Chip Harrison assists would be detective. Parody

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3261103.html

A rather slight mystery story set in contemporary (ie mid-70s) New York. The narrator, Chip Harrison, is apparently based on the unpleasant Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye, but has grown up a little bit and is working as assistant to Leo Haig, a New York detective explicitly based on Nero Wolfe but with comic differences.

Like The Topless Tulip Caper, it begins with a young naked woman being poisoned to death, and end with Haig exposing the murderer in his study in front of all the other suspects and two reluctantly impressed policemen. In between both have a rambling plot involving several more murders, and plenty of sex for the narrator. There is a struggle towards social commentary which doesn’t quite get anywhere. It’s pretty mindless stuff which I might have found funnier if I had ever actually read a Nero Wolfe book. ( )

Lawrence Block's homage (of sorts) to Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe. It doesn't so much imitate as try to update (circa 1974) the basic story concept. It comes across as something of a low rent, almost seedy Nero Wolfe knock-off with a lot of sex going on. At times it seems more satire than homage while at other times it just seems odd. If I were the kind of person who gave up easily I would have cast this book aside in the first 30 pages, it just wasn't appealing to me... frankly, if it weren't written by Lawrence Block I probably would never have been motivated to finish it.

The Nero Wolfe surrogate Leo Haig is a comic character, bumbling and inept in many ways (board games, pipe smoking and propping his feet on his desk) but apparently sharp in the ways of deductive reasoning. The Archie Goodwin stand-in is Chip Harrison a young man with very active hormones who seems intent on "scoring" every chance he can, he's much less witty and charming than Stout's Goodwin (surprising since author Block can and does write very humorous and clever dialogue in his other series) and seems to be more of a clueless bystander than anything else. Had the Harrison character been more likable or even less one dimensional the book could have been much more interesting.

The mystery is okay, it's not the kind where the reader is given all the clues needed to solve it, it sticks to the Wolfe formula of having all the suspects gathered in one room for the final solution to the case. It's average at best. I doubt I'll try any of the other books in this series. ( )

The third of Lawrence Block's Chip Harrison novels, this is somewhere in between mystery and just plain entertainment. Block's Harrison "mysteries" play at the genre, but many of the techniques used in these books evolved into trademarks in his Bernie Rhodenbarr burglar series. ( )