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    Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
    Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
    Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
    Audiobook5 hours

    Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

    Written by Ed McBain

    Narrated by Dick Hill

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    He dresses in black and stalks the streets of the 87th Precinct. He is a shadow, always searching for his next victim. And when he finds it, all that will be left is a severed hand.

    For Detectives Carella and Hawes, this new killer is an enigma. He leaves no trace of his crime—no evidence at all. Even the severed hands have had their fingertips sheared off. With nothing much to go on, the detectives work off the hunch that the black-clad killer has a grudge against the 87th, and begin a frantic manhunt before any more of his handiwork appears on their streets.

    One of world-renowned crime master Ed McBain’s most grisly and intense novels in the famed 87th Precinct series, Give the Boys a Great Big Hand is a finely tuned build-up of brooding malevolence and frantic desperation…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 24, 2012
    ISBN9781455873708
    Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
    Author

    Ed McBain

    Ed McBain, a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award, was also the first American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. His books have sold more than one hundred million copies, ranging from the more than fifty titles in the 87th Precinct series (including the Edgar Award–nominated Money, Money, Money) to the bestselling novels written under his own name, Evan Hunter—including The Blackboard Jungle (now in a fiftieth anniversary edition from Pocket Books) and Criminal Conversation. Fiddlers, his final 87th Precinct novel, was recently published in hardcover. Writing as both Ed McBain and Evan Hunter, he broke new ground with Candyland, a novel in two parts. He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. He died in 2005. Visit EdMcBain.com.

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    Reviews for Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

    3.5/5

    74 ratings13 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I'm giving the second star only for being anti-PC, otherwise it's a definitely one-star read. Superficial, repetitive, trying to be humourous in vain. Had they not mentioned internet and mobile phone, I would have thought it was written in the eighties.
    • 2/5
      Some of this is laughable, some more serious and appropriate.
    • 3/5
      Overall this is an enjoyable and entertaining book. I picked it up because I saw it in the library and couldn't resist because of the title. It kind of points out things that we know already, but talks about them on a neurological level. However, the language is not overly scientific so that most adults can easily grasp the concepts. A fun read.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting analyses of the differences between men and women. The authors (a married couple) cite a lot of research showing differences in hormones and brain structure and function and hypothesize that many of the differences go back to our primitive ancestors, when men were the hunters and warriors and women were the nurturers and caregivers. The fact that those roles are no longer very relevant explains many of the tensions modern couples have in forming and maintaining relationships. While there's a extensive bibliography at the end of the book, the fact that the authors don't actually cite many of their sources during their presentation may lead readers to question some of their claims. On the other hand, the book is a popular presentation (and a very readable one, interspersed with cartoons and jokes which help the authors make their points) rather than a scholarly work.
    • 3/5
      I found this much more accessible than the Venus & Mars books. Although I am still p*ssed off that men get a cave and a rubber band while women only get a g*d dammed well!The he said/she heard passages are worth the book alone. Might make a really good wedding gift.
    • 3/5
      Light, humourous and at times quite revealing.
    • 5/5
      Superb book to better understand mindset of opposite sex, not only for improving marital relations, but also for dealing with them in all walks of life including understanding gender-disparity and gender-movements.
    • 5/5
      An interesting book, not long, quite dated, easy to read, but a great storyline.
    • 5/5
      I needed to read this about 40 years ago. By now I know all this stuff, without realizing that I know it. e.g. p. 76 Male brains are highly compartmentalized and can separate and store info. Female brain can't store info this way--problems just keep going round and round in her head Only way for women to get problems out is to talk them out, not to find conclusions or solutions.Women like to talk. Women think out loud--man thinks she's giving him a list of problems. Women can speak and listen at same time while men can do one or the other. So many similar insights.
    • 4/5
      A patrol man finds an overnight bag - with a human hand in it! And the first two pages of Chapter Three actually made my stomach a bit queasy! And it made the title of the book a bit more gruesome too! Then another dismembered hand is found in a trash bin. I guess the book’s title could add an ‘s’ to its end…Another good read, much darker than the previous ten. Pretty gruesome end reveal too! I liked it a lot!
    • 4/5
      It was good: the boys of the 87th precinct have to deal with a body that's being delivered to them in pieces, starting with the hands. There's a woman involved, a stripper no less, along with a couple of men, one of whom got jealous and well, the rest really figures itself out, doesn't it?
    • 4/5
      The 11th book in the long police procedural series finds the boys of the 87th Precinct in possession of, literally, a great big hand — left at a bus stop in a small overnight bag. Eventually the other hand turns up, and then the clothes worn by the man or woman who left the hand on the bus stop bench, but whose hands? And who cut them off and scattered them around the city? There are plenty of candidates for both roles, victim and murderer, and the ending benefits from being both non-obvious and completely believable. A solid entry in the series, despite the sort of casual sexism typical of hard-boiled crime novels of the 1960s. McBain's lyricism as a writer buys him a longer rope from me than other less-skilled wordsmiths.
    • 4/5
      Some of the best police procedurals in the 87th Precinct involve cases that seem to start with a dead end. In this case, it's a severed hand - minus fingerprints - left at a bus stop in a plastic airline bag that sets the investigative wheels in motion, as the boys try to track down the former owner of the body part with little more to go on than the assumption that it's previous owner might have been reported missing recently. Patrolman Richard Genero, the beat cop who made the initial body discovery way back in The Pusher, strikes gold again when he finds a discarded flight bag containing a severed hand. With nothing to go on but a print-less hand and a vague description of the person who left it, the bulls at the 87th need to pull clues and suspects from thin air to discover not only who the killer is, but who the victim was.McBain's charm comes from his attention not only to police procedure, but to the personalities of the police themselves, and Give the Boys a Great Big Hand is a perfect example of how he balances the two throughout the narrative. This entry in the series is very heavy on the leg work - even more so than forensics despite the gruesomeness of their only lead - and a great deal of the time is spent interviewing a colorful variety of suspects unusual and frustrating suspects. I also have a personal affinity for the occasional existential diatribes that McBain will place in the thoughts of his characters, and this novel includes a great one, with Hawes leaving church and contemplating the concept of reality.The emotional toll seemingly fruitless investigations can take on the police is demonstrated in the rising frustrations of Steve Caralla, which eventually explode in a physical confrontation between him and Andy Parker. The fight starts when Carella sticks up for Frankie Hernandez, who spends his second appearance in the city defending The Cause from Parker's relentless bigoted comments. This is the second time that Carella loses his temper beyond the norm (the first notable time being King's Ransom), and appears to be a growing trend with him, perhaps an anger management issue indirectly related to the recent arrival of twins to his household.Apart from that and a shared moment of vented frustrations between Carella and his wife Teddy, the personal lives of the boys at the precinct don't play any direct roll in the mystery of the severed hand, a refreshing change of pace in a series already too used to dragging personal involvement - more often than not Carella's family - in to inflate the tension. However, once again, The City is almost a character itself, as an unrelenting rain casts a gloomy backdrop on the already grim task at hand.