Ed McBain's Shotgun

"Oh, how they hoped for an original slaying once in a while, a well-conceived murder instead of these sloppy run-of-the-mill crimes of passion that were constantly being dumped into their laps. Oh, how they longed for a killer who would knock off somebody with a rare untraceable poison, Oh, how they wished they might find a body in a locked windowless room, Oh, how they wanted somebody to scheme and plot for months on end and then commit the perfect homicide, which everyone would think was suicide or something." 

"Meyer and Hawes got all the interesting cases."

Carella and Kling are called in when two bodies, a man and a woman, are found by the milkman making his morning rounds. The milkman liked the Leydens--she gave him a cup of coffee when he collected the bill, she didn't have to do that--and he seemed like a very nice man, only he had to travel a lot, missed his wife. "It scares you, you know?"

The first cops on the scene are happy to call it domestic trouble, murder-suicide, and wrap it up at once. But Carella sees through that. (Kling is busy throwing up--he's still new to the 87th--and murders--in this one.) 

Both the victims have been shot in the face, which must mark particular hatred on the part of the murderer. Some sort of creep? (Beyond the usual fact that murderers are creeps, of course...) Carella and Kling are on the track of somebody who meets girls in bars.

McBain's stories often look like they're some sort of random violence--or some sort of creep--but in the end the solution is much more Sherlock Holmes-ish than that--untraceable poison, locked room--and this is no exception. Shooting somebody in the face might be a mark of particular animosity, as they speculate at first, but it just might also be a trick to make indentification difficult, especially for people who've never been fingerprinted...dental records are of no use...and our first cops are happy to think this was suicide or something...

Cotton and Hawes' case is a woman who's stabbed with a bread knife. Was that more interesting? I wouldn't have thought so, necessarily. But it turns out connected to Carella and Kling's case, and that's definitely another sign of a classic puzzle mystery.

Not the best McBain by any means, but a satisfactory entry.

Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt

Silver Age (1970). Two People