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If you like your cop tales hard-boiled, McBain's your man. In fact, I don't know how in hell I missed the other thirty-one novels in his series about the bigoted, boozed-up, and bullet-riddled 87th Precinct. In Kiss, two parallel, equally seamy stories unfold: one is the trail of Sonny Cole, who is accused of murdering the father of detective Steve Carella; the other is Carella's investigation of a rich banker, who seems to be out to off his wife. The raucously funny route to surprise endings makes a convincing case for moving to the suburbs. It also offers a crash course in cop jargon and weird phrases like "Lieutenant Randall Wade looked as mean as tight underwear."

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