TOPLESS TULIP CAPER

Under the "Chip Harrison" pseudonym, Block (The Burglar in the Closet, etc.) published four paperback novels in the early 1970s—all of them recounting the mild, comic sex/suspense exploits of smirky adolescent narrator Chip. In this 1975 outing (first time in hardcover), Chip has become the assistant to fat, fame-hungry N.Y. detective Leo Haig, playing a very un-subtle Archie Goodwin to Haig's Nero Wolfe. So the Rex Stout allusions soon proliferate when Haig takes on the case of Tulip Willing (n‚e Thelma Wolinski), a stripper/biologist whose precious experimental fish have been poisoned. (Instead of orchids, Haig dotes on tropical fish.) Whodunit? Is the fish-killer the same villain who then murders Tulip's colleague/roommate, Cherry Bounce, with a poison dart (mid-strip)? Chip quizzes all the suspects, finds another couple of corpses, and—partly to please his paperback editor—allows himself to be seduced at regular intervals. ("'We're not in the business to sell books,' he said. 'We're selling hard-ons.'") But all the glory, of course, belongs to reclusive Haig—who gathers all the characters together at his town house for the clue-by-clue wrapup and the final ho-hum revelations. Routine as mystery, dated as satire, and a lot less funny than Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series—but a quick, breezy, mildly fetching parody/hommage for Wolfe aficionados.