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    The Pusher
    The Pusher
    The Pusher
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Pusher

    Written by Ed McBain

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A bitterly cold night offers up a body turned blue—not frozen, but swinging from a rope in a dank basement. The dead teen seems like a clear case of suicide, but Detective Steve Carella and Lieutenant Peter Byrnes find a few facts out of place, and an autopsy confirms their suspicions. The boy hadn’t hung himself but OD’d on heroin before an unknown companion strung him up to hide the true cause of death. The revelation dredges up enough muck to muddy the waters of what should’ve been an open-and-shut case. To find the answers to a life gone off the rails, Carella and Byrnes face a deep slog into the community of users and pushers—but a grim phone call discloses that very community already has its claws in a cop’s son. A new pusher is staking a claim right under the 87th Precinct’s noses, and it’s up to Carella and Byrnes to snag the viper before it poisons their whole lives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9781480593916
    The Pusher
    Author

    Ed McBain

    Ed McBain, a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award, was also the first American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. His books have sold more than one hundred million copies, ranging from the more than fifty titles in the 87th Precinct series (including the Edgar Award–nominated Money, Money, Money) to the bestselling novels written under his own name, Evan Hunter—including The Blackboard Jungle (now in a fiftieth anniversary edition from Pocket Books) and Criminal Conversation. Fiddlers, his final 87th Precinct novel, was recently published in hardcover. Writing as both Ed McBain and Evan Hunter, he broke new ground with Candyland, a novel in two parts. He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. He died in 2005. Visit EdMcBain.com.

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    Reviews for The Pusher

    3.5/5

    122 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The third book in the 87th Precinct series is a more standard entry into the police procedural genre. But at the same time, it manages to reach an emotional depth somewhat unusual for the time period.The plot is pretty straight forward. A pair of patrolmen stumble upon a apparent junkie suicide. But sometimes things aren't as easy as they seem, and the suicide squeal quickly turns into a multiple homicide investigation that threatens to become blackmail when Lt. Byrnes son becomes linked to the drug scene. The bulls at the 87th are relegated mainly to the footwork, as most of the behind the scenes action involves Byrnes as he struggles with his son's involvement. Byrnes goes as far as to fill Carella in on the situation, a decision that almost proves to be fatal.Apart from some of the dated aspects one would expect from a well-reserched police drama from the fifties, the bulk of the novel is your typical expose on the brutal world of the street level drug trade. But as usual, McBain delves into the emotional causes and ramifications of the Heroin users and dealers. The most revealing of these is the personal and professional termoil faced by Lt. Byrnes with the revelation that his son is a Heroin addict. Adding to the emotional doubt of where he has gone wrong with his son, and the constant battle between anger and compassion, is the dilemma of whether or not to cover up his son's possible involvement in a crime, especially when a mysterious third party with knowledge of his son's connection attempts to blackmail him for police protection.McBain doesn't just focus on the 87th detectives. Glimpses into the lives of low key players in the drug scene shows the many facets of human frailty and desperation and prevents the broad generalizations that many crime dramas easily fall into. Even the closer look at Carella's relationship with stoolie Danny the Gimp is both touching and revealing. But to McBain's credit, none of this detailed attention to the human element detracts from the gritty realism that is typical of this series.
    • 4/5
      This is the first book I've read by Ed McBain, and now I'm hooked. The prose is spare, grim, and funny; and the characters are moving. In an early scene, the detectives interview the mother of a victim, and it's the most credible and moving such interview I've read in a mystery. Some of the omniscient narrator's asides are quirky, almost loopy, but the author doesn't pull punches when he's presenting tragedy, and the combination gives the book broad emotional range. I'm amazed at how well this book has weathered the decades since it was published, and I'm look forward to experiencing how the rest of the series develops.
    • 5/5
      The third book in the 87th Precinct series is a more standard entry into the police procedural genre. But at the same time, it manages to reach an emotional depth somewhat unusual for the time period.The plot is pretty straight forward. A pair of patrolmen stumble upon a apparent junkie suicide. But sometimes things aren't as easy as they seem, and the suicide squeal quickly turns into a multiple homicide investigation that threatens to become blackmail when Lt. Byrnes son becomes linked to the drug scene. The bulls at the 87th are relegated mainly to the footwork, as most of the behind the scenes action involves Byrnes as he struggles with his son's involvement. Byrnes goes as far as to fill Carella in on the situation, a decision that almost proves to be fatal.Apart from some of the dated aspects one would expect from a well-reserched police drama from the fifties, the bulk of the novel is your typical expose on the brutal world of the street level drug trade. But as usual, McBain delves into the emotional causes and ramifications of the Heroin users and dealers. The most revealing of these is the personal and professional turmoil faced by Lt. Byrnes with the revelation that his son is a Heroin addict. Adding to the emotional doubt of where he has gone wrong with his son, and the constant battle between anger and compassion, is the dilemma of whether or not to cover up his son's possible involvement in a crime, especially when a mysterious third party with knowledge of his son's connection attempts to blackmail him for police protection.McBain doesn't just focus on the 87th detectives. Glimpses into the lives of low key players in the drug scene shows the many facets of human frailty and desperation and prevents the broad generalizations that many crime dramas easily fall into. Even the closer look at Carella's relationship with stoolie Danny the Gimp is both touching and revealing. But to McBain's credit, none of this detailed attention to the human element detracts from the gritty realism that is typical of this series.
    • 5/5
      Even in 1956, when Ed McBain wrote this book, drug addiction was a problem in the United States. Like so many of the books in the 87th precinct series (this is the third), this story touches on a whole range of subjects that remain relevant even today in the US — like the problems facing migrant communities, or violence against women. As part of the author’s attempt to create a new kind of crime fiction in which there is no single hero but instead a collective, McBain has one of his characters shot in the chest and battling for his life at the end of the book. What happens next — and the Afterword that explains it all — was both moving and fascinating.
    • 4/5
      Great description of Steve Carella in this one, “A constant man in a city of inconsistencies.”A young man is dead in the 87th. Is it a heroin overdose, or is it suicide? Or, is it murder? Steve Carella takes the lead in this one, and the path to the truth leads him to death's door! A very good story with quite a bit of detail on the heroin business, which surprised me, as this book came out in 1954! The 'Afterword' in this book was very amusing! Apparently, when the finished version of this story was submitted, Detective Steve Carella died at the end! But McBain's agent and editor didn't like that, and despite the author's protests, Carella lives! Close call, Stevie, close call...
    • 3/5
      If you liked the TV show Hill Street Blues, you'll probably enjoy this series. Ed McBain invented the police procedural subgenre in which a whole precinct is the hero rather than an individual detective and that is provided the basis for such ensemble TV shows...

