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: Flat Characters Over-praised and Predictable
Review: Fat Ollie is back and so are the "boys' of the 87th Precinct. The Precinct fans who only met Ollie as a loudmouthed, grossly fat smelly bigot from the 88th, will be surprised to meet Ollie as a bona fide writer of fiction. As usual, McBain spins the yarn in an entertaining, folksy style, tying together action and comment in a fast paced, amusing fashion. Some unusual things happen in this saga, such as Ollie's romance with rookie cop,wherein we find out that Ollie, like many "big" men, is a good dancer, light on his feet, a TV "talent" has a crush on Carella, and Kling encounters Eileen Burke on the 87th's turf.
All in all, it is a typical McBain--fast paced, entertaining, humorous, with an occassional insight into human nature.
If anyone wants escape literature, there's no better.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible!
Review: I couldn't finish the book..it was that bad. Coming from a writer who has created a character like Matthew Hope..it was indeed surprising. But Fat Ollie comes across as an ordinary white American ( WASP) who has forgotten than America is not an exclusive domain of whites!
Rating:
Summary: Terrific again! Typical McBain!
Review: I've read ALL of the 87th Precinct books to date and have loved and reread all of them. This one was unique and captivating, as is typical Ed McBain style. Keep them coming!!
Rating:
Summary: the master has not lost his touch
Review: One of the greatest police procedural series is the 87th Precinct novels of the legendary Ed McBain. The first one was written in 1956. It was a straightforward novel with one relatively simple storyline. Today's volumes are conciderably longer with several distinct subplots that intertwine with the various characters. They are much more complex and character rich novels. They might be rarely equaled by current writers but never surpassed in pure writing style.
In this, the 52nd book in the series, Fat Ollie Weeks, a crude and rude detective of the 88th Precinct has just completed a detective novel. He has the manuscript stolen off the back seat of his car while investigating a crime. The case he is given is the assasination of a politician who may very well have been a candidate for mayor. Fat Ollie solicits help on the high publicity case from Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct. Fat Ollie not only wants to solve the crime, he also wants to get his manuscript back.
McBain uses much humor in telling this multifaceted story. The murder of the politician is compelling enough. However, we also meet some of the dregs of society as Fat Ollie trails his book. Characters are superbly portrayed- many of which are old friends to those of us who have followed the series. McBain, once again proves that after almost a half century, he has not lost his touch.
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.
Rating:
Summary: Great Story With Satire Of Detective Stories
Review: This book is excellent. What makes Ed McBain special is that he can make a hero out of Fat Ollie Weeks, an overweight policeman who is a bigot. In this book Fat Ollie's own manuscript is stolen. There are excellent comments on writing and on how the author (Fat Ollie or McBain) found his "voice." The book pokes fun of other McBain novels, of Fat Ollie and of bad writing. Ultimately, Ed McBain does not take himself, or Fat Ollie, very seriously, which makes for a great story. Some of the reviewers have misunderstood the cleverness of this book, and that's too bad.
Rating:
Summary: GO OLLIE ! A Fun Read But No Real Mystery Here
Review: This book is for all Ed McBain and police procedural fans, but if you have not read MONEY MONEY MONEY you should read that first because this is a direct sequel. Detective (Fat Ollie) Weeks is the first detective on the scene to investigate the murder of councilman Lester Henderson, who was considering a run for mayor. The murder actually occurs in the 88th precinct where Ollie is stationed, but this becomes the next book in the 87th precinct series because Henderson lived in the 87th and (despite the reluctance of their lieutenant) Ollie decides to enlist the help of detectives Steve Carella and Bert Kling, with whom he worked in the MONEY MONEY MONEY case. The murder is solved in a straightforward way (with the unintentional help of the murderer), but that is background to the main story and almost incidental. This is not FAT OLLIE'S BOOK just because he was lead detective on the case, but also because he had just finished his manuscript for the dectective story which he had decided to write during his and Carella's previous case. As he was investigating the Henderson murder, his briefcase with his only copy of REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER (written using the pen name Olivia Wesley Watts) was stolen from his car. Thus, Ollie is simultaneosly trying to retrieve his manuscript and apprehend the murderer. We revisit not only Carella, Kling and Ollie, but several other characters from previous books, including the Reverend Gabriel Foster, and detective Eileen Burke, a previous love interest of Kling who gets assigned to the 87th in a move that threatens to complicate his relationship with Deputy Chief Surgeon Sharyn Cook. And we meet Officer Patricia Gomez, to whom Oliie becomes attracted in the process of Gomez helping Ollie solve the case. We gradualy get to read Ollie's manuscript interpersed with the Henderson case through a clever device which McBain adopts which introduces another complication and very funny thread to the book. Ollie remains his bigoted self, and this element plays an integral role in the story. It is carried to such extremes that it is at times hilarious, but not, of course, for the targets of his bigotry. And it does remind us of how such attitudes lurk just below the surface in many organizations. Before reading very far into the book I decided that it was to be read in a lighthearted way, sort of a parody of mystery writers, detective stories, bigots, racial agitators, drug addicts, and homosexuals. From this viewpoint, it was a fun, very fast read, while further developing the characters with which I was already familiar as an avid McBain reader. While I loved the cleverness of the idea of parallel cases for Ollie as the basis of this book, a few unanswered questions (which would reveal too much of the plot) and the (perhaps intentional) superficiality of the story kept me from giving it a five star rating.
Rating:
Summary: Report to the Commissioner
Review: This is my first Mcbain book I have read. I enjoyed the different twist in this book. Fat Ollie is the typical Columbo type cop. Ollie is portraded as a fat, bigot aspiring writer. The book is about the murder of a councilman. It seems more or less important to Ollie to find who stole his book. There are different story lines that are quite easy to follow. It was quite fun to read and guess what OLlie would do next as well as reading along Ollies' book. I read this book on my return flight from Iraq and I must say I am not much of a Crime Fiction guy but, but this was well worth the read.
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