Category: M-R Page 9 of 10

Wow, it’s been exactly one month since I started this post. When I get behind (on these write-ups, not the reading) I get beeeehind.

So I can’t be certain, since it was twenty some years ago, but I think this was the first I ever read–and while I don’t remember being hooked right away, I did beat it to the library to grab another one. As I recall, the copy of the book my aunt loaned me had a balloon-y cartoonish drawing of Wolfe shoving his face into an orchid under some 70’s era kitchen green and orange stripes. Never judge a book by its cover indeed.

We are introduced right away to the remarkable Hawthorne sisters–April, May and June; a writer (married to the Secretary of State), a college president and one of Broadway’s brightest stars. Their wealthy brother has just died in a hunting accident and left behind a most curious will. His sister’s didn’t get the inheritance they’d been promised, instead they’d each been left a piece of fruit. That didn’t bother them too much–except for appearance’s sake (although May, the college prez, is distraught that her school didn’t get what it’d been promised); what bother’s the sisters is the way his wife wasn’t taken care of, and that his mistress (a poorly kept secret at best) received the overwhelming bulk of the estate. The sisters want Wolfe to prevail upon the mistress to return much of her inheritance to the more “rightful” heirs. Wolfe, for reasons I can’t understand, takes the case. Naturally, it’s not too long into the case before someone’s killed, and that’s when things really start to get interesting.

On the whole, the male characters (other than the regulars) in this novel are pretty dull, but most of the female characters rate a novel all their own. The three Hawthorne sisters have all striking personalities and a realistic dynamic between the three. There’s an interesting detail or two about the widow that I’ll save for those who want to read it. The daughter of the writer and the Secretary of State, Sara Hawthorne, grabs my attention each time I read it. Even if I can rarely remember how much peril she will be in by the end of the book–I always care a bit more about her welfare than I do similar Stout characters. As the sole female descendant of the legendary sisters, she feels the weight of expectation to do something as remarkable to the world at large, while being convinced that she’s not of the same caliber as her mother and aunts. To make up for that, she tries harder to be unique, to make her mark, to distinguish herself than the others probably had to–and in doing so endears herself to readers as well as to Wolfe and Archie.

A staple of P.I. fiction involves interactions between police and the private dicks–usually (after the first novel or three), there’s some sort of grudging mutual respect and assistance. Yet typically, there’s a mixture of trust and distrust–the P.I.’s withhold information and or straight-out lie to the cops and vice versa–teeter-tottering between the two extremes. Sometimes this feels forced, or even obligatory–even from skilled authors. Stout almost always pulls it off successfully (I can’t think of an exception), and generally entertainingly (thanks to Archie’s narration if nothing else). Wolfe has laid all his cards on the table and Inspector Cramer is convinced Wolfe’s up to something and makes more than one biting comment in that regard, leading Archie to observe: “It’s a funny and sad thing, the purer our motives are, the worse insults we get.” A sign of Stout’s ability is that he can keep something this tried and true fresh.

You’ve got a very wide and colorful cast of characters, a dash of political intrigue, and Wolfe out of the office on a case. What’s not to like?

A line or two that made me grin, both revealing a good deal about all involved.

Wolfe frowned at her. He hated fights about wills, having once gone so far as to tell a prospective client that he refused to engage in a tug of war with a dead man’s guts for a rope.

[After Archie is informed by Fritz that Wolfe has left on business] I hung up and went back out to the car and told Fred:
“A new era has begun. The earth has turned around and started the other way. Mr. Wolfe has left home in a taxicab to work on a case.”
“Huh? Nuts.”
“Nope. As Fritz says, honest for God. He really has. So if you’ll–“
“But [expletive], Archie. He’ll get killed or something.”
“Don’t I know it?”

Update: Found the cover image I remembered. I was off on the colors (tho’ there could be another version, I guess), but there’s that nasty cartoon….

