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CRIME COP: Detective Jeff Flavin gets assigned to head the Burglary detail when a rich guy named Sturgis is beaten and his beautiful wife murdered during a robbery of their safe. He and his partner, George Gilman, interview the murder victim’s best friend. They suspect the friend knows a lot more than she’s telling about what went on at the Sturgis’s. But overall there are very few clues—no fingerprints, only a light shoe print. This is the fourth robbery involving safe cracking and husband beating—all but the most recent involving the same kind of safe—so they start looking at disgruntled workers at the safe company. That’s when they discover Leonard Ferenc, who fits the bill perfectly. But finding Ferenc is another matter altogether. BODY OF THE CRIME: Lt. Ben Tutchek has been promoted to Commander of the Homicide Division. Delegating responsibility isn’t coming easy to him. But today, the day after the Fourth of July, it’s all hitting the fan at once—there’s a rape killing in South Branch Park, a drowned woman found floating in the river against the East Coast Fisheries dock, cop-fighters down at The Point, and the holdup of a Park Liquor Shop in which the owner is almost killed. As it that weren’t enough, the president of a large Manhattan company has fallen down dead in his office from a mysterious head wound. The Commissioner wants answers. And as the paperwork mounts on his desk, Tutchek is caught right in the middle, trying to solve it all himself.
Crime Cop:Using the pseudonyms Larry Holden and Larry Heller, New Jersey native Lorenz F. Heller (1910-1965) authored two police procedural crime novels in 1959 and 1962 titled Crime Cop and Body of the Crime. Stark House Press has reprinted these lean thrillers in one volume with an introduction by retired LAPD detective and author Paul Bishop. As a huge fan of Heller’s writing, I was excited to plunge into Crime Cop.Taking cues from Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, Crime Cop is set in the fictional metropolis of Hudson. Heller does a nice job of mimicking McBain’s third-person narrative voice. Our featured cops are robbery Detectives Jeff Flavin and George Gilman (presumably before he wrote the Edge westerns), and they are busy dealing with actual crimes, chronic complainers and tips from chatty stoolies.Amid the day-to-day chaos, Flavin is summoned to a boss’ office to be briefed on a big case. A series of residential home invasion robberies resulted in the death of a female homeowner. Homicide is working the killing, and they need Flavin and his partner to tackle the robberies providing the department with two avenues to solve the crime.Beyond the normal procedural steps of interviewing potential witnesses, there is some interesting pre-computer police science elements to the plot that were completely fascinating. The compiling of clues and inferences gained from those clues is an exercise in pure Sherlockian deduction. As cops, Flavin and Gilman are logic machines and a pleasure to read.Smart legwork by the crime cops - punctuated by vivid hardboiled dialogue - develops a viable suspect for the robberies and the killing. There are twists and turns along the way. We also get several vividly-drawn characters filling out the cast, culminating in a satisfying ending.Crime Cop reminded me of an exceptional Ed McBain 87th Precinct cover band. In many ways, I preferred Heller’s writing and plotting to McBain’s work. The good news is that - thanks to Stark House - readers don’t need to choose. Read them both.Fun Fact:There’s a homicide detective in Crime Cop named Ben Tutchek who is the main character in the author’s Body of the Crime. Interestingly, the 1962 paperback was published under the quasi-pseudonym of Larry Heller. The author was setting himself up for a Marvel Universe (or 87th Precinct) of inter-connected cop stories from Pyramid Books, but tepid sales couldn’t justify a third novel. Thanks to Stark House for reuniting this two-book “series” into a single volume.
