The Incredible Schlock Homes Author:Robert L. Fish Robert L. Fish burst upon American letters with "The Adventure of the Ascot Tie" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, February 1960. Since then he has been unbelievably prolific and versatile. — His first novel, The Fugitive (1962) won Mystery Writers of Ameria's Edgar as best first novel of the year and introduced the vivid, humorous, daring and ... more »shrewd Captain Jose Maria Carvalho Santa Da Silva, liaison officer between the Brazilian police and Interpol, one of the few successful Great Detectives created in the 1960s.
Along with frequent new adventures for Ze Da Silva, he has, as Robert L. Pike (he has also written under the piscine pseudonym of A.C. Lamprey), chronicled in short stories and novels the procedural routine of Lieutenant Clancy of the 52nd Precinct, N.Y.P.D.
He has written other short stories, some parodies, some straight--notably the entertaining exploits (in Argosy) of the all-purpose swindler Kek Huuygens. He has even, against all the odds, written a novel-based-on-a-TV-series which is brightly readable (Trials of O'Brien).
But probably his most virtuose accomlishment, aside from the creation of Schlock Homes, has been his completion of Jack London's unfinished The Assiassination Bureau, Ltd. (McGraw-Hill, 1963)--a wondrous grotesque comedy of idealistic assassination in which it is impossible to detect any scam dividing London from Fish.
Robert L. Fish, I am by now pretty thoroughly convinced, can do anything; and I wait eagerly to see what will come next. But I shall never forgive him if his unpredictably assorted output does not continue to include, from time to time, a fresh triumph/fiasco of Schlock Homes.