Kirkus评论

Ed McBain couldn't write bad dialogue if he tried. And the sheer technical strengths that grace his 87th Precinct series almost save this sentimental melodrama--a heavyhanded murder-morality play about what happens to kids (and, later on, to second wives and half-siblings) when parents get divorced. Jamie Purchase of Calusa, Fla., comes from a poker game (and a visit to his new mistress) to find second wife Maureen and their two small daughters butchered. Soon Michael, Jamie's son from marriage #1, confesses, but there are reasons to doubt him. He does, however, have an older sister. And, to lay on his message extra-thick, McBain makes narrator Matt Hope, Jamie's friend and lawyer, a philandering husband-father with his own home-vs.-Other-Woman crisis. Admittedly, this all reads along with characteristic procedural crispness and flavor--but once the oversimplified, exaggerated game plan starts to take shape, you'll start itching for the grayer, richer shades of the 87th Precinct. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.