Where There's Smoke

Ed McBain

Benjamin Smoke is a retired police lieutenant who walked away from teh job fo rone reason alone: he was bored. Bored of the criminals. Bored of the crimes. Bored of answers that came too easy, too fast, and too often the same. Now, working as an unlicensed private detective, Smoke finally gets his wish. Someone has committed the perfect crime -- a perfectly senseless crime -- by stealing a dead body. And when Smoke starts investigating he's in for one surprise after another, from black magic to murder and a woman who believes she's Cleopatra -- and is lighting a fire right before Smoke's eyes...

Published
January 1, 1975
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Author

Ed McBain

Ed McBain was one of the many pen names of the successful and prolific crime fiction author Evan Hunter (1926 – 2005). Born Salvatore Lambino in New York, McBain served aboard a destroyer in the US Navy during World War II and then earned a degree from Hunter College in English and Psychology. After a short stint teaching in a high school, McBain went to work for a literary agency in New York, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and P.G. Wodehouse all the while working on his own writing on nights and weekends. He had his first breakthrough in 1954 with the novel The Blackboard Jungle, which was published under his newly legal name…