He Who Hesitates, by Ed McBain

This one is an outlier in the 87th Precinct. It’s told entirely from the perspective of Roger Broome, a visitor to the city who was only supposed to be there for a few days on business. But now he feels he needs to go to the police and tell them something.

We gradually learn what that something is through flashbacks seeded throughout the story. It has to do with a girl Roger met the previous night. Her name was Molly and, as the backstory is gradually unfolded for us, things do not look good for Molly.

Roger shies away from going to the 87th Precinct. He encounters several of the detectives during the course of the day and it’s interesting to see the people who are usually the main characters through Roger’s perspective. In the meantime, he vacillatates between going to the cops or simply going home.

In the meantime, he meets ANOTHER girl and makes a date with her. That might not be a good thing.

Go to the cops or go home? He doesn’t decide until the last page of the book.

The book can be seen as a homage to James M. Cain in its structure and themes. I don’t know if that was intentional, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.

I don’t think I would recommend this to someone new to the 87th Precinct series and I can’t call this a favorite of mine. But it is indeed interesting to see the main cast through someone else’s eyes and the “will he or won’t he” vibe does add a real tension to the story. I would call this a mid-level entry in the series. It’s an experiment that I enjoyed as a one-time thing. For other fans of the series, they will either also enjoy the departure from the usual procedural formula or be annoyed by it and glad that McBain would be returning to that formula in the next book.