(3 of 3)
In Eight Black Horses (Arbor House; 250 pages; $15.95), the multinamed novelist who signs his police procedurals Ed McBain displays shrewd plotting, deadpan humor and understated, unnerving violence. The story pits the cops of his fictional 87th precinct against a cunning, twisted and slightly cartoonish villain, the Deaf Man. The action shuttles from screwball comedy to revenge tragedy and seems amoral even when the good guys triumph. The writer, who also publishes fiction under the name Evan Hunter (The Blackboard Jungle), retains the measured pace and discerning, descriptive eye of the serious novelist.
The Man from Internal Affairs (Mysterious Press; 215 pages; $15.95) by Jazz Writer and Village Voice Columnist Nat Hentoff achieves what is often attempted but rarely attained, a comic mystery that is both funny and scary. Hentoff's convoluted story involves the drug trade, male and female prostitution, antagonism verging on race war between Irish and Jewish police officers, the plight of the forcibly retired, and the purported pervasive corruption of New York City. All this is set against the backdrop of a gruesome series of murders: the top halves of three corpses are found crammed into garbage cans. The "man" of the title is an investigator for the department's own secret self-policing unit, and he, like the reader, is trying to determine whether the novel's apparent hero is in fact a crook. In the largest sense, Internal Affairs is about the deceptive nature of facts and evidence, and the ways in which incomplete knowledge can lead to disastrously wrong conclusions. Not just a splendidly chilling entertainment, it is also a journalist's mea culpa for his craft's prevailing sin of undue certitude. --By William A. Henry III