Harry Lipkin
Created by Barry Fantoni

This isn't the first time author BarryFantoni has taken a satirical swipe at private eyes. A long-time contributor to British satirical magazine Private Eye (just coincidence, I'm sure) and a cartoonist for the Times, he wriote a couple of spot-on spoofs of the genre back in the eighties, featuring 1940s gumshoe Mike Dime.

in 2010 he announced his retirement -- after 47 years! At the time he said he planned to write a few memoirs, and then dive back into detective fiction, with a novel "about the world's oldest detective who is old and useless and talks about his illnesses."

Well, in 2012, that novel came out.

Harry Lipkin, Private Eye is the title, and the star of the show is... wait for it... HARRY LIPKIN, an 87-year-old Jewish shamus who lives in Warmheart, Florida. He drives a 40-year old Impala and has a sharp tongue, a surly disposition, a P.I. license, a loaded .38, a spare set of dentures and plenty of time on his hands.

Harry's sympathetically drawn, if not always particularly likable, and while he moves rather slowly, he does eventually get to where he's going.

So he busies himself working cases for his neighbours. After all, his mom lived to be 103. So what the hell else is he going to do?

NOVELS

• Harry Lipkin, P.I. (2012). Buy this book.. Kindle it!

RELATED LINKS

• Hand Me Down My Walking Cane: Old Dicks
  This guys ain't goin' gentle into that good night...

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.