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Police Procedurals
-Ed McBain, "The Empty Hours"
-Donald Westlake, "The Sound of Murder"
-Georges Simenon, "Storm in the Channel"
-Hugh Pentecost, "Murder in the Dark"
-Donald Westlake, "The Sound of Murder"
-Georges Simenon, "Storm in the Channel"
-Hugh Pentecost, "Murder in the Dark"
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
1 person is currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Martin H. Greenberg
910 books163 followersMartin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and speculative fiction anthologist. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. In addition, he was a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel.
For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.
For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 18, 2025
This book contains four novellas. The best two are: Ed McBain, The Empty Hours, which I’ve read before — I’m not a big Evan Hunter fan, though; and one of Donald Westlake’s Levine stories, The Sound of Murder, which is wonderful. And I’ll look up the collection and read the rest, I think.
June 12, 2020
This is book 2 of 4 in a set called Academy Mystery Novellas. This one contains: The Empty Hours by Ed McBain, The Sound of Murder, Donald Westlake, Storm int he Channel, Georges Simenon, & Murder in the Dark by Hugh Pentecost. All for authors are generally well know, but it is harder now to get access to the novella length story.
I liked the first 3 a great deal, they had the snap and quirk that makes a shorter story line dynamic. The last by Hugh Pentecost, an author I really like, I found the weakest. But a great deal of that also was the story’s old fashion feel - as well as having a romance burst forth. The interesting thing is that in Pentecost’s story the police part doesn’t solve the crime, it’s another person in the story. So in a sense, it was vaguely police procedural. And if you want to find out a bit about world of diamonds it’s interesting. Not sure if it’s still done this way.
Would I recommend this, yes the first three are pretty strong and the last is all right - and contains a “regular’ in other Pentecost stories.
I liked the first 3 a great deal, they had the snap and quirk that makes a shorter story line dynamic. The last by Hugh Pentecost, an author I really like, I found the weakest. But a great deal of that also was the story’s old fashion feel - as well as having a romance burst forth. The interesting thing is that in Pentecost’s story the police part doesn’t solve the crime, it’s another person in the story. So in a sense, it was vaguely police procedural. And if you want to find out a bit about world of diamonds it’s interesting. Not sure if it’s still done this way.
Would I recommend this, yes the first three are pretty strong and the last is all right - and contains a “regular’ in other Pentecost stories.
March 26, 2016
From Casual Debris.
In 1985 Academy Chicago Publishers released a four-volume series of books featuring rarely re-printed novellas by popular mystery writers. The books were divided into four mystery sub-genres and included four novellas apiece. The volume titles and themes were: Women Sleuths, Police Procedurals, Locked Room Puzzles and Great British Detectives. The series featured sixteen stories by sixteen different authors, with no writer appearing more than once. Though labeled as novellas some were actually longer short stories, or novelettes. Many of the stories saw little print, which is not surprising as it has always been difficult to publish and re-print stories of such awkward length. The series itself was later reprinted, in 1991, as a boxed set by The Readers' Digest Association.
Volume two in the series is well balanced in that it features two strong stories and two average ones, two real novellas and two novelettes, and though each work follows police procedure, the stories themselves are diverse within the sub-genre. The better works are the first two: McBain's "The Empty Hours" and Westlake's "The Sound of Murder." While the Simenon and Pentecost stories are not bad, they are not memorable and, with so many stories out there, questionable in their re-print worthiness.
McBain's "The Empty Hours" is a cold, distant telling of the murder of a young woman who, despite her modest situation, lived in an expensive apartment with expensive things. The mystery expands and reveals itself very much through official procedure, and culminates in a tragic denouement. Westlake's story is similar in that it too is genuinely tragic, but while McBain's tragedy is brought on by the gritty reality of the urban landscape (specifically New York City), Westlake's tragedy in "The Sound of Murder" is internalized and the petty needs of humanity are reflected in a neurotic and sensitive middle-aged detective.
