Ed McBain - Evan Hunter

Interviewed by Michael Carlson

Even though we're meeting for lunch in a restaurant on Great Portland Street, when Ed McBain comes in, trench coat draped over his arm, I half expect to see a New York City yellow cab pull away. There's something quintessentially New York about McBain, who still speaks with the unique rhythms of his hometown. He could pass for an 87th Precinct detective, in the same way Mickey Spillane could pass for Mike Hammer: the person seems to fit comfortably into the world he has created. McBain is accompanied by his wife of five years, Dragica, or Dina. He's doing better than me, because I'm accompanied by Mark Timlin, and the measure of McBain's stature is that the normally ebullient Mark is strangely subdued in the presence of one of his true idols. An avid collector of McBain, Mark appears to have more of his books than he's actually written, and that's a lot of books! Because, of course, Ed McBain is also Evan Hunter. It was Evan Hunter who wrote The Blackboard Jungle, which became a best-seller almost fifty years ago, in 1954. The 87th Precinct series, written by Ed McBain, began soon after. Half a century later, he shows no signs of slowing up. His prodigious career includes countless film and television scripts, and even the 2000 Broadway musical, The Night They Raided Minskys, which itself helped inspire the fiftieth novel in the 87th Precinct series, The Last Dance. He's in Britain promoting his two latest novels: Money, Money, Money is the fifty-first 87th Precinct novel, while Candyland is a 'collaboration', the first half written by Hunter and the second half by McBain.

This schizophrenia has been a trademark of his career, but crucially, although Evan Hunter is his legal name, it too is a pseudonym. Hunter was born Salvatore Lombino, on 120th Street, between First and Second Avenues. "It is a case of mistaken identity," he laughs, "I ought to be talking like the Godfather, it was that kind of neighbourhood, very close knit Italian families, lots of immigrants." I mention I saw a quote where he said he was once looking out at the East River from his flat on 72nd Street, and realised that in fifty years he'd moved almost exactly fifty blocks south. "I feel a sort of nostalgia, maybe it's because of my age. I did a story collection, 50 from the Fifties, of stories I wrote for the last gasp of the pulp magazines, all sorts -- crime, science fiction, adventure. I thought four or five were really good. The rest were just, well, working my way downtown."

I was impressed with Candyland, the McBain/Hunter collaboration, where the switch in authors coincides with a switch in the villain's character, or the part of the character that is revealed as his increasing rage begins to appear beneath his apparently civilised veneer. It's also a very sexy book, especially, dare I say it, for a seventy-five-year-old writer. "Well, I should hope so," he laughs, and bows his head toward his wife. "You can thank her if the writing is sexier than it used to be." He then sounds shocked. "You know, one British reviewer called it 'sleaze'? You know what I'd say to him? Bafongool!" I won't bother to transliterate that Italo-American curse back into the 'proper' Italian, but if you've ever seen a Scorsese movie, you'll get the point. Candyland also features a female cop, Emma Boyle, who could easily transform herself into a series character, if not the basis for a TV series. Was that his intent? "No, not at all. My next one is called From the Moment She Was Gone, it's about a man coming to grips with the disappearance of his twin sister. And before you say it, yes, it's another tale of schizoid identities."

There's nothing schizoid at all about Money, Money, Money. It does feature a terrorist plot in New York City. Did it reflect at all the events of September 11? "No, it was actually published September 6 in the States. I've heard some writers recalled their books, and did rewrites to take the events into account, but there were no additions. Once I finish a book it's finished: I don't stay up nights." The novel also moves McBain's somewhat comic detective, Fat Ollie Weeks to the fore. "Yes, the book is really a springboard to Ollie… he's become one of my favourite characters. I think that's what helps keep the series interesting, as the characters age, even at their decelerated rate. Ollie's like Leslie Nielsen, when the gun doesn't go off." I mention his sharp reaction to John Connolly's appropriation of the Fat Ollie nickname in one of his novels, and that when interviewing John he's said that McBain's were the first crime novels he read, and the use was intended as homage. "Oh there's no call for that. He shouldn't have done it. Let him make up his own characters." In fact, making up his own characters is what Fat Ollie himself is now doing, because Money, Money, Money ends with the first pages of Weeks' own novel, called Bad Money. The first line is, "It was a dark and stormy night". I note Ollie's unlikely to be paying ironic homage to Bulwer Lytton. "That's for sure," McBain laughs. "But my next one is going to be called Fat Ollie's Book, and his manuscript is going to get stolen out of the back seat of a police car."