And here we are at the seventh Archie Goodwin novel (feat. Nero Wolfe), Over My Dead Body. All things considered, this is not my favorite in the series, though I admit to reading it at least bi-annually. It should be noted that “not my favorite” roughly equals a grade of B-.

This is the first time we get a feel for Wolfe’s politics (and can guess at Stout’s), although it’s difficult to discern everything Stout’s trying to say because of my lack of knowledge about politics in the area around Montenegro pre-World War II. One day I keep telling myself that I’m going to look into that and see just how much Stout reflected reality, but today is not that day.^*

A woman who claims to be Wolfe’s long-abandoned daughter shows up looking for help in a case involving some missing diamonds. Until he can determine whether she is who she claims, Wolfe has to step in to assist. Just as things look like they’re settled on that account, someone is killed in a less than normal fashion. Of course. This sets off a case of multiple homicide and international intrigue, involving more than one European power, the NYPD and the FBI. Not to mention, we learn a little about Wolfe’s past, which is definitely more than a little interesting.

There are some truly funny moments in this one, and some very clever work by Stout, Wolfe and Archie. But…I dunno, it doesn’t totally work for me, dawg. Still, a Wolfe novel is like pizza and that other thing…even when it’s not great, it’s still good.

A couple of lines worth repeating…

[after escorting an FBI agent from the house] “You see what happens,” I told him bitterly. “Just because you rake in two fat fee and the back account is momentarily bloated, in the space of three weeks you refuse nine cases. Not counting the poor little immigrant girl with a friend who likes diamonds. You refuse to investigate anything for anybody. Then what happens? America gets suspicious because it’s un-American not to make all the money you can, and sicks a Senior G-man on you..”

[Fritz] was stiffly formal, as was his invariable custom when there were ladies present, not form any sense of propriety but from fear. Whenever any female, no matter what her age or appearance, got inside the house, he was apprehensive and ill at ease until she got out again.

“I carry this fat to insulate my feelings. They got too strong for me once or twice and I had that idea. If I had stayed lean and kept moving around I would have been dead long ago.”

^* Assuming I keep at this, fifteen entries from now, we’ll get another crack at this region, and I feel much more confident about what’s going on there.

While I’m enjoying this little Wolfian project of mine, I noticed when I picked up Some Buried Caesar that I was rather eager to dig into it. This is easily one of my favorite books–not just in this series, either. This is one of the funniest, most entertaining books Stout wrote, a real winner.

Like the last book, we again find Wolfe and Archie away from their cozy New York City abode. Last time, Wolfe was driven by his love of haute cuisine to subject himself to the whims of machinery. He has baser motives for this trip–a fellow orchid grower has slighted Wolfe, so Wolfe’s journeyed to upstate New York to humiliate him at a county fair’s competition.

As they near their destination, they have a minor accident in their car and find themselves taking refuge at the home of Thomas Pratt, the millionaire owner of a chain of diners called Pratteterias (don’t that just sound appetizing?). Pratt is preparing for a publicity stunt, where he will be barbecuing a champion bull, still in the prime of life. This is causing quite the stir among local (and, apparently some non-local) cattlemen, and Pratt is worried (with good reason) that at least one of them will attempt some sort of tomfoolery to prevent the bull feed. The son of one cattleman bets Pratt $10,000 that it won’t happen, which drives Pratt to engage Wolfe’s services to ensure it’ll take place.

From there, Fletcher’s Law kicks in and Wolfe has something more up his alley to work on. The trip to the country for a flower show becomes a maze of intrigue, crime, old family feuds, prison reform, and dumplings that are out of this world.

It is in this book that Archie meets Lily Rowan. There will be many competitors for Archie’s affections, and a few women will come close, but none are the match for him that Lily is. There aren’t many recurring characters that haven’t been introduced by this book, but Lily quickly takes her place amongst them.

For the sake of remaining spoiler-free, I trimmed my original selection of quotable portions somewhat, and still have what’s likely to be the largest selection I’ll offer up in this series.