Georges Simenon's novelette "Storm in the Channel" is a far lighter story than the first two. It involves a recently retired Jules Maigret on holiday with his wife, stranded in a rooming house during a rainstorm, where one of the employees gets murdered. Though there are procedural elements in the investigation, much of the focus is on humour so that it reads more like a cozy than what a reader might expect a procedural to be; paired down to its investigative elements and removing the lightness could have led the story toward its own dramatic tragedy, but instead the death and motivation feel almost incidental. Similarly Hugh Pentecost's "Murder in the Dark" is an uneven story that reads like a fusion between different sub-genres, with the procedural aspect being not among its most notable. In an interesting change the detective is relegated to observer as a secondary player, an initial suspect, abducts the narrative and investigates in a clumsy, inefficient way. Add a love story and other tidbits from assassins to the locked room ("where in the hotel are those diamonds?") and the mish-mashing is complete. The story's greatest achievement is in the confessional written out by our protagonist, and the details in diamond-smuggling, appraisal and retailing that I found fascinating.
With the exception of Pentecost's piece, the investigators themselves play an important part in the story itself. The gritty down-to-earth qualities of McBain's detectives are very much a part of the dark New York landscape. Westlake's detective is a self-questioning and neurotic late middle-aged man whose awareness of his own mortality makes the reader aware of general human mortality, and his self-concern is in striking contrast with the waste in which human life is eventually equated to. Finally, Simenon's detective is more comical and unaffected by the tragedy of the victim in his story, and to me this unfortunately diminishes the characters themselves. In Pentecost the characters are more pastiche, and the detective is a bit player who stands grinning in the background.
Though overall the anthology is somewhat above average, it is certainly an interesting overview of the procedural, at least for the twenty-five years leading up to 1962. I'm certain there are other, more comprehensive anthologies out there dealing with police procedurals, though perhaps not devoted on the longer short form.
In 1985 Academy Chicago Publishers released a four-volume series of books featuring rarely re-printed novellas by popular mystery writers. The books were divided into four mystery sub-genres and included four novellas apiece. The volume titles and themes were: Women Sleuths, Police Procedurals, Locked Room Puzzles and Great British Detectives. The series featured sixteen stories by sixteen different authors, with no writer appearing more than once. Though labeled as novellas some were actually longer short stories, or novelettes. Many of the stories saw little print, which is not surprising as it has always been difficult to publish and re-print stories of such awkward length. The series itself was later reprinted, in 1991, as a boxed set by The Readers' Digest Association.
Volume two in the series is well balanced in that it features two strong stories and two average ones, two real novellas and two novelettes, and though each work follows police procedure, the stories themselves are diverse within the sub-genre. The better works are the first two: McBain's "The Empty Hours" and Westlake's "The Sound of Murder." While the Simenon and Pentecost stories are not bad, they are not memorable and, with so many stories out there, questionable in their re-print worthiness.
McBain's "The Empty Hours" is a cold, distant telling of the murder of a young woman who, despite her modest situation, lived in an expensive apartment with expensive things. The mystery expands and reveals itself very much through official procedure, and culminates in a tragic denouement. Westlake's story is similar in that it too is genuinely tragic, but while McBain's tragedy is brought on by the gritty reality of the urban landscape (specifically New York City), Westlake's tragedy in "The Sound of Murder" is internalized and the petty needs of humanity are reflected in a neurotic and sensitive middle-aged detective.
