomit and shit." The 87th Precinct detectives, Steve Carella and Hal Willis, who caught this "squeal" are present too: they will be handling the investigation.

This is a Hal Willis novel, not a Carella novel, which is good news as Det. Carella has appeared way too many times in McBain's books. The other central character in the novel is Marilyn, who was the deceased man's girlfriend. In fact, the thread that focuses on the relationship between Det. Willis and Marilyn is, to me, the best thing about the novel. Unfortunately, 'best' does not mean 'very good.' I like the thread mainly because it does not conform to Mr. McBain's (Evan Hunter's) usual template of storytelling.

Another interesting component of the story is the non-exclusive nature of the relationship between Marilyn and the victim. Marilyn as a "woman with a past" is a cliché touch, but the author handles the trope in a little unusual way. The choice of the title poison is also uncommon.

Naturally, we have an awful lot of apparently authentic police procedure: to emphasize the realism the author even encloses copies of four weeks of the victim's weekly calendar (the reader would be OK without this material). The reader would also be better off without transparent "red herrings" in the later part of the plot: the author could have very well announced: "And now, dear reader, here's a red herring." The standup-comedy-style routine at the precinct reads stale and unfunny, as opposed to the story about the murder in a movie theater. Summing up, I would be hesitant to recommend this novel.

I am a little sad that my year 2019 in books ends with a whimper...

Two-and-a-quarter stars.

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