Ten Plus One

It is Spring in Isola and McBain opens his novel with a long and humorous paen to the beauties of the season, though we know from experience that we are probably being led up the garden path to discover something dark and sinister. To be precise it's 25 April 1963 and sure enough, there is a murder. Detectives second grade Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer are sent to investigate the shooting of middle-aged executive Anthony Forrest in the middle of a busy street, felled by a. 308 calibre Remington bullet just after leaving his office building. Apparently liked by everyone and with no apparent motive for the crime, Carella has to go empty-handed to deliver the bad news to the family. With no apparent leads, Forrest's 19-year-old daughter Cindy, who currently taking a psych course, takes a special interest in the investigation – and the detective too. This introduces an unusual dynamic, a hint of something potentially perverse, though this had already been touched upon at the scene of the crime in a light-handed manner through the banter of Homicide North's Tweedledum and Tweedledee duo of Monoghan and Monroe.