Georges Simenon's novelette "Storm in the Channel" is a far lighter story than the first two. It involves a recently retired Jules Maigret on holiday with his wife, stranded in a rooming house during a rainstorm, where one of the employees gets murdered. Though there are procedural elements in the investigation, much of the focus is on humour so that it reads more like a cozy than what a reader might expect a procedural to be; paired down to its investigative elements and removing the lightness could have led the story toward its own dramatic tragedy, but instead the death and motivation feel almost incidental. Similarly Hugh Pentecost's "Murder in the Dark" is an uneven story that reads like a fusion between different sub-genres, with the procedural aspect being not among its most notable. In an interesting change the detective is relegated to observer as a secondary player, an initial suspect, abducts the narrative and investigates in a clumsy, inefficient way. Add a love story and other tidbits from assassins to the locked room ("where in the hotel are those diamonds?") and the mish-mashing is complete. The story's greatest achievement is in the confessional written out by our protagonist, and the details in diamond-smuggling, appraisal and retailing that I found fascinating.
With the exception of Pentecost's piece, the investigators themselves play an important part in the story itself. The gritty down-to-earth qualities of McBain's detectives are very much a part of the dark New York landscape. Westlake's detective is a self-questioning and neurotic late middle-aged man whose awareness of his own mortality makes the reader aware of general human mortality, and his self-concern is in striking contrast with the waste in which human life is eventually equated to. Finally, Simenon's detective is more comical and unaffected by the tragedy of the victim in his story, and to me this unfortunately diminishes the characters themselves. In Pentecost the characters are more pastiche, and the detective is a bit player who stands grinning in the background.
Though overall the anthology is somewhat above average, it is certainly an interesting overview of the procedural, at least for the twenty-five years leading up to 1962. I'm certain there are other, more comprehensive anthologies out there dealing with police procedurals, though perhaps not devoted on the longer short form.
January 12, 2015
Police Procedurals (1985), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Bill Pronzini, is the second volume in the Academy Mystery Novellas series. For this series Greenberg and Pronzini chose works by respected crime fiction writers--most works which had never appeared in anthologies before--and organized the novellas into editions based on sub-genre. As the title indicates, this collection brings together four novellas that give us a taste of police procedure as envisioned by Ed McBain, Donald Westlake, Georges Simenon, and Hugh Pentecost.
McBain's work, The Empty Hours from 1960 has the Steve Carella and the men of the 87th Precinct investigating the death of a woman found dead in a cheap apartment. From the beginning, things are not what they seem. The woman looks like an African American to the officers first on the scene, but she proves to be Caucasian--blackened and bloated by the intense heat and rapid decomposition. They assume she was a woman down on her luck--but her clothes prove to be more expensive than her surroundings would warrant and her bank account is nice and full. As they check up on her, they find that she was Claudia Davis, a wealthy young woman with a generous trust fund. They also learn that her cousin had come to stay with her not so very long ago, but more recently had died in a boating accident. Now both women are dead. But why? And what happened to the missing $5,000 from her safe deposit box? This is an excellent procedural--very descriptive writing, but not so much of a puzzler and very little misdirection.
Quote:
Nobody like Monday morning. It was invented for hangovers. It is really not the beginning of a new week, but only the tail end of the week before. Nobody likes it, and it doesn't have to be rainy or gloomy or blue in order to provoke disaffection. It can be bright and sunny and the beginning of August. (p. 39)
The Sound of Murder (1960) by Westlake is the story of a young girl who seems mature beyond her years who comes to Detective Abraham Levine in Brooklyn's 43rd Precinct to accuse her mother of murder. Amy Thornbridge Walker is positive that her mother has killed her step-father with a "loud noise" (he suffered from a weak heart) and wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't done in her father as well. She has no proof to offer the detective--just her calm assurance that it happened. Levine, who suffers from a bit of heart trouble himself, begins to believe there may be something to the girl's story and sets out to investigate. But as with the first story, everything may not be quite as it seems. This one is nicely done with a clue planted right in front of the reader but so subtly it will probably be overlooked.
Simenon's Storm in the Channel (1944) sees now-retired Superintendent Maigret setting off with his wife on holiday to England. But a storm in English Channel prevents their crossing and they take refuge in boarding house. Maigret finds himself on something of a busman's holiday when the maid is found shot to death after helping one of the other boarders carry luggage down to the boat. The local detective thinks the retired policeman may be past it, but Maigret soon proves that he can read clues in a menu with dress measurements doodled on it. It isn't long before the detective has a confessed murderer in charge. This is straight deduction and Maigret makes the most of the few clues he finds.
