How long does it take to read The Big Bad City?
The Big Bad City by Ed Mcbain takes about 4 hours 58 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Book 49 of 87th Precinct
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About 4 hours 58 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1999. 271 pages, about 74,525 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 17 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 58 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 6 minutes |
The page count is the median across 13 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The first thing you need to know about this city is that it is big. It is difficult to explain to someone who has never seen it. The next thing you need to know is that it's dangerous. Never mind the reassuring bulletins from the mayor's office; just watch the first ten minutes of the eleven o'clock news and you'll learn exactly what the people of this city are capable of doing to other people in this city. This week's city tabloids depict the face of a pretty, dead girl who lay sprawled near a park bench not seven blocks from the 87th precinct house, while the late night news reports on the latest exploits of The Cookie Boy, a professional thief who leaves a box of chocolate chip cookies behind after a score. Behind the scenes, detectives Carella and Brown soon discover that this is not your average dead girl, but one with an unusual past. As they piece together her secrets, detectives Meyer and Kling search Isola's pawnshops for items stolen by The Cookie Boy. While the detectives are investigating their cases, one of them is being stalked by the man who killed his father.
Subjects: Police, Fiction, United States, Murder, Nuns, Isola (imaginary place), fiction
