Fat Ollie's Book

Name: Fat Ollie's Book
Rating: 3.66 (1307 reviews)
Author: Ed McBain

87th Precinct • Book 52

by Ed McBain

3.66 Goodreads

(1.3K ratings)

Published 2002 Mystery

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Why You'll Love This

A bigoted, insufferable detective wrote a novel — and someone stole the only copy, which turns out to matter more to him than the murder he's supposed to be solving.

Great if you want: a procedural with a genuinely comic, morally complicated center
The experience: brisk and wry — McBain keeps plates spinning with effortless control
The writing: McBain layers sharp satire inside tight genre craft — never heavy-handed
Skip if: Ollie's casual bigotry, played for dark comedy, will put you off

About This Book

When a city councilman turns up dead outside a political rally, it's exactly the kind of high-profile case that draws attention from every direction. But for Detective Fat Ollie Weeks, the real crisis is personal: someone stole his car, and with it the only copy of the novel he's been secretly writing — a thriller featuring a brilliant detective who bears more than a passing resemblance to Ollie himself. What follows is a murder investigation tangled up with literary ambition, wounded vanity, and the surprisingly poignant spectacle of a deeply flawed man protecting something he genuinely loves.

McBain pulls off something genuinely clever here, embedding a parody of bad crime fiction inside a very good crime novel, letting readers appreciate the joke while still caring about the outcome. The prose is tight and dry, the humor cuts without announcing itself, and Fat Ollie — bigoted, self-important, oddly compelling — remains one of the series' most entertaining recurring figures. At under 200 pages, this entry moves fast and earns its laughs, while still delivering the procedural texture that has defined the 87th Precinct novels for decades.