A writer with two pseudonyms, writing a novel written by his character, the identity problem is getting worse all the time. I suggest this schizoid quality appears to be a function of New York writers, mentioning Donald Westlake, of course, most famously writing as Richard Stark and Tucker Coe, and Lawrence Block producing the very different Scudder and Rhodenbarr books, albeit all under his own name. "Maybe it's because we all worked for Scott Meredith, his literary agency. One of the things we have in common is understanding the market, and working very hard at the typewriter. You're not a writer unless you write." You're all pros, I suggest, in the best sense of the word? "I'm glad you said that," he laughs. "But yes, people ask how I write, and they're surprised when I mention the reader's eye, because it's something I'm aware of when I write, the balance of the type on the page. When people say my books are easy to read, well, that's deliberate." And, of course, part of the momentum of the series came from its being contracted, originally, as a series? "Yes, I got a contract for three books, and the editor asked whether Steve Carella should be married or not. I said 'why not?', and in the early books, Teddy gets into a lot of trouble -- she had to be someone extremely vulnerable." And Carella, of course, is the handsome Italian cop. "Just a coincidence," he laughs.

What's also interesting about Money, Money, Money is that the strongest character may well be the drug-running pilot Cassandra, whose murder kicks off the story. Is there a movement in his writing from openly vulnerable female characters to more assertive ones? "Not consciously," he says, "but I remember just before September 11, before my tour was cancelled, I was in Dayton, Ohio, and my audience was all in their fifties and sixties, youngsters really, but I was aware that that could be a sure sign of a series growing stale, if it doesn't attract new readers." He pays a lot of attention to the people in bookstores. It's where he met his wife. "In a Barnes & Noble, and she asked me if I worked there. Which, in a manner of speaking, I do." Dina then tells about their visit to the Czech Republic, where 3,000 people waited patiently for his appearance. She is, at fifty-two, a quarter century younger than her husband, but she says it's hard to keep up with his energy. This provokes much laughter about generation gaps, which itself leads to another McBain tale. "A generation gap is something we often perceive as being there, when it really isn't." A few moments before we had been talking about one of my favourite Hunter books, his essay Me and Hitch, about working on the screenplays of The Birds and Marnie with Alfred Hitchock. It's one of the best views of Hitchcock's working methods, a far better take on The Birds than, say, Camille Paglia's volume in the BFI Film Classics series. "My agent tried to sell that as an article to Playboy, but they said no. They said they were afraid their audience wouldn't know or care who Hitchcock was! Can you believe that? Of course the youngsters today would still know Hitchcock. But the older people are the ones who are afraid to look out of it." He remains involved in screenwriting, having done a pilot for Castlerock based on Sadie When She Died, but it's a difficult process. "Everything takes six years, and you don't recognise what comes out the other end. There was an 87th Precinct with Randy Quaid, who's a great actor, but he's not a New Yorker, he's a cowboy. Or Burt Reynolds. They should've binned that. It's all about, well, we'll put a gun on his hip, and he's a cop. The Cops of Madison County."

I mention his books ought to be easy to adapt, because they're so streamlined, and the dialogue is all there. "I am glad you said that," he laughs. Asked to choose adaptations of his own work he likes, he mentions a Donald Sutherland 87th Precinct, and Chabrol's Blood Relatives. And Mark Timlin mentions High and Low, Akira Kurasowa's version of King's Ransom. Lunch is winding down, and I get my copy of Candyland signed by both McBain and Hunter. He arrived as Ed McBain, but now I feel like I'm talking to Evan Hunter. Evan suggests a toast he picked up in Liverpool, "Here's to golden days and purple nights." It's as good a way to end as any. But then Ed McBain rears his head. There's something he noticed in Scotland: "Why can't I be simply The McBain?" he asks. As far as readers are concerned, he already is.