Quote:
"It must have been a crime of passion....That girl was a really fast one. She was always hanging around the dance-hall at the far end of the harbour." "Well, that makes it different," murmured Madame Mosselet, who seemed to think that if passion was involved the whole thing was natural. (p. 120)
Murder in the Dark (1949) by Pentecost takes its name from the unusual diamond-buying procedure described in the story. Buying "in the dark" involves a diamond broker obtaining an allotment of rough diamonds with a set amount of carats and agreed upon types [there are various types of rough diamonds] but without seeing the actual stones. The sealed packet is then sold to a customer who is gambling on whether the stones will cut properly and be worth what she or he paid for them...or, hopefully, worth even more. A recently wealthy man comes to New York City to buy diamonds and, being a gambler by nature, decides to buy them in the dark--but before the night is over the man is dead and the diamonds have disappeared. The story turns into a Maltese Falconish tale--with people crawling out of the woodwork looking to find those diamonds. It's up to Lieutenant Pascal to figure out who thought the stones worth killing for and where those gems might be. Fairly good story albeit with one of the main suspects running in and out of the police investigation in a rather improbable way.
Overall, a good collection of mysteries. My favorite is the Westlake story with McBain and Pentecost close behind. Simenon's Maigret continues to fail to interest me greatly--although I must say that prefer this short story to the novels I've read so far.
First posted on my blog My Readers' Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
McBain's work, The Empty Hours from 1960 has the Steve Carella and the men of the 87th Precinct investigating the death of a woman found dead in a cheap apartment. From the beginning, things are not what they seem. The woman looks like an African American to the officers first on the scene, but she proves to be Caucasian--blackened and bloated by the intense heat and rapid decomposition. They assume she was a woman down on her luck--but her clothes prove to be more expensive than her surroundings would warrant and her bank account is nice and full. As they check up on her, they find that she was Claudia Davis, a wealthy young woman with a generous trust fund. They also learn that her cousin had come to stay with her not so very long ago, but more recently had died in a boating accident. Now both women are dead. But why? And what happened to the missing $5,000 from her safe deposit box? This is an excellent procedural--very descriptive writing, but not so much of a puzzler and very little misdirection.
Quote:
Nobody like Monday morning. It was invented for hangovers. It is really not the beginning of a new week, but only the tail end of the week before. Nobody likes it, and it doesn't have to be rainy or gloomy or blue in order to provoke disaffection. It can be bright and sunny and the beginning of August. (p. 39)
The Sound of Murder (1960) by Westlake is the story of a young girl who seems mature beyond her years who comes to Detective Abraham Levine in Brooklyn's 43rd Precinct to accuse her mother of murder. Amy Thornbridge Walker is positive that her mother has killed her step-father with a "loud noise" (he suffered from a weak heart) and wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't done in her father as well. She has no proof to offer the detective--just her calm assurance that it happened. Levine, who suffers from a bit of heart trouble himself, begins to believe there may be something to the girl's story and sets out to investigate. But as with the first story, everything may not be quite as it seems. This one is nicely done with a clue planted right in front of the reader but so subtly it will probably be overlooked.
Simenon's Storm in the Channel (1944) sees now-retired Superintendent Maigret setting off with his wife on holiday to England. But a storm in English Channel prevents their crossing and they take refuge in boarding house. Maigret finds himself on something of a busman's holiday when the maid is found shot to death after helping one of the other boarders carry luggage down to the boat. The local detective thinks the retired policeman may be past it, but Maigret soon proves that he can read clues in a menu with dress measurements doodled on it. It isn't long before the detective has a confessed murderer in charge. This is straight deduction and Maigret makes the most of the few clues he finds.
