[In "The McBain Brief"] the creator of the famed 87th Precinct gives us eight stories with policemen…. Also included are an amusing story about a con man who gets conned ("Hot Cars"), a private eye mini-whodunit ("Death Flight") and a miscellany of other amusements, including a case of infanticide and one of fratricide. Mostly, the violence is by men against women, but there's one ruthless female here. The stories vary in merit—a few are too predictable—but all entertain. The reader is drawn in from the start, and the pages seem to turn themselves.

A review of "The McBain Brief," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 224, No. 3, July 15, 1983, p. 43.