Detective with hound following male nobody (3,4,3,5)
I believe the answer is:
tom dick and harry
'nobody' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot tell whether this works.
'detective with hound following male' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'detective' could be 'dick' (informal term for a detective) and 'dick' is present in the answer.
'with' could be 'and' and 'and' is present in the answer.
'hound' could be 'harry' (both can mean to harass) and 'harry' is found in the answer.
'male' could be 'tom' (tom can mean a male cat) and 'tom' is found within the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tom dick and harry that I've seen before include "Ordinary people" , "Anyone" , "Being basic geezer" .)