John,
Re your comment below:
"I particularly enjoyed any of the Deaf Man stories starting
with 'Let's Hear It For the Deaf Man' and
'Hark!' both particularly stand out in my mind. It seems as
though for these stories, given that there's a
well-established baddie, the well-established characters seem
to work a little bit harder."
The first "Deaf Man" novel wasn't LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE DEAF
MAN. It was THE HECKLER from 1960, which preceded LET'S HEAR
IT by 13 years, and which was followed by FUZZ (1968), which
preceded LET'S HEAR IT by five years.
THE HECKLER, as I've said, is my personal favorite 87th
Precinct novel, but, for me at least, it's the only one of
the "Deaf Man" sub-series that really works. Criminal
masterminds, a la Moriarty and Fu Manchu, don't really fit
into the naturalistic, ultra-realistic atmosphere of the
police procedural. It's like chocolate and pastrami, two
really great things that don't go together. But in THE
HECKLER, the two disparate elements, realistic police work
and a melodramatic, larger-than-life villain, are balanced in
perfect harmony.
JIM DOHERTY
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