McBain, Ed (1926—)

Over the past 40 years, Evan Hunter, writing under the pseudonym Ed McBain, has established himself as an amazingly prolific author in a number of different genres. He is best known for his gritty "87th Precinct" detective series, which has grown to include nearly 50 volumes since the first installment, Cop Hater, was published in 1956. Hunter has also published a number of other works under his real name, as well as the pseudonyms Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, and Richard Marsten.

Hunter first became interested in writing during World War II, while serving in the Navy. After the war, he attend Hunter College in New York City, studying to become a teacher and graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1950. After graduation, he taught at a vocational school in New York City for one year. Hunter quickly left teaching, and then held a series of diverse jobs, including selling lobsters and answering telephones for the American Automobile Association. A turning point for the author came in the early 1950s, when he secured a job as an editor at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency in New York, during which time he began to write and sell short stories, including science fiction and westerns.

Hunter's experience teaching in the New York schools provided the basis for his first book. The Blackboard Jungle, the story of teachers in New York's vocational schools who attempt to deal with unruly, unmotivated students achieved great popularity upon its release in October 1954. The following year, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios adapted The Blackboard Jungle for the screen, and the film, starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier, received four Academy Award nominations. Ten other feature films, as well as two television movies, have been made based on Hunter's books. Hunter has also written several screenplays, including one for Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie The Birds, based on a Daphne du Maurier short story.

While the publication of The Blackboard Jungle in October 1954 and the subsequent release of the movie based on the book gained Hunter a certain amount of fame, it also proved a mixed blessing for the author. As he told the literary critic Roy Newquist in an interview in the 1960s, recorded in Newquist's book Conversations, he was not attempting to provide an expose of the New York schools in the book, but simply writing about his time as a teacher, which he considered to be the most meaningful experience in his life up to that time. Reviewers and interviewers expected Hunter to be an expert on the problems of juvenile delinquency and urban schools, but he refused to play that role. Hunter also noted that the critical reception of his subsequent novels, including Strangers When We Meet, Mothers and Daughters, and Paper Dragon, was not as positive as he hoped it would be.

While the publication and success of The Blackboard Jungle did not lead to Hunter's achieving the critical success he felt he deserved, it did create the opportunity for him to launch the highly successful "87th Precinct" series. When Pocket Books did a reprint of The Blackboard Jungle, Hunter decided to send the publisher a mystery he had written under a pseudonym (not McBain). One of the editors at Pocket Books recognized Hunter's style and told him that the publisher needed someone to take over the niche occupied by Erle Stanley Gardner, whose mysteries were recycled every several years under new jackets to enthusiastic popular reaction, but who was getting too old to continue to produce as prolifically as he had in the past. Pocket Books offered Hunter a contract to produce three books under the McBain pseudonym, with an opportunity to renew if the series was success, and the "87th Precinct" was launched.

McBain noted in an interview with Contemporary Authors that the "nice thing about the '87th Precinct' is that I can deal with any subject matter so long as it's criminally related. With the Ed McBain novels, I only want to say that cops have a tough, underpaid job, and they deal with murder every day of the week, and that's the way it is, folks." The series is set in the fictional city of Isola, clearly patterned after New York City, and deals with the experiences of a consistent set of about a dozen characters, including detectives Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer, and Bert Kling, all of whom deal with various personal issues while generally tackling several cases in each novel.

In addition to the "87th Precinct" novels, McBain has produced 13 entries in the popular Matthew Hope series of crime novels, which deal with a Florida attorney who becomes involved in solving mysteries, since the first volume appeared in 1978. Despite his great success as McBain, the author has continued to produce work as Evan Hunter. His 1994 Hunter novel Criminal Conversation, about a district attorney whose wife ends up having an affair with a mob boss he is attempting to indict, was a bestseller and was purchased by actor Tom Cruise's production company for a potential movie. In 1986, McBain was given the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

—Jason George

Further Reading:

Dove, George N. The Boys from Grover Avenue: Ed McBain's 87th Precinct Novels. Bowling Green, Ohio, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1985.

"Ed McBain." http://www.mysterynet.com/history/mcbain/.June 1999.

Newquist, Roy. Conversations. New York, Rand McNally and Company, 1967.