After a library shelf full of 87th Precinct police procedurals, Evan Hunter writing under the pseudonym Ed McBain, gives us police investigation on the wholesale level. In a weblike structure, in which each line of inquiry about each of half a dozen victims leads to the center. There's no spider waiting there, but there is a police commissioner impatiently waiting for some results after accusing his men of fiddling around.

The vics don't seem to have much in common other than being over 50 and being killed with the same weapon and in the same manner: a couple of cold, clean shots to the face with a Glock. The first one to get it is a blind violinist in an alley behind the restaurant he works in. Then, the body of a sales rep in her own apartment. Follow that with an elderly priest in his rectory garden, an aging college professor walking home from class, and an old woman doing nothing more than walking her dog.

Detective Steve Carella and his men cover the cases that fall within their bailiwic, and jurisdictional lines bring in other investigative pairs to help track each case down a cold and patternless path. On the personal side, Carella exhibits deep fatherly interactions with his daughter and false hopes with ex-wife Sharyn and a vivacious hooker who insists she's just a librarian with an attraction, picking him up in a bar.

Fellow detective Bert Kling's love life goes downhill and "Fat Ollie" Weeks shows up only briefly. Meanwhile, a man of some means and desperation to have a good time connects with a beautiful prostitute and treats her to luxuries beyond her expectation and loving kindness she never dreamed of. She'd also never suspect what he's really up to when he takes off on one of his "business" missions.

The story of revenge for a life thwarted by others makes for an intriguing plotline and the master of the police procedural and crime fiction puts it in a dependable dramatic framework. If you've been reading this series, it's something like the "best of" and a fond reminiscence. What I failed to experience, however, was an attachment to a character who might have moved me into more gut-gripping territory. Interesting, but a bit ho-hum and resting on the laurels of a rich history.

Which I'm sorry to have to conclude especially because this is the last 87th precinct case we'll be getting. Evan Hunter died in July at the age of 78 well after establishing himself as one of the most prolific authors on the planet with such earlier work as "The Blackboard Jungle," no less, and the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." A literary genius has left us... with an inheritance of classics.

But up to the end, a writer and his creative gene don't just fade away. Perhaps this story about what a certain kind of man might choose to do when facing the end of his life came out of Hunter's mining a dramatic possibility suggested by his own terminal condition.