[Archie speaking] Let’s say she goes ahead and ruins him. In my opinion, if he’s worth the powder to blow him to hell, he’ll soon get unruined. No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables.

I had been accosted by a tall skinny guy in a pin-check suit, as young as me or younger, wearing a smile that I would recognize if I saw it in Siam–the smile of an elected person who expects to run again, or a novice in training to join the elected person class at the first opportunity. He looked around to make sure no spies were sneaking up on us at the moment, introduced himself as Mr. Whosis, Assistant District Attorney of Crowfield County, and told me at the bottom of his voice, shifting from the smile to Expression 9B, which is used when speaking of the death of a voter, that he would like to have my version of the unfortunate occurrence…[Archie makes a wise crack] That confused him, because he had to show that he appreciated my wit without sacrificing Expression 9B

Dressed in a light tan jersey thing, with a blue scarf and a little blue hat, among those hearty country folk [Lily Rowan] looked like an antelope in a herd of Guernseys. I sat down across the table from her and told her so. She yawned and said that what she had seen of antelopes’ legs made it seem necessary to return the compliment for repairs

I was wondering which would be more satisfactory, to slap her and then kiss her, or to kiss her and then slap her.

It was Nancy Osgood, and the glance she cast behind her as she entered one of the sheds was either furtive or I was getting fanciful. Even if she was furtive it was none of my business, but a detective who minds his own business would be a contradiction in terms

“One test of intelligence, [Wolfe] said patiently, “is the ability to welcome a singularity when the need arises, without excessive strain. Strict rules are universal. We all have a rule not to go on the street before clothing ourselves, but if the house is on fire we violate it…”

[Wolfe speaking] “Proscriptions carried too far lead to nullity.”
[Archie replies] “After I analyze that I’ll get in touch with you. My first impulse is to return it unopened.”

The fifth volume in the Archie Goodwin/Nero Wolfe series, Too Many Cooks, is probably the most controversial, and (no probably necessary) one of the more entertaining and unusual entries in the Corpus. One of the eccentricities that Nero Wolfe spent so much time and energy cultivating is his rule about not leaving the house on business, yet this is the third novel to feature him outside his beloved brownstone. Yes, this time, it didn’t start out as a business trip, but still…

The story opens with Wolfe boarding–sacré bleu!–a train, bound for West Virginia where he will be the guest of honor at the meeting of Les Quinze Maîtres (The Fifteen Masters–a group of the world’s greatest chefs), being held at the Kanawha Spa resort. Of course, when we have a P.I. on vacation, someone must be murdered (what I call (Jessica) Fletcher’s Law). Wolfe does what he does best here, turn the crime and the uncovering of the villain/villains to his profit–this time, not for money, tho–something far more important, a recipe.

As this book takes place 14 hours (by train) away from Wolfe’s home, there’s obviously not a lot here that further establishes the recurring elements in the series, with one exception. This is the first time we meet Marko Vukcic, Wolfe’s oldest friend and one of the two men who call him “Nero.” Marko is the owner of Rusterman’s, a restaurant that will be featured throughout the long run of the series, and a place I’d love to eat at a time or two. Wolfe will talk to, and interact with, Marko in a way he will not do with anyone else–seeing him like this is quite the change.

Earlier I called this one of the more controversial novels in the Corpus, that is simply because of the language used to describe the African American employees of the resort–and a few others of various ethnic backgrounds. Deplorable language that would not be tolerated today, period. Even Archie uses it! Wolfe, of course, does not, and because of his civility and ability to treat the staff with dignity (and even with a nice little speech about equity) he’s able to win them over and get them to divulge information they kept from the authorities. Many are shocked and/or bothered by Stout’s use of ethnic pejoratives and have called for the publisher to edit this volume for future editions. Such a ridiculous notion, that. I would encourage you to read Barbara D’Amato’s blogpost about ‘satiable curtiosity in that regard.

