Don't leave it on ice

Press, 3 November 1984, Page 22

Don't leave it on ice

Ic@. By Ed Mcßain. Pan, 1984. 288 pp. $6.95 (paperback).

(Reviewed by

Ken Strongman)

It is probably bad form to liken a book to a television show, but the excuse is that they are both very good as well as being similar. “Ice,” the latest 87th Precinct mystery, is, like “Hill Street Blues,” made even better by the more leisurely pace of the written word. The Precinct is like the Hill with all of the missing bits filled in, but without everything happening at once.

Unlike many writers of crime fiction, Ed Mcßain has not deteriorated throughout more than 20 tales of Carella, his complex of men in the 87th, and his lovely nut deaf wife. “Ice” is the best I have read. The plot is intricate and tight, the characters develop, even after all these years, and above all, the writing is very fine indeed. There is a sense in which the police

S dural is the poor relation in the y of crime fiction. “Ice” shows that this does not have to be so; it is entirely believable and yet thoroughly absorbing as a good work of fiction should be. Even the title is excellent and, for all its simplicity, means something other than the obvious, or the next obvious, or the next This is one paperback which is clearly worth the money. To end with a small taste, how is this for an elegant comparison between the two opposed viewpoints which often beset

American cops and robbers? “They were looking for him to do consecutive time on at least four homicide raps. He was hoping to be out on the street again within the imminently foreseeable future. They were somewhat at odds as concerned their differing aspirations and their separate versions of what had happened over the past nine days.” It is all like that.