Ed McBain: Lightning (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
The city can be a strange place, full of odd sights. Sometimes chilling sights. But nothing could prepare the detectives of the 87th Precinct for the sight of a murdered young woman, a member of a local college track team, hanging from a lamppost. Nor could they be ready for the news that the same night, another woman is raped for the third time -- by the same man. Two cases, two perpetrators, one chilling evening.

Can the detectives of the 87th, with help from Fat Ollie Weeks and Rape Squad Decoy Eileen Burke, put them behind bars for good? The team doesn't have much time, because it only takes a moment for lightning to strike again.

One of Ed McBain's grittiest installments of his famed 87th Precinct series, Lightning is a masterpiece of suspense, brooding intensity, and ingenious plotting that elevates crime fiction to its highest possible plane.

Ed McBain: Lightning. An 87th Precinct Novel. Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publ., ISBN: 9781612181752 (March, 2012), 334 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Lightning (USA 1985)

From the Publisher:
LIGHTNING -- strikes with repeated terror as a diabolical hangman murderer leaves one pretty coed after another dangling from the city's lampposts.

LIGHTNING -- rends the night sky with searing acts of violence as a serial rapist returns for the same victims again and again.

LIGHTNING blazes through the 87th precinct as the dedicated men and women who wear the gold badge push themselves to the limits of danger... because they know that behind each strike of lightning lies the darkness of a criminal's twisted mind.

Ed McBain: Lightning. An 87th Precinct Novel. Avon Books, ISBN: 0380699745 (July, 1985), 212 p., $3.95.

Ed McBain: Lightning (UK 1984)

From the Publisher:
A young woman is found hanging from a lamppost in a deserted area of the 87th Precinct. That same night, another woman is raped - for the third time in succession, by the same man each time. Not long after that, a second murder victim is found hanging from a lamppost in another part of the precinct. The murders are obviously linked. But how? And why are both murder victims female athletes and - more specifically - runners on the track teams of two different colleges? Why is someone, as it turns out, systematically raping different women twice, three times, sometimes four times in succession? Has the Deaf Man put in a return appearance, as the detectives of the 87th secretly suspect? Can Fat Ollie Weeks help the men of the 87th solve either of these crimes? Will Eileen Burke, working as a decoy for the Rape Squad, be forced into a confrontation that may change her life and her views about police work?

Lightning can strike twice - and sometimes even more often.
In his latest 87th Precinct novel, Ed MeBain once again shows how the patient, hard-working professionals with the golden shields investigate urban crime, putting pieces together with immense skill, intuition and old-fashioned pounding of the streets. And how the individual detectives emerge as flesh-and-blood men and women - with their personal problems, pains, sorrows and triumphs -- in circumstances that frequently test their expertise to the limit of endurance.

Ed McBain: Lightning. An 87th Precinct Novel. Hamish Hamilton, ISBN: 0241113725 (October, 1984), 304 p., £?.??.

Ed McBain: Lightning (USA 1984)

From the Publisher:
A young woman is found hanging from a lamppost in a deserted area of the 87th Precinct. That same night, another woman is raped -- for the third time in succession, by the same man each time. Not long after that, a second murder victim is found hanging from a lamppost in another part of the precinct. The murders are obviously linked. But how? And why are both murder victims female athletes and -- more specifically -- runners on, the track teams of two different colleges? Why is someone, as it turns out, systematically raping different women twice, three times, sometimes four times in succession? Has the Deaf Man put in a return appearance, as the detectives of the 87th Precinct secretly suspect? Can Fat Ollie Weeks help the men of the 87th solve these crimes? Will Eileen Burke, working as a decoy for the Rape Squad, be forced into a confrontation that may change her life and her views about police work?

Lightning can strike twice -- and sometimes even more often. In his new 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain once again shows how the patient, hard-working professionals with the golden shields cope with crime and killers, putting together the pieces of each difficult case with immense skill, intuition... and old fashioned pounding of the streets... testing their expertise to the limit of endurance.

Ed McBain: Lightning. An 87th Precinct Novel. Arbor House, ISBN: 0877955816 (August, 1984), 304 p., $15.95.