RAVES

Click to view the review in bigger size

New York Post – January 2, 2001
Split decision a Winner: Dual personality sweetens Evan Hunter’s Candyland
By CURT SCHLEIER

Evan Hunter developed a split personality in the mid-1950s. He had just published his breakthrough novel, The Blackboard Jungle, to critical raves and commercial success when he was approached by an editor at Pocket Books. The editor was concerned that Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the popular Perry Mason books, was getting on in years. He wondered if Hunter would come up with a replacement series.

It was an unusual request to make of an author with literary aspirations. As Hunter recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Connecticut: “Mystery novels weren’t quite considered unrespectable; you didn’t have to carry them around in a brown paper bag. But you knew no mystery writer was ever going to win a Pulitzer.” I didn’t think it was a big break. The Blackboard Jungle was the kind of book I was going to write. This other project was something I was going to be doing in my spare time.”

What Hunter came up with was the 87th Precinct series, which is now 50 books strong. He also came up with a nom de crime. “They said it would be dangerous to my career as a serious novelist if it became known that I was going to write mystery novels.” So Hunter took on the name Ed McBain. “Who knew that Ed McBain was going to become more well known than Evan Hunter?” he asked.

Now, in a switch that has potentially eerie connotations, Hunter and McBain have “collaborated” on a new novel, Candyland. It’s actually two interconnected novellas, each featuring the talents of the different alter egos. The first half deals with Benjamin Thorpe, a middle-aged architect visiting New York, whose life implodes in one evening of mindless debauchery. It is typical Hunter: literate, a little erotic, and very well written. The second half is typical McBain, a terse police procedural that follows a group of New York cops as they pursue the killer of a masseuse/prostitute who worked at the same establishment that Thorpe had been thrown out of the night before.

“I started it as an Evan Hunter novel,” Hunter explained, “But as I got to the end, I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if I picked up the story as Ed McBain?” Hunter—or is it McBain—says there’s no schizophrenia involved. “I think it’s just a different style. A different pace. One of the reasons I wrote it was to show the difference.”

Hunter, 74, has been writing for more than 50 years, starting as a young radarman stationed on a destroyer in the Pacific in the days just after World War II. “After you stood your watch for four hours and did your cleaning station on the ship, there was nothing to do but wander around.” Instead of wandering, Hunter wrote mysteries and science fiction stories that he sent to every pulp magazine in existence. “I always thought they’d take pity on a sailor in the middle of the ocean.” He was wrong. His stories kept coming back, and before long his shipmates got involved, betting to see how long it would take before the next one was returned.

It wasn’t until the early 1950s that Hunter started selling his work. His first sale, a science fiction story, was for $12.60 after agent commissions but before taxes. And it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that he became a consistent best-seller. Hunter didn’t create the police procedural, but he refined it. He was the first author to create an ensemble cast, a decision that gave birth to such television shows as Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue.

He once called himself the best mystery writer around, but he is now less concerned about winning literary prizes like the Pulitzer. He does have a grand finale planned, however: an 87th Precinct novel called Brit. He hasn’t written it yet, though. “I’m afraid I’ll get hit by a bus. I really am. The next morning I’ll just step off a curb and, BAM!”