Ed McBain: Blood Relatives (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
Steve Carella does not fit the picture of a big city detective. Well-mannered and the consummate professional, he lacks the rough-hewn edges of the men who devote their lives to fighting crime on the streets. But there is one thing that tears him up... one thing that drives him to the edge of his much darker side.

When a madman rapes and kills his first victim in the 87th Precinct but leaves the second alive after a brutal knifing, Carella relentlessly hunts the man down. But the detective is in for a shock when the surviving victim recognizes the assailant in a police lineup...

A probing, intimate crime thriller that exposes the deeper recesses of the 87th Precinct's main character, Blood Relatives is an Ed McBain classic. His mastery of character, dialogue, and place come together in a brooding powerhouse of a novel.

Ed McBain: Blood Relatives. An 87th Precinct Novel. Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publ., ISBN: 9781612181578 (March, 2012), 186 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Blood Relatives (USA 1978)

From the Publisher:
THE MEANEST SEX CRIME ON THE STREET
It was exactly the sort of case Detective Carella despised. One girl had been raped and murdered. Another savagely ripped by a psycho's knife. Patricia Lowery survived the slashing attack and could identify her cousin's killer. All Carella needed was the girl's eyewitness testimony and a little luck. Then Patricia spotted her assailant in a routine line-up and Carella's luck ran out. His witness had fingered a fellow detective who had been on the force for seventeen years...

Ed McBain: Blood Relatives. The New 87th Precinct Thriller. Bantam Books, ISBN: 0553117599 (May, 1978), 163 p., $1.75.

Ed McBain: Blood Relatives (UK 1976)

From the Publisher:
The hand lay just outside the door of an abandoned tenement. For a frightened moment Patrolman Shanahan thought it had been severed from the rest of the body.

It had not, but 15-year-old Muriel Stark's body was a mass of knife wounds and when her young cousin Patricia reported the crime, she too, was bleeding. Detective Bert Kling would always remember seeing her bloody palmprints, one on each of the glass-panelled doors leading into the 87th Precinct station house, before the girl stumbled into the room.

What happened to the two girls on their way home from a party? Who cut the lock off Muriel's diary? And who used the kitchen knife for murder? Detectives Carella and Kling had a formidable surprise awaiting them.

Ed McBain: Blood Relatives. An 87th Precinct Novel. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976, ISBN: 0241892260, 178 p., £?.??.

Ed McBain: Blood Relatives (USA 1975)

From the Publisher:
"Bloody palmprints, He would always remember seeing first the bloody prints, one on each side of the glass- paneled doors. And then the doors swinging open and the girl Spilling into the room. Arms wide, hands im- ploring... blue dress torn open over white blood-smeared bra, she lurched toward the muster desk, beseeching Kling to help, for God's sake, help."

The girl was Patricia Lowery, fifteen years old. She was the lucky one. Soon after, they found her cousin, Muriel Stark, seventeen, lying in a doorway, her body ripped with knife wounds. Hysterically, Patricia talked to Detective Steve Carella and Bert Kling of the 87th Precinct, telling her brutal story of molestation and murder. The man was tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, she said; he had a knife blade four inches long, she would never forget what he looked like, what he made them do.

Immediately, Kling and Carella set out to find the killer, launching interrogations, file searches, laboratory analyses -- all the weapons of investigation at their command. The twisting, blood-spotted trail leads them deep into the warped world of the sex offender. Then, click. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes, phony alibi. And a positive identification from Patricia: "I said I'd never forget."

There's only one problem. He's the wrong man.

Blood Relatives is top-notch McBain, filled with crackling dialogue and nerve-twisting suspense. McBain's ability to evoke characters, the atmosphere of the squadroom, and the grit and sweat of police work has always been exceptional, but Blood Relatives is something special: a truly superior thriller, with an ending that hits like a hammer blow.

Ed McBain: Blood Relatives. An 87th Precinct Mystery. Random House, ISBN: 0394485823 (October, 1975), 178 p., $6.95 (?).