As with all of the 87th Precinct novels, Nocturne deals with urban America and in particular New York City. Even though the setting for the books is the fictional Isola, they are really based on McBain's knowledge of and experience in New York. The social concerns of the series are those of almost any urbanbased crime fiction: the role of the police, the increasing violence of American city life, shifts in ethnic populations, the changing nature of metropolitan crime, and the general decay of modern society in the United States. For the past fortysome years, McBain has chronicled these social issues in the pages of his 87th Precinct series which now number over three dozen individual books.

As life in modern cities has evolved, so has the role of metropolitan police departments. Not only has their job become more difficult because of increases in urban criminal...