Cop Hater

"I heard raving reviews about this series and wanted to get into crime books more, so I decided to dive into "Cop Hater." I liked a lot of things about this novel. It was fast-paced and just long enough. I liked the dialogue; the characters were witty and snappy. I also liked how the book was about how the cops did everything. It was my first experience reading a book like that, and I've always been interested in police procedures and what happens behind the scenes. I also appreciated how the cops weren't placed on a pedestal; it felt reasonably unbiased. There were bad cops, and there were good cops. Carella was a well-written character. I felt very connected to him and didn't connect super positively with anyone besides his fiancé, but it didn't matter because at least I had Carella. Considering how much build-up there was, the ending felt rushed, but at least the last scene was WELL built up. I'll be indulging in the rest of the series in the future."

""The city lay like a sparkling nest of rare gems, shimmering in layer upon layer of pulsating intensity. The buildings were a stage set. They faced the river, and they glowed with man‐made brilliance, and you stared up at them in awe, and you caught your breath. Behind the buildings, behind the lights, were the streets. There was garbage in the streets."<br/><br/>Right from the beginning the city is as much a character in this book as the cops of the 87th Precinct. McBain shows how he can take a simple police procedural and fill it with the kind of writing and storytelling that made his screenplay of The Birds a success for Hitchcock.<br/><br/>My version came with a prologue by McBain in which he talks about how and why he invented the city of Isola instead of using a real city, and how he came up with the idea of using the precinct cops as the central characters instead of having a Miss Marple type amateur sleuth or a Mike Hammer type private eye. The realism of detective work shines through and leaves you hanging on every word."