Ed McBain made his debut in 1956. In 2004, more than a hundred books later, he personally collected twenty-five of his stories written before that time. All but five of them were first published in the detective magazine Manhunt and none of them appeared under the Ed McBain byline.

Here are kids in trouble and women in jeopardy. Here are private eyes and gangs. Here are loose cannons and innocent bystanders. Here, too, are cops and robbers. These are the stories that prepared Ed McBain to write the beloved 87th Precinct novels. In individual introductions, McBain tells how and why he...

This installment in the 87th Precinct series finds the detectives stumped by a serial killer who doesn't fit the profile. A blind violinist taking a smoke break, a cosmetics sales rep cooking an omelet in her own kitchen, a college professor trudging home from class, a priest contemplating retirement in the rectory garden, an old woman out walking her dog--these are the seemingly random targets shot twice in the face. But most serial killers don't use guns. Most serial killers don't strike five times in two weeks. And most serial killers' prey share something more than being over fifty years...

Matthew Hope has been shot - taking two bullets outside a bar in Calusa's seediest neighborhood. With Matthew in a postsurgery semicoma, the men and women who know him best go to the places he went, talk to the people he talked to, and desperately try to find out who wanted Matthew Hope dead. The sexy, tough investigator called Toots Kiley, the world-weary cop named Morris Bloom, and Warren Chambers, a strong black man who gets reminded every day that Florida is still the Deep South, start to get the picture: Matthew Hope had walked into a weird and wild world. Hope had been hired to close a...

It's not a mystery, it's a story of survival and triumph. That's what some people say about Romance, a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wielding stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. And before the detectives of the 87th can solve that crime, the same actress is stabbed again. This time for keeps. A.D.A. Nellie Brand moves in for a murder conviction, but Detective Steve Carella is sure she's got the wrong guy, and wrestles for the case with Fat Ollie Weeks, Isola's foulest cop. While Bert Kling...

In Isola, the hours between midnight and dawn are usually a quiet time. But for the 87th Precinct detectives Carella and Hawes, the murder of an old woman makes the wee hours anything but peaceful--especially when they learn she was one of the greatest concert pianists of the century long vanished. Meanwhile 88th Precinct cop Fat Ollie Weeks has his own early morning nightmare: he's on the trail of three prep school boys and a crack dealer who spent the evening carving up a hooker.

It is Christmas in the city, but it isn't the giving season. A retired Gulf War pilot, a careless second-story man, a pair of angry Mexicans, and an equally shady pair of Secret Service agents are in town after a large stash of money, and no one is interested in sharing.
The detectives at the 87th are already busy for the holidays. Steve Carella and Fat Ollie Weeks catch the squeal when the lions in the city zoo get an unauthorized feeding of a young woman's body. And then there's a trash can stuffed with a book salesman carrying a P-38 Walther and a wad of big bills.
The bad bills...

This is a new 87th precinct crime novel.

On the night that was supposed to launch a glittering pop career, Tamar Valparaiso is dragged off stage, halfway through her performance, by two masked men. Steve Carella is the man responsible for getting her back safely.