As far as notable quotations from this one, I don’t have a large crop. I have two quotes from Archie, which while not getting into specifics, describe a woman in such a way that the reader can A. come up with their own mental image of her and B. absolutely understand why pretty much every male in the book will fall under her spell. The third quotation is Wolfe defending himself from the charge that he doesn’t like women (he is often accused, wrongly, by readers/critics/characters of antipathy towards the fairer sex), in a way that illustrates his character wonderfully.

…just as I flipped my [cigarette] butt through the crack between the train and the platform, I could have picked a star right there–or at least touched one. She passed by close enough for me to get a faint whiff of something that might have come from a perfume bottle but seemed only natural under the circumstances, and while her facial effect might have been technicolor, it too gave you the impression that it was intended that way from the outset and needed no alterations. The one glance I got was enough to show that she was no factory job, but hand-made throughout. . . . I muttered to myself, “My heart was all I had and now that’s gone, I should have put my bloody blinders on,” [and] shrugged with assumed indifference…

She had removed her wrap but her hat was still on, and the odor, faint and fascinating, was the same as when she had passed me on the station platform. I had a chance now to observe that she was as young as love’s dream, and her eyes looked dark purple in that light, and her lips told you that she was a natural but reserved smiler. Wolfe gave her a swift astonished glance…

[Wolfe speaking] Not like women? They are astounding and successful animals. For reasons of convenience, I merely preserve an appearance of immunity which I developed some years ago under the pressure of necessity.

this is my best attempt at recreating what was lost earlier, I had a hard enough time finishing this the first time, my heart’s just not into making this pretty. Just going for done.

Ugh, I thought it was bad when I was a book behind by Week 3 of this little project^* , and now I’m two behind in Week 6? Not pretty…so I’d better hurry up and talk about The Red Box, the fourth novel in the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin series by Rex Stout.

Thanks to a nice piece of trickery, Wolfe is dragged out of his office(!!!) to investigate a murder at a fashion show. A poisoned box of chocolate ended up in the wrong hands and stomach, cyanide in an almond candy, of course. Before he can figure out who’s responsible, Wolfe first has to determine who the target was. And he has to move fast, because there’s a whole lot of cyanide being tossed around and the bodies are going to start piling up.

I had a blast reading this one, I apparently hadn’t picked this one up in ages, but I don’t think I’ll make that mistake again. Now, I’m having a hard time writing this one up because there’s nothing remarkable about this one, unlike the previous installments–yes, the methodology is creative, the motivation is novel–but that’s par for the course. There are no new features to the corpus (well, a minor one, but it’s nothing unique to Stout), the regular cast of characters are pretty well set (had some good scenes with Saul and the gang). This is exactly what one is supposed to get out of a Wolfe novel.

This novel does introduce us to another feature common to Wolfe stories, ‘tho Archie seems to make a bigger deal of it here than later–it must have worked well enough for Stout to decide to use it again and again. As Archie put it it

that case was just one damned client after another

The client that dragged Wolfe into the case ended up trying to fire him, and then eventually did; which was okay, because a richer client wanted in on it; but that wasn’t the end of it. This did serve to move the plot along, and provide a few humorous moments, but that’s about it.

There were several great lines–those that had me rolling or were particularly insightful, but as I looked them over, I realized they all need too much context (up to a page or two) to appreciate/understand, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow or so for some samples of Archie the wordsmith. A lot of good back and forth between Archie and Wolfe, Archie and the clients/witnesses/cops/basically everyone, Wolfe and Cramer, and so on.

^* and now that I’ve publicly announced I’m undertaking a project/doing a series here, I’ll make it one more entry before crashing and burning. Curses! Foiled again!

With the third installment of many series, you can see the author settling into the world he’s creating and while there are hints of it, Stout’s been pretty at home since Day 1–he just adjusts the furniture a bit in The Rubber Band.