      In this 3rd book in the series, we meet again Detective Steve Carella who was featured in the first book but the story really revolves around his boss, Lieutenant Byrnes. The plot could have been set last year instead of in 1956; it is rather a sad commentary about drug use in the U.S. that this is so...
    • 5/5
      So far my favorite of the series, although I'm reading in order and it's only book 3
    • 3/5
      Third of McBain's 87th Precinct mysteries shows the author growing in confidence, but this time out the plot lacks a satisfactory resolution and it is left to the characters to capture the reader's interest.
    • 4/5
      Review from Badelynge.An early 87th Precinct story. This one promises rather more noir than it actually delivers. Its opening pages are the hook that tries its darndest to stop you putting the book back onto the spindle and choosing some other more tempting paperback. And even though it's many decades since this one saw anything other than thrift sale piles or charity shop boxes, I can appreciate why McBain lays it on so thick at the start. The city sounded like such a dark and shadow infested place on those pages... and cold, man it's cold. 'The citizens grinned into the wind, but the wind was not in a smiling mood.'After that it gets down to business, the shadows are swept aside and the cold only nips at the narrative infrequently as McBain gets down to populating his police procedural with interesting characters. That is the real strength of these books - just well thought out and realised characters, which doesn't stint with even the minor cast. I've heard all the comparisons to Dragnet but I'd be pulling the wool over your eyes if I agreed with them as I've barely seen more than an episode of that old series. So I'll stick with what I do know, throw my cards down on the table and say it most put me in mind of 'On Dangerous Ground' a classic noir film from the 50s starring Robert Ryan, which in turn was an adaptation of an old noir pulp by Gerald Butler. The early scenes set in the city do sing 87th Precinct at me. And I could draw a little parallel with Carella's romance with his deaf-mute wife Teddy to Robert Ryan's character falling for Ida Lupino's blind girl. I think it's true that screen writers and novelists were feeding on each other voraciously in the 40s and 50s, several of the 87th Precinct novels made it to the big screen itself, as well as a short half-life tv series which is largely forgotten. This one is a strong entry in the series. It's strongest in the heat of the character dialogue, which is very naturalist. If you saw them acted out you would assume the actors were improvising or in some reality show sequence. It's weakest when McBain starts constructing his torturous ironic word-plays.There's also a historic element for modern readers to enjoy, because even though though the stories take place in an imaginary city it can't hide being a city made up of amalgams of New York in the 50s. It's probably a more faithful representative of police procedures than a lot of today's detective fiction can claim, and McBain isn't shy of relating the technical minutiae of 50s forensics. I'd recommend this series to anybody who liked the first 20 minutes of 'On Dangerous Ground' and fans of Dragnet or Hill Street Blues, though it's a nightmare trying to dig these things up cheaply over half a century since they first gave us a twirl on those paperback spindles.
    • 4/5
      A book to read and re-read.One of the strengths of much of Ed McBain`s work is that he gave his detectives personal lives.Prior to that, as with Sexton Blake or Sherlock Holmes, there were occasional references to the fictional sleuth`s tastes, but rarely if ever to their personal circumstances.One might argue that Chandler`s Marlowe was revealed by a series of hints and references (the fact that he lived alone, his past career at the DAs office and dismissal for insubordination, his knowledge of literature,etc), but Chandler himself said he would never write a book with a married Marlowe - when he broke his own rule, one could see why.Anyway, this tale of a newly-married Carella and a Byrnes worried by his son`s involvement with drugs, and possible involvement in a murder, is one of McBain`s best. A tense but compassionate look at life.
    • 4/5
      I like series books and these are such quick reads. I also like the quick dialog and the simpleness of the time that these are set in.