A Matter of Conviction

By Ed McBain

After an intense heat wave, storms threaten to blanket New York City, and three boys walk across town with knives in their pockets and murder on their minds. They're tough kids in combat boots, crossing into Spanish Harlem to pick a fight. And when they see one of their intended victims, they surround him, draw their knives, and plunge their weapons into the poor boy's gut. The attackers flee, and blood pours down the victim's lifeless body, mingling with the sudden rain. But despite the showers, nothing will be able to extinguish the full-blown panic that threatens to set the city aflame. Prosecuting the case falls to Hank Bell, a Harlem-born district attorney with a solemn sense of civic duty. As the case threatens to unravel, Hank will be the only thing that stands between his city and blood-spattered anarchy. The inspiration for John Frankenheimer's classic film The Young Savages, this is a hard-eyed look at a city on the edge of chaos, written by a man who understood urban crime better than anyone else: legendary crime writer Ed McBain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: mysteriouspress.com
• Release date: Aug 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788540582

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.

Reviews for A Matter of Conviction

[bekkil1977 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Awhile back I visited this cool used book store fairly close to where I live, and found two old Evan Hunter paperbacks I had never seen before. I finally got around to reading one of them: "A Matter of Conviction". It was one of his early books. Assistant D.A. Hank Bell is assigned a case, prosecuting three young men who stabbed and killed another young man, who happened to be blind and Puerto Rican (it's the 1950s). The three boys who stabbed him are white and belong to a rival gang. As a further twist, the mother of one of the killers is Bell's old girlfriend, who wrote him a Dear John letter when he was off fighting in WW2. It had a lot of typical McBain elements to it, and it was a quick, engrossing read.