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Title: Money, Money, Money: An 87th Precinct Novel by Ed McBain, Garrick Hagon ISBN: 0-7927-9858-9 Publisher: Chivers Audio Books Pub. Date: February, 2002 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 10 List Price(USD): $94.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.41 (27 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Fast Paced Investigation
Comment: Drug-running, counterfeiting rackets and terrorism are all combined and land in the lap of the 87th Precinct. They are called into action after trouble in the lion enclosure at the zoo. Circumstances conspire to ensure that Fat Ollie Weeks of the 88th Precinct is also brought into the case, livening up proceedings no end.

Steve Carella and Ollie Weeks join forces to head up the homicide investigation, which becomes a lot more involved as they uncover more about the victim. Counterfeit $100 notes are found that are somehow linked to the victim, as are drugs - a lot of drugs, actually. The irreverent Ollie Weeks provides the lighter moments of the book as he imposes his charm on the unsuspecting public. Steve Carella still has family problems as well as personal ones, providing a more sober and darker sub-plot.

This is yet another strong case for the cops from the 87th Precinct combining a fast-paced story with amusing banter from the investigating officers as they go through their standard police procedures. I get the feeling that Ed McBain is becoming more and more happy with his creation of Ollie Weeks and seems to have delighted in developing his character over recent books. His personal hygiene, interviewing techniques and view on minority groups are all so bad, it's good.

Rating: 5
Summary: Nearly Fifty Years of Policing in Isola
Comment: As a mystery author with my debut novel in its initial release, I am amazed that Ed McBain (AKA Evan Hunter)has been writing 87th Precinct police procedurals for nearly fifty years. I doubt if I'll be writing my series in a half a century, but I'm glad McBain is still writing his. Astonishingly, each 87th Precinct novel seems fresh and inventive. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY is no exception. Steve Carella and the boys (as well as the girls) remain as vibrant as they did when this series first began back when Eisenhower was president. In this fifty-first 87th Precint novel, a woman is found dead in the Grover Park Zoo. She turns out to be an ex-military flygirl who has found herself a fulfilling civilian career as a drug pilot. Steve and his associates (mainly Fat Ollie Weeks) follow the money, and McBain's plot spins upward from there. There's a secondary plot involving a terrorist plot, and, of course, the personal problems and concerns of the series characters also play a major part in the story. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY is a fine fifty-first entry in this series. It is one of the best fifty-first novels in any mystery series ever written. Get this book and read it.

Rating: 3
Summary: Money Makes The Eight-Seven Go Round
Comment: Ed McBain's 51st entry in the 87th Precinct series shows the author in fine fettle, robust even. It's an enjoyable, somewhat unusual novel, a good page-turner as McBains nearly always are. If it's less than his best, it's not from lack of trying.

Someone is moving funny money through the streets of Isola. A woman gets fed to the lions. A guy turns up dead in a garbage can. A peaceful burglar gets an odd visit from a Secret Service agent. A group of terrorists from the Middle East plot an explosion at a city landmark. Just another day at the office for the 87th Precinct.

There's a lot to chew on here, and like the poor woman in the lions' cage, it ends up getting scattered in many directions. Focus is usually one of McBain's strengths, but after a promising start, it kind of gets lost. Perhaps it is because he wanted to tell a story that had little to do with the 87th Precinct, a story about counterfeiters and spies and terrorists. The novel begins rather oddly on a dirt runway in the American Southwest, and the 87th Precinct detectives don't even show up until the book is well underway. They take a back seat for much of the ensuing narrative, while McBain focuses his attentions on one of his more interesting villains, a nasty coked-out drug dealer named Wiggy The Lid, and a white-shoe publishing house where all is not as it seems.

Even this gets tangled up, however. I'm not sure I understand what happened in the novel, why this person did that, but as best I can tell, the pieces don't all connect in the end the way these books usually do. The resolution feels muddy. There's some noises made about government conspiracies, which frankly reeks of Oliver Stone paranoia but grabs you all the same, then it's just dropped without further mention. "Money, Money, Money" feels like an experiment, at times a worthy one, but as a novel it's more than a den of lions can chew on.

The introduction of a terrorist subplot is notable. The copyright of "Money, Money, Money" is 2001, and I suspected McBain threw the subplot in because of a wish to acknowledge 9/11. Yet "Money, Money, Money" hit the bookstores earlier that summer, which renders his take on a group of al-Qaeda operatives plotting to detonate a bomb in a concert hall rather eerie. "We are teaching them we can strike anywhere, anytime," the terrorist leader explains. "We are telling them they are completely vulnerable."

More eerie is the fact this subplot has no apparent purpose in the novel. It doesn't connect with the other plot threads, except that it seems this particular al-Qaeda group has the benefit of counterfeit cash in funding their deadly work. McBain just throws the terrorist plot in there, it seems, because he sensed it was something important that needed to be dealt with. He was right, of course.

But "Money, Money, Money" is not a better book for this Nostradamian turn. It's certainly interesting, vibrant, readable, at times funny, with Fat Ollie Weeks, the miserably uncouth and bigoted cop, getting more center-stage attention than usual. Reading "87th Precinct" novels is always worthwhile, and this is no exception. But this is no standout, either, however elevated its ambitions.