A series of comedic mystery short stories by Loren Estleman.
To summarise Claudius Lyon, we have to begin with Nero Wolfe. You've probably heard of Wolfe — the reclusive and obese genius who, when he's not reluctantly solving murders and foiling blackmailers, devotes his life to following his epicurean passions within his luxurious Manhattan brownstone. He tends to beautiful orchids that he grows on the roof, consumes world-class cuisine lovingly prepared by his live-in chef, reads the great works of human literature, and basically ensures that his life is a perfect ode to his pleasures. His various adventures are recorded for posterity by Archie Goodwin, his snarky but loyal leg-man. Nero Wolfe is a gourmet, a sophisticate, an intellectual and most especially, to every expansive inch of his waistline, the Great Detective.
Claudius Lyon... is none of these things.
Claudius Lyon can best be described as an utter fanboy. As a lonely, overweight child, he consoled himself in mystery novels and fell in love with the stories of Wolfe, and upon growing up and inheriting his family's wealth he decided to mimic his hero in every possible way. He changed his name to make it more Wolfe-like, he shuttered himself up in an expensive brownstone, he devoted himself to horticulture, cuisine, solitude and literature, and hired himself a legman to gather evidence while he sits and contemplates over the details of the mystery at hand.
Unfortunately for him, Lyon is not quite as good as his idol, and it shows. His brownstone is in Flatbush instead of Manhattan, tomatoes are the only plant he can grow without killing it, his live-in chef only cooks kosher, he reads nothing but cheap mystery stories and his assistant, the sardonic Arnie Woodbine, is merely a two-bit crook who spends his days trying to fleece Lyon of as much of his wealth as he can get away with. Furthermore, the fact that neither qualifies for a private investigator's license means that they must balance Lyon's desire to follow in his hero's footsteps with avoiding both a cease-and-desist notice from Wolfe's lawyers and the resentful attentions of the bullying Captain Stoddard, head of the local NYPD precinct, who is just waiting for the pair to accept payment from a grateful client so he can arrest Lyon for fraud (and sock Woodbine in the jaw for good measure). But underneath the comically inept attempts at mimicry, Lyon is a lot sharper than he seems...
The stories have been collected in a 2017 anthology, Nearly Nero: The Adventures of Claudius Lyon, the Man Who Would Be Wolfe.
Provides examples of:
- Ascended Fan: Lyon tries to invoke this for himself by following in Nero Wolfe's footsteps as closely as possible.
- Butt-Monkey: Poor Claudius Lyon lives in a world where apparently everyone thinks he's a joke (albeit not entirely without cause) and is either trying to rip him off as much as possible or trying to arrest him for fraud.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: While Lyon is both much smarter and less crazy than Woodbine snidely suggests, he definitely falls here. At very least, a man who willingly tolerates being fleeced by a two-bit conman and an inept kosher chef, spends four hours a day pretending to grow tomatoes and puts up with the bullying of a local cop just to make his life as close to that of Nero Wolfe as possible is eccentric at least.
- Conviction by Contradiction: Unlike the murders solved by Wolfe, the mysteries investigated by Lyon tend to be small-scale Encyclopedia Brown-style logic puzzles where the solutions hinge on wordplay, puns, and misreadings. The author has acknowledged this, claiming that having Lyon investigative weightier crimes would puncture the humor a bit. Also lampshaded in that Lyon doesn't charge for his services and, as most people assume that something being for free is worth exactly what's being paid for it, these are the only kinds of mysteries he ever comes across.
- Deadpan Snarker: Arnie Woodbine reacts to Lyon with much sarcasm.
- Direct Line to the Author: The stories are set in a world where Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are actual people and the novels featuring them are published records of actual cases. Rex Stout is mentioned to have been Goodwin's literary agent.
- Dirty Cop: Hinted with regards to Captain Stoddard, who is suggested to be a bit too inclined towards excessive force. He once puts Woodbine in a chokehold after Woodbine makes the mistake of saying something that gets on his wrong side, only stopping because a civilian happens to notice. Several of his attempts at catching out Lyon are also pretty clear-cut cases of entrapment.
- Dirty Coward: Both Lyon and Woodbine are this towards Stoddard, for different reasons; Lyon because he's deep down quite timid and easily threatened by Stoddard's bullying nature, and Woodbine because he's an ex-con and mouthing off to a cop is a good way of finding oneself heading back to the slammer (or on the receiving end of some excessive force). This contrasts with Wolfe and Goodwin, both of whom are a lot more courageous and willing to talk back to the authorities.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Stoddard is a spiteful jerk who is more obsessed with entrapping and bringing down Lyon than Lyon's harmless and small-nature attempts at mimicry really deserve.
- Expy: Invoked and parodied; Lyon is, of course, one of these to Nero Wolfe, with Woodbine being one of these for Archie Goodwin. Invoked because Lyon has actively tried to mimic Wolfe as much as possible. Parodied because he's not very good at it...
- Fan Boy: Claudius Lyon, towards Nero Wolfe.
- Hero-Worshipper: Claudius Lyon, to Nero Wolfe. It is implied that the worship is not particularly appreciated; one story involves Lyon facing a possible lawsuit from Wolfe for identity theft (and Woodbine facing a possible beating from Goodwin).
- Hidden Depths: Lyon is often viewed as a pitiful joke from those around him, but he's got some genuine investigative chops; he's quite capable of solving the puzzles he comes across, and it's often implied (and sometimes outright stated) that he sees through Woodbine's attempts to fleece him.
- Inspector Javert: Captain Stoddard's determination to catch out Lyon in receiving payment for his investigative services is disproportionate to both the offence and Lyon's rather harmless attempts at mimicry, reflecting his bullying, spiteful nature more than anything else.