Quote:
"It must have been a crime of passion....That girl was a really fast one. She was always hanging around the dance-hall at the far end of the harbour." "Well, that makes it different," murmured Madame Mosselet, who seemed to think that if passion was involved the whole thing was natural. (p. 120)
Murder in the Dark (1949) by Pentecost takes its name from the unusual diamond-buying procedure described in the story. Buying "in the dark" involves a diamond broker obtaining an allotment of rough diamonds with a set amount of carats and agreed upon types [there are various types of rough diamonds] but without seeing the actual stones. The sealed packet is then sold to a customer who is gambling on whether the stones will cut properly and be worth what she or he paid for them...or, hopefully, worth even more. A recently wealthy man comes to New York City to buy diamonds and, being a gambler by nature, decides to buy them in the dark--but before the night is over the man is dead and the diamonds have disappeared. The story turns into a Maltese Falconish tale--with people crawling out of the woodwork looking to find those diamonds. It's up to Lieutenant Pascal to figure out who thought the stones worth killing for and where those gems might be. Fairly good story albeit with one of the main suspects running in and out of the police investigation in a rather improbable way.
Overall, a good collection of mysteries. My favorite is the Westlake story with McBain and Pentecost close behind. Simenon's Maigret continues to fail to interest me greatly--although I must say that prefer this short story to the novels I've read so far.
First posted on my blog My Readers' Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
April 3, 2021
Next on the block is
Police Procedurals
; a genre I’ve never cared enough about to purposely read which is a little strange since my favorite shows are of the genre. A police procedural is detective fiction that follows the police/similar agency around as they investigate. Think shows like Law & Order, CSI, Castle, Dragnet, and Blue Bloods. I’m sure if you flick through the channels right now you can probably find one or two.
The Empty Hours by Ed McBain is about a woman found murdered in a slum apartment, surrounded by rich clothing and bank records indicating a vast wealth. The part of the solution is a familiar but the clues are arranged in such a way that it still takes a few chapters before the reader can see where the detectives are going with it. Of course, that could also be thanks to the abundance of thought derailments the story has to offer. My personal favorite is a three page comparison of the sun to a woman. It’s very poetic, and I think I’ll wind up typing it up to frame for that blank spot in my living room, but it hasn’t got a thing to do with the story. You’ll find yourself recognizing when the author starts to wander and just skipping whole paragraphs until he gets back to the plot. It’s a good one, but would probably benefit from trimming.
The Sound of Murder by Donald Westlake tells the tale of a little girl who wanders into the police station to report her mother for having murdered her step-father by making a big noise. The man has had recent heart trouble and is dead of a heart attack, and the girl now suspects her mother of also having been behind her biological father’s drowning death. It’s amazing how different the styles are between these short stories. Where TEH was overly dramatic this one is slow to start and finishes with an action scene like fireworks going off. The story is okay, but I’m starting to wonder if all the stories are this much of a production. My only problem is the character portrayal of the little girl, who comes across like a Stepford child or one of those creepy kids in horror films. There’s a reason for it, sure, but make it a little more obvious why don’t they.
Storm in the Channel by Georges Simenon is finally a story that is straightforward, with a solution that requires some thought, and has a simple wrap-up (and if the detective’s reasoning has a soupçon of sexism to it, it was such a refreshing tale after the dramatics of the last two that I’m willing to forgive and forget). The story is about a detective on vacation how is trapped in a small seaside B&B while he and his wife wait out a violent storm so they can continue on their holiday. When one of the servant girls is murdered he stems his boredom by poking his nose in the matter. I really enjoyed this one and there’s nothing bad to be said about it.
