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Rating: 
Summary: Fat Ollie's Book
Review: "Fat Ollie's Book" is the 52nd novel of the 87th Precinct by Ed McBain. Ollie Weeks, a cop from the 88th Precinct, is called to investigate the shooting of city councilman Lester Henderson at the King Memorial. While Ollie investigates, someone steals his 36-page novel "Report to the Commissioner". He enlists the help of the cops of the 87th Precinct to help in the case since Henderson lived in the 87th. Steve Carella and Bert Kling investigate Henderson's murder while Fat Ollie looks for the drug addict who stole his manuscript. A familiar face returns to the 87th. Eileen Burke, Kling's former girlfriend, joins Andy Parker in a subplot involving a drug deal. Ed McBain has been writing this series since 1956, but he still maintains a first rate series. I think "Fat Ollie's Book" is one of the best in this series by the undisputed master of the police procedural, Ed McBain.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much of a good thing
Review: Detective/First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks of the 87th Precinct is an incredibly large and tactless bigot. And he has written a book. A whole 36 pages long, this pride and joy is in a briefcase in the back of his car on its way to the copy shop (he's still living back in the days of typerwriters without carbon paper) when he gets a call. Someone has seen fit to murder a popular politician running for mayor. While Ollie is inspecting the scene of the crime and quizzing witnesses, someone smashes his car's back window (right in front of a bunch of uniforms, what would you know?) and makes off with the briefcase.And that, my friends, is only the beginning. While Ollie is out tracking down both a murderer and a thief (and treating readers to a running stream of horrificly unPC comments along the way), the crossdressing hooker who filched the manuscript (which is titled REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER, by the way) takes the little tale at face value ... and starts searching for the captured policewoman therein. FAT OLLIE'S BOOK is full of double meanings on several levels, and Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) gets in hilarious but subtle pokes at nearly everybody -- himself, bestselling authors, literary agents, writers, both sexes, cops and villains, and last but not least, even us humble layperson book reviewers. We all know the fictional city described here, Isola, is supposed to be New York City, and we all know the fictional city described in Ollie's book is supposed to be Isola, and it just gets funnier. McBain has a way with both words and humor that is truly mind boggling. Still ... masterful as this 52nd book in the series is, it's not really a mystery. It reminded me of a cross between Lawrence Block's humorous crime capers and Patricia Cornwell's forage into new territory in HORNET'S NEST and company. Rather than being surprised by twists and turns, the reader is instead denied any suspense by getting to follow all the threads as they grow closer and closer and finally converge. Also, while the no-holds-barred humor starts out funny enough, too much of it turns the story tedious. Halfway through this book I was all set to give it five stars, but by the time I reached the ending my enthusiasm had waned. FAT OLLIE'S BOOK is a great tongue-in-cheek parody and full of laughs, but to me it read like a chocolate dessert -- delightfully sweet in small quantities, but heavy when taken as a whole.
Rating: 
Summary: Fat Ollie Steals 87th Precinct Spotlight
Review: This book contains the worst crime fiction Ed McBain has ever produced, and that's meant as a complement. After all, it takes a gifted writer to write prose as bad as McBain produces on behalf of one of his less noble fictional creations, Detective First Grade Oliver Wendell Weeks. Weeks figures if he solves the crimes, what's the trick in making one up on paper and getting it on the best seller's lists? Not only does he have a well-worn list of "how-tos" for creating crime fiction ("BE SURE TO AVOID AMBIGUITY"), he's been doing his homework surveying the marketplace by reading Amazon.com reviews. Clearly this guy is in trouble... Weeks has been floating around McBain's 87th Precinct novels for a while, and now he gets center stage. Though he's with the 88th Precinct, and much disliked by the 87th Precinct detectives (and many readers) because of his nasty manner and blunt racist approach to life, he's still a decent detective. Weeks kind of works as a protagonist only if you are playing it for laughs, and McBain is here. "Fat Ollie's Book" is one of the more comic 87th Precinct offerings. People still die, and others mourn, but this time there's more emphasis on laughs, incongruity, and malaprops, particularly when it comes to Weeks' novel. He decides it should star someone like himself (maybe not quite as fat) but female, since he discovers women buy more mysteries than men. It's not exactly like Weeks transforms himself into Phil Donohue. His opus, "Report To The Commissioner," includes references to the narrator's ample bust and what a hot dish she is in general. She's writing from a locked room, you see, waiting for someone to kill her, and the first thing she wants you to know is there's a run in her stockings... Then someone steals his manuscript, and Weeks goes on the warpath to get it back. As a crime drama, "Fat Ollie's Book" is problematic. There's a couple of cases being worked on in tandem with Ollie's crisis, neither which holds much interest. The other detectives, like Steve Carella and Bert Kling, go through their paces but don't manage anything particularly interesting this time around. A problem with this book is that Weeks is probably the most colorful character anyway, and pushing him up to the foreground, especially as entertainingly as this, makes the others pale by comparison. But as a crime comedy, "Fat Ollie's Book" is a nice reminder of a key reason so many of us visit the 87th Precinct: McBain's one funny writer, and he can spin a yarn. Pity poor Ollie can't. But at least he can dance, play "Night And Day" on the piano, and come up for a derogatory epithet for anyone else on the planet.
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