A break from the norm, in that this features 3 novellas rather than a single novel, but none the worse for it. My favourite of the 3 stories was the last one, which has Hawes on a skiing holiday, butting heads with the local cops as he tries to solve a murder. ( )

This volume of the 87th Precinct files is in quite a different style than the others I have read so far. There are three stories inside, but they don’t interconnect or cross over as have others of McBain’s books. This is simply a collection of three separate short stories - the title story, “J”, and “Storm”. The first two stories are good, but I didn't like the third story at all, a Cotton Hawes solo tale set at a ski resort. Heck I don't even think the first murder in that story is even physically possible!?!

Oh well, one book out of the first fifteen that didn't fully entertain me. That's a dang good record! ( )

It was made up of three shortish (about 60 pages each) stories. The first one involves the murder of an independently wealthy young woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her cousin two months prior to her own untimely death. Turns out the one who drowned was actually the rich one and her cousin assumed her identity so she could keep on getting the dividend checks (she did not inherit in the event of her cousin's death, her uncle's alma mater did). She is murdered in her apartment in a botched burglary, totally unrelated to her assuming her dead cousin's identity.
The second story involves the murder of a rabbi on the second day of Passover outside of his synagogue. At first the detectives suspect a local anti-Semitic who has made his feelings very clear, but it turns out it was a member of the rabbi's congregation who felt that his non-Orthodox ideas were going to ruin his temple.
The last story has Hawes on a ski weekend vacation. A young ski instructor is murdered on the slopes. He feels the local police are botching up the case and tries to lend his help, making things very complicated when he is suspected of being the killer. In the end, he does solve the crime all on his lonesome. ( )

This is the 15th book in the eternal 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, and for the first time we have a different format. Rather than a single narrative throughout the book, this is a collection of three short stories, unrelated except for what's alluded to in the title: They all take place (or at least key events do) in the small hours of the morning. As McBain describes them in the first story, which shares the title of the volume:

The city doesn't seem to be itself in the very early hours of the morning. She is a woman, of course, and time will never change that. ... In the empty hours she sleeps, and she does not seem to be herself. She sleeps silently, this city. Oh, an eye open in the buildings of the night here and there, winking on, off again, silence. She rests. In sleep we do not recognize her. Her sleep is not like death, for we can hear and sense the murmur of life beneath the warm bedclothes. But she is a strange woman whom we have known intimately, loved passionately, and now she curls into an unresponsive ball beneath the sheets, and our hand is on her rich hip. We can feel life there, but we do not know her. She is faceless and featureless in the dark. She could be any city, any woman, anywhere. We touch her uncertainly. She has pulled the black nightgown of early morning around her, and we do not know her. She is a stranger, and her eyes are closed.

Notwithstanding those poetic musings, the first story is a straightforward police procedural. A young woman is found dead, and as the detectives of the 87th Precinct investigate they find that many things are not what they seem. I sussed out the twist pretty quickly, but I don't think McBain necessarily meant it to be a huge surprise. And because it's a short story, there is no endless stretch where the reader is screaming the obvious solution at the page, wondering how these smart, professional men — Cotton Hawes and Steve Carella take the lead on this one — can be so dang dumb. That was refreshing.

The second story, J, also begins with a murder. A rabbi has been stabbed to death, and painted on the wall next to him is a single letter, J. Obviously it refers to his religion and indicates an anti-Semite killer — or does it? Investigating are Carella and the precinct's lone Jewish detective, Meyer Meyer, who finds the murder calling into question his own identity as a Jew.

The final story, Storm, breaks all the rules for this series. It's set outside the bounds of the 87th Precinct — outside, in fact, the entire fictional city that is a stand-in for New York City. Cotton Hawes takes a new girlfriend on a skiing trip upstate. They get there just ahead of a blizzard that closes all the roads and means that whoever is killing the ski instructors is somewhere nearby. It was a good mystery and I enjoyed getting to know Cotton better, but it just didn't feel right without the big-city ambience filling the background.

I suppose it's to be expected that if you're going to keep a series fresh through 55 (!) books you need to shake up the formula once in a while. McBain does just that with The Empty Hours, and it's left me eager to dig in to the next one soon. ( )

The Empty Hours is a collection of three short 87th Precinct stories by Ed McBain: The Empty Hours, "J", and Storm. A welcome departure from the typical 87th Precinct structure, these three shorter pieces each focus on a specific crime, and more importantly, how that specific crime affects the precinct boy working on the case.

In The Empty Hours, Steve Carella investigates an apparent suicide with Meyer Meyer's assistance as he desperately looks for evidence of homicide, leading them to more mysteries than they had bargained for. Later, in "J", Meyer is assigned to a Rabbi killed in the alley next to a synagogue. Finally, in Storm, Cotton Hawes involves himself in a murder investigation outside of his jurisdiction when a dead body shows up on a ski lift while he is on vacation.

All three short stories are competent police procedurals in the 87th Precinct vein, and their brevity allows McBain to focus more on one character. Carella's investigation brings out more of the sadness and despair that has been plaguing him over the past few novels, and Meyer finds himself questioning the deepness of his own Jewish faith as he looks into the possibility of the dead Rabbi being the victim of a hate crime. While there isn't any real predominant theme running through these stories - other than murder investigations, of course - The Empty Hours and Storm both feature vacation getaways outside of the city, and all three do result in the detectives taking the cases personally, although the latter is far from unusual in the 87th Precinct series.

Of the three short stories, The Empty Hours is probably the most interesting, and Storm the most formulaic, but they are all strong entries and entertaining reads. ( )