Murder in the Dark by Hugh Pentecost is a textbook case of a weak title; it tells you nothing but that the guy was murdered in darkness and leaves you with the expectation that this will be an important part of the plot, which it isn’t. I can rattle off plenty of more appropriate ones (Diamonds in the Dark, A Stones Throw, The Diamond Gamble, Diamonds for Dolly, and so forth). Anyway, a newly wealthy man is murdered and his newest purchase, a sealed box of uncut diamonds, is missing. This one reads like it’s trying to be a full-length novel. There are lots of twists and turns and a secret plot that everyone and their grandmother seems to be in on. There’s con after con piggy-backing each other and it just struck me as being too crowded a story for a novella. And the story first reads as though the detective is the main character so it’s a little jarring when you suddenly start following the main suspect around. Even more jarring is that this choice necessitates the main suspect being allowed to tag along after the police like a short-tempered lost puppy. An alright story with a tacked on romantic plot and too many bad guys.
The verdict? I like the clean lines of that third story enough that I’ll be looking up more of Georges Simenon’s work, but the rest try too hard. This compilation’s going in the recycling bin.
The Empty Hours by Ed McBain is about a woman found murdered in a slum apartment, surrounded by rich clothing and bank records indicating a vast wealth. The part of the solution is a familiar but the clues are arranged in such a way that it still takes a few chapters before the reader can see where the detectives are going with it. Of course, that could also be thanks to the abundance of thought derailments the story has to offer. My personal favorite is a three page comparison of the sun to a woman. It’s very poetic, and I think I’ll wind up typing it up to frame for that blank spot in my living room, but it hasn’t got a thing to do with the story. You’ll find yourself recognizing when the author starts to wander and just skipping whole paragraphs until he gets back to the plot. It’s a good one, but would probably benefit from trimming.
The Sound of Murder by Donald Westlake tells the tale of a little girl who wanders into the police station to report her mother for having murdered her step-father by making a big noise. The man has had recent heart trouble and is dead of a heart attack, and the girl now suspects her mother of also having been behind her biological father’s drowning death. It’s amazing how different the styles are between these short stories. Where TEH was overly dramatic this one is slow to start and finishes with an action scene like fireworks going off. The story is okay, but I’m starting to wonder if all the stories are this much of a production. My only problem is the character portrayal of the little girl, who comes across like a Stepford child or one of those creepy kids in horror films. There’s a reason for it, sure, but make it a little more obvious why don’t they.
Storm in the Channel by Georges Simenon is finally a story that is straightforward, with a solution that requires some thought, and has a simple wrap-up (and if the detective’s reasoning has a soupçon of sexism to it, it was such a refreshing tale after the dramatics of the last two that I’m willing to forgive and forget). The story is about a detective on vacation how is trapped in a small seaside B&B while he and his wife wait out a violent storm so they can continue on their holiday. When one of the servant girls is murdered he stems his boredom by poking his nose in the matter. I really enjoyed this one and there’s nothing bad to be said about it.
Murder in the Dark by Hugh Pentecost is a textbook case of a weak title; it tells you nothing but that the guy was murdered in darkness and leaves you with the expectation that this will be an important part of the plot, which it isn’t. I can rattle off plenty of more appropriate ones (Diamonds in the Dark, A Stones Throw, The Diamond Gamble, Diamonds for Dolly, and so forth). Anyway, a newly wealthy man is murdered and his newest purchase, a sealed box of uncut diamonds, is missing. This one reads like it’s trying to be a full-length novel. There are lots of twists and turns and a secret plot that everyone and their grandmother seems to be in on. There’s con after con piggy-backing each other and it just struck me as being too crowded a story for a novella. And the story first reads as though the detective is the main character so it’s a little jarring when you suddenly start following the main suspect around. Even more jarring is that this choice necessitates the main suspect being allowed to tag along after the police like a short-tempered lost puppy. An alright story with a tacked on romantic plot and too many bad guys.
The verdict? I like the clean lines of that third story enough that I’ll be looking up more of Georges Simenon’s work, but the rest try too hard. This compilation’s going in the recycling bin.
August 30, 2015
Just reread this one. My favorite one was the second story, by Donald Westlake. A little girl comes into the precinct to report that her mother killed her stepfather.
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