- Inspector Lestrade: Captain Stoddard, the local NYPD precinct commander, fills this purpose for Lyon just as Inspector Cramer fills it for Nero Wolfe. In keeping with the distorting mirror nature of the stories, however, while Cramer is decent cop with a grudging respect for Wolfe, Stoddard is simply a vindictive bully on a crusade to try and put the screws onto Lyon.
- Jerkass:
- Captain Stoddard is a spiteful, humourless bully who vindictively tries to set up Lyon at every possibility and, it's implied, is not immune to using excessive force.
- Arnie Woodbine is a bottom-feeding low-level con man who has Archie Goodwin's snark but lacks his moral compass or charm. His narration also views Lyon with undisguised contempt, whereas Goodwin for all his snark respects his employer.
- Keep the Reward: Possibly the main, if not only, actual advantage Lyon has over Wolfe is that he is independently wealthy and so, unlike Wolfe, doesn't need to accept payment for his services. This is partly by necessity, however, since he is also unlicensed and accepting a payment could get him in trouble with the police; refusing a reward is a loophole that lets him continue to operate.
- Meaningful Name: Invoked:
- Claudius Lyon changed his name specifically to honor and mimic his hero; a Roman emperor and a wild animal with heavy symbolic meaning. Lyon flatters himself that, unlike a "Wolfe", a "Lyon" is the king of the animals. It is possibly the only way he's managed to get one up on his hero, however.
- Arnie Woodbine plays with this. Lyon hires him simply because his name looks and sounds like "Archie Goodwin" if you tilt your head, squint and say it quickly. But whereas Goodwin's name gives a clue to his essential decency, Woodbine is a type of cigarette (and one noted for being quite coarse and hard to smoke), also giving a clue to Woodbine's rougher and skeevier nature.
- Poor Man's Substitute: Invoked as part of the parody; Lyon actively tries to set himself up as an Expy of Nero Wolfe, but due to his own personal limitations and circumstances the overall effect is ultimately less-than-impressive:
- Wolfe is a genius Great Detective whereas Lyon, while not unintelligent, is basically a nerd who's read one too many mystery novels;
- Wolfe is a cultured epicure with a love of great literature and fine dining, but Lyon's reading taste runs more towards Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown, his home furnishings are impossibly tacky, and the only fine dining he has access to is the kosher delicacies of a second-rate chef called Gus;
- Wolfe has the services of Archie Goodwin, a talented investigator in his own right, where Lyon has to make do with Arnie Woodbine, a low-level con man who keeps trying to fleece him;
- Wolfe's furnishings are elegant and tasteful, but Lyon lacks a sense of style;
- Wolfe is a licensed investigator, but Lyon doesn't qualify for one.
- Woodbine is an even bigger one than Lyon. He's supposedly the Archie Goodwin to Lyon's Nero Wolfe, but where Goodwin is Wolfe's Hypercompetent Sidekick, Woodbine contributes absolutely nothing to the proceedings other than his name kinda sorta sounding almost like Goodwin's, and he is overall a useless leech who spends all his time sponging as much as he can get away with from Lyon. Furthermore, it's often suggested that Woodbine isn't even that good a conman; he's a Horrible Judge of Character, appears to have repeatedly been arrested by the same undercover officer more than once, and has a lengthy list of criminal convictions implying that outside of what he fleeces from Lyon his scams have rarely actually worked. Essentially, for all Woodbine's snide dismissiveness towards Lyon, it's heavily implied that the only reason Woodbine actually gets away with scamming him the way he does is because Lyon willingly overlooks it rather than have to find another Archie Goodwin stand-in.
- Captain Stoddard is this for Inspector Cramer; both are hostile Inspector Lestrade types, but where Cramer is the head of a homicide division, Captain Stoddard merely runs the "bunco"note squad for the nearby precinct. Also, where Cramer is a capable detective in his own right and a pretty decent cop, Stoddard is merely a vindictive bully with a hot temper and, it's heavily implied, a proclivity for excessive force.
- Gus, Lyon's chef, is also this to Wolfe's chef Fritz Brenner; Fritz is a world-class chef in his own right with a wide menu of recipes, whereas Gus only cooks kosher food, seems to heavily use lox and is quite third rate. It's also implied that Gus himself is a bit of a conman who is merely fleecing Lyon.
- Even Saul Panzer, tail-man extraordinaire, has one in the form of Sherm David, a local hobo that Lyon sometimes hires when he needs some grunt work done. As with Woodbine, the connection is merely in the name, combining a figure from Hebrew mythology and a tank (or at least sort of in Sherm's case).
- Serious Business: Captain Stoddard is more obsessed with trying to bring down Lyon than Lyon's rather average and harmless attempts at mimicry warrant or deserve.
- The Cameo: The bookstore owner at the middle of the mystery in "Wolfe Trap" is Otto Penzler, proprietor owner of the The Mysterious Bookshop
, the oldest crime-thriller speciality bookshop in the world. He also runs a press which reprints classic first-editions. - Ungrateful Bastard: In one story, after Lyon manages to clear Captain Stoddard's niece of theft, when it looks like the bookseller at the middle of the mystery is going to gift Lyon a book in thanks Stoddard immediately leaps on it as an excuse to try and arrest him. And this is at Christmas time, as well.
- The Watson: Arnie Woodbine performs this role for Lyon, just as Archie Goodwin does for Nero Wolfe. Woodbine is a lot more of The Load, however; he's not particularly interested in solving mysteries, views Lyon with contempt, and spends most of his time trying to fleece his employer. He doesn't even really need to perform the "prod the detective into working" function that Goodwin serves, since Lyon — much as he might try to hide it — is actually desperately eager to solve mysteries and show off his smarts. Ultimately, it seems that Lyon only keeps Woodbine around to maintain the homage to Nero Wolfe he's got going on.
