Since 1956, when Cop Hater was first published and inaugurated the series, almost fifty 87th Precinct novels have appeared. They are set in an imaginary city called Isola, the Italian word for "island," which has, along with other geographic features of the landscape, led readers to make the not-too-difficult leap of understanding that Isola is Ed McBain's thinly disguised New York City. And if the reader goes through the novels in chronological sequence the social concerns of the books certainly mirror those of not just any large American urban environment but more particularly New York.

As he did in his first successful novel, The Blackboard Jungle, which examined the plight of the city's schools during a transitional phase of urban life, so the 87th Precinct novels trace the evolution of the police over a longer period.

Like Balzac's Comedie Humaine, whose interlocking series of novels chronicled nineteenth-century...