Fat Ollie's Book: A Novel of the 87th Precinct (Paperback)

by Ed McBain

Book Overview

All at once, Fat Ollie Weeks had a truly brilliant idea... But as any real writer could tell you, that's how inspiration strikes -- with the sudden force of a violent crime. Known more for his foul... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743410335
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.8" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

As good as usual and funnier than most.

Those who pull an Ed McBain book off the shelf, or take one to the check out, are unlikely to be disappointed. This 2002 offering is as good as they usually are and funnier than most. Occupying most space, in terms of physical bulk and narrative focus, is Oliver Wendell Weeks, a cop otherwise known as Fat Ollie. Affecting a style of delivery modeled on that of W C Fields (who remembers him?), and able to boast that his music teacher successfully taught him the first three notes of "Night and Day", Fat Ollie has further displayed his talents by writing a police procedural novel. Unfortunately for him it is stolen, but fortunately for us its full text is interlaced with everything else that unfolds in this rich McBain extravaganza. Thrown in also are comments about Internet sites like this one, and those who read and write reviews thereon.

Fat Ollie and friends in the big bad city.

In his fifty-second 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain features the loathsome and obese sexist bigot, Fat Ollie, who has finally finished his own police procedural, "Report to the Commissioner." Oliver Weeks sees himself as a literary lion in the making. The protagonist of his rather brief novel is Ollie's female and slim alter ego, whom he names Olivia Wesley Watts. Unfortunately, Fat Ollie never got around to making a copy of his manuscript, which he composed on an old fashioned typewriter. When Ollie leaves the novel in a dispatch case in his car, a junkie steals the case and its precious contents. "Fat Ollie's Book" has many of McBain's trademark touches. It is politically incorrect and filled with flippant dialogue. The author seamlessly threads three main plot lines throughout the book and they cleverly overlap at times. A prominent councilman who may be planning to run for mayor is shot while preparing for a rally. A pair of cops is hoping to interrupt a big drug sale. And, of course, Ollie is determined to find the perp who ripped off his precious book.McBain's 87th precinct novels are always entertaining, and "Fat Ollie's Book" gets high marks for its large and colorful cast of characters, its fast moving story and its self-mockery. McBain quotes large sections of Ollie's book, and through Ollie, McBain makes fun of the conventions of the police procedural. McBain's fictional city of Isola is a homage to New York City, with its high-octane excitement, its political pressure and the desperation and chutzpah of its criminal element. Ed McBain has won every award that is available to a mystery writer. "Fat Ollie's Book" makes it clear why McBain has remained successful for so many years, while lesser talents have fallen by the wayside. This novel, like so many others in this series, is witty, smart and irreverent, and I recommend it.

Go Get 'em Ollie.....

Who shot city councilman, Lester Henderson, as he practiced crossing the stage to the podium, waving and smiling, follow spot glowing, during a rehearsal at Martin Luther King Memorial Hall, for his mayoral candidacy announcement that evening? As first on the scene, all around offensive, foul mouthed and bigoted Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks catches the case and begins to run with it, interviewing witnesses, barking obnoxious orders, and getting a sense of the scene and what had just happened there. Ollie's feeling pretty pumped, grabbing a high profile, headline making murder case. That is, until he returns to his vehicle and finds the only copy of his just completed first novel, Report To The Commissioner, missing. It seems that while he was inside the hall working one crime scene, someone outside was creating another. Some low-life broke into his car and stole all thirty-six pages of his soon to be bestseller masterpiece. And to complicate matters, the not-too-bright thief doesn't even realize he's holding a novel. He thinks he's just found his ticket to the good life; a police report detailing a soon to be bust involving 2.7 million worth of diamonds..... Award winning, master storyteller, Ed McBain, finally gives one of his most colorful and entertaining characters a book, actually two books, of his own. This is a police procedural that has it all... seemingly unrelated, complex, and intriguing story lines that are deftly woven together, creating a stunning climax and satisfying ending; clever, vivid, often laugh-out-loud scenes, and brilliant, meaty characterizations including the ever quirky and engaging cast from the 87th precinct. But it's Mr McBain's smart, crisp, humorous writing, and witty and irreverent dialogue and asides that make this, as well as all his novels, stand out and sparkle, and once you begin reading, be prepared to finish Fat Ollie's Book in one sitting. This is Ed McBain at his very best and no one in the genre does it better. Make sure you put Fat Ollie at the top of your "must read" list and enjoy!

Another winner from the 87th Precinct

Ed McBain likes the titles of his 87th Precinct series to bear more than one meaning, and "Fat Ollie's Book" is no exception. Fat Ollie Weeks, detective of the neighboring 88th Precinct, stands at the center of this novel, having caught the call on the murder of an aspiring politician. Fat Ollie, not an incompetent detective but quite willing to let others carry the load if circumstances warrant, shifts the burden of the investigation to Steve Carella and Bert Kling while he pursues a case far more important to himself - the theft of the sole existing copy of the manuscript of, well, Fat Ollie's book, a detective thriller written by him to cash in on the lucrative fiction market dominated by a bunch of women amateurs who wholly lack his real world expertise and insights. The book took him months to write, too, at least three or four months, all thirty-six pages of it, and he wants it back, no matter the effort required or whose toes must be stomped on.Fat Ollie, it should be said, is a racist, but that is an inadequate description. He is also an ethnic, religious, and sexist bigot. He despises, in short, everyone not exactly like himself. Come to think of it, he also despises anybody who IS like himself. Oblivious to the insults he showers upon others and sensitive to slights from others, he nonetheless is not absolutely without a touch of oafish charm, just enough to intrigue a Puerto Rican uniformed female cop caught up in the murder case and just enough to keep the reader interested in such an otherwise unsympathetic protagonist.As usual in the 87th Precinct novels, the plot twists around itself, sweeping up a collection of odd characters marching unknowingly to inevitable interaction and intermeshed fates. Along the way, we get to read - in short doses - Ollie's truly dreadful attempt at literary creation, so bad as to become bizarre fun. And we follow the developing stories of McBain's familiar stable of detectives from the more than fifty novels that have preceded this one. No 87th Precinct fan should miss this one, another top-notch entry in this series filled with dark humor.

Another winner from the grand master of mystery writers

Every time I read an Ed McBain novel (and I've probably read half of the more than 50 he's written, each a gem), I wonder why it's not sitting atop a best-seller list (arbitrary as those lists may be). Mystery-lovers of the world, take notice! McBain (aka Evan Hunter) is a brilliant writer, the kind who dreams up ingenious plots and then populates them with an array of diverse characters, filled with spunk and armed with witty banter, who will make you laugh out loud and might - just might - even cause you to shed a tear or two. In this latest winner, Detective Oliver Wendell "Fat Ollie" Weeks of the 88th Precinct has written his first novel - a police procedural. Unfortunately, just as he's taking his precious tome (all 36 - yes, 36 - pages of it) to be photocopied (somehow Fat Ollie hasn't seen fit to purchase a computer), he gets called to a murder investigation, and wouldn't you know it, someone filches the sure-to-be-a-best-seller (!) from the back of his squad car while he's off fighting crime. Can Fat Ollie find time to recover the manuscript while solving the murder of a political up-and-comer? Heck, should he even be concentrating on the murder when the fruit of his labor has disappeared? Truth and fiction are tightly intertwined as Fat Ollie teams up with the boys from the nearby 87th Precinct (familiar to and well-loved by McBain fans everywhere) to figure it all out. McBain's sense of humor is beyond priceless, if that's possible, and this story is a grand piece of entertainment. I enjoyed every page. Don't miss it.