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Title: The Frumious Bandersnatch : A Novel of the 87th Precinct by Ed McBain ISBN: 0-7432-5034-6 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (12 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: McBain does it again!
Comment: It's hard to believe that the 87th Precinct series has been around for over forty years, and covers fifty-three novels. The Frumious Bandersnatch (incidentally taken from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky") is classic McBain.
Young, beautiful and talented, Tamar Valprasio is about to make her breakout debut when she is abducted from her own video party. Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes work inspite of lack of clues and the complex tangle of the "The Squad" to bring the criminals to justice and rescue Tamar before it is too late. As can be expected in an Ed McBain novel, there is the twists and turns and the humor. albeit dark at times, with the usual cast of the detectives of the 8-7. As an interesting sideline, we begin to see another dimension of "Fat Ollie" Weeks as his relationship with Officer Patricia Gomez go another level. Will the boys get to Tamar? And who is behind her kidnapping. Listen to the audiobook to find out.

Rating: 3
Summary: Classic McBain, with a disappointing ending
Comment: Masked kidnappers steal the show - and the budding pop-star - at talented, ambitious Tamar Valparaiso's launch party. Steve Carella lands the case, but he and his fellow cops at the 87th precinct expect the FBI to snatch it away any second. Though none of them have heard of Tamar, it's clearly a glitzy case.

The feds get into it, albeit late, but Carella stays on, thanks to Barney Loomis, Tamar's big-shot producer. McBain has fun with the posturing and politics of the FBI and the posturing and glamor of the music industry. The Lewis Carroll theme and distortions-on-a-theme are clever and amusing. He's up to his own high standards of crisp, humorous dialogue and dry observation as the procedural story unfolds at a page-turning clip. Point of view switches among the cops, and with scenes from Tamar's viewpoint, showing her to be a gutsy, determined and observant 20-year old.

Everything about this story is just right, in fact, except the climax, which is as jarring as it is predictable. An ending which spoils the mood of the whole. McBain hasn't lost his touch, but this time it packs an unpleasant punch.

Rating: 5
Summary: How Do You Spell That....?
Comment: Before you buy the book, you have to find the book. Asking for it yields its own little joys.

"Frumious Bandersnatch please," a gentle query to a clerk who responds with a sparkle in the eye born either of interest or befuddlement. A kind of secret, privileged conversation ensues between buyer and seller, an academic treatise on the etymology of the title, Lewis Carrol and Monty Python.

So you buy the book and the story flies by as is usual with McBain and the 87th Precinct, wholly satisfying except for it being over too soon. The wait for the next one begins immediately. A brilliant man once said, "After a time you may find that 'having' is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as 'wanting.' It is not logical, but it is often true."

Brilliant, but never read McBain.

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