I have a pretty good sense of history, but it consistently throws me when someone in an early 20th century novel makes a reference to something in their recent past (or, in this case, the past of their parents) which is straight out of a Western movie. I can look at the dates all I want, do all the subtraction necessary, and realize it’s fitting, but I can’t accept it. Doesn’t matter how many times I try, I just can’t. Which is a cryin’ shame, cuz it makes it harder for me to get through the opening chapters of this novel than it should.

Regardless, this is a fun read. You’ve got Wolfe facing off with the District Attorney and Police Commissioner, Wolfe hiding a client from the police–also featuring the introduction of Lt. Rowcliffe, who will become a favorite punching bag of this dynamic duo, some interesting back and forth between Wolfe and clients/witnesses, a good revealing of the criminal to an assembled crowd in Wolfe’s office, and best of all, a woman staying in Wolfe’s home. Archie doesn’t tell us yet how nervous this makes Fritz (that’s a standard line that will come up later), but it is clearly a novelty.

The central client to this piece is Clara Fox, the aforementioned female guest. She’s one of the top 5 female characters in the corpus. She has every male who spends ore than a few minutes with her eating out of her hand, and from what Stout tells us about her, she earns it. Often when you come across a character like that, I just don’t get the appeal (naturally, an example escapes my mind), but Ms. Fox is an exception to that rule.

I’m finding it difficult to summarize the plot without a lot of spoilers, so I’ll just quote the back of my bantam edition and leave it at that.

What do a Wild West lynching and a respected English nobleman have in common? On the surface, absolutely nothing. But when a young woman hires his services, it becomes Nero Wolfe’s job to look deeper and find the connection. A forty-year-old pact, a five-thousand-mile search, and a million-dollar murder are all linked to an international scandal [a fairly inaccurate and overly sensational conclusion to that has been removed]

I didn’t try to write down the quotable lines in this one, tho’ there were plenty. There’s really only one that matters. Clara Fox, the adventuress, sums up life in the brownstone so succinctly, so perfectly, that it’s impossible to look at The Corpus without reflecting on it. You also have to admire someone who could go toe-to-toe with Archie with that quip on the end.

You know, Mr. Goodwin, this house represents the most insolent denial of female rights the mind of man has ever conceived. No woman in it from top to bottom, but the routine is faultless, the food is perfect, and the sweeping and dusting are impeccable. I have never been a housewife, but I can’t overlook this challenge. I’m going to marry Mr. Wolfe, and I know a girl that will be just the thing for you, and of course our friends will be in and out a good deal. This place needs some upsetting.

The second installment in Stout’s Wolfe/Goodwin series is a great follow-up to Fer-de-Lance, following up the outlandish machinations of the killer in the first novel with s more subtle, psychological criminal. The main characters don’t really develop (ever), but they are honed somewhat as Stout solidifies his vision for the series.

Wolfe is approached by a man carrying both a burden of fear and guilt–back in college, he was one of a group of students (associated only by place of residence) played a prank on an underclassman which resulted in a tragedy leaving the victim crippled. Years later, these students are mostly very successful in their various fields but are bound together by this incident, they have periodically helped their victim in various ways throughout the years until he has found his own measure of success. However, it now seems that he has also taken to exacting his revenge on those he holds responsible, and Wolfe’s prospective client wants the detective to put an end to it. Wolfe sends him away, but is eventually provoked by circumstances, money and, of course, Archie to take up the case — investigating a missing persons case, two deaths, and potentially preventing many others.

Stout’s novels are filled with all sorts of characters–particularly when the clients are committees, as in this novel. Most of the characters (even, occasionally, the villains) are little more than a name and a near-stereotypical collection of behaviors/remarks. But most stories feature a character or two (beyond the regular cast of characters) that really stand out and are memorable. TLoFM features two of these: Paul and Dora Chapin. Paul Chapin is an author of some talent, who was left crippled (physically) after the prank mentioned above, but he seems to have been born with an emotional/psychiatric disability that’s worse than that–the physical injury just makes him even more demented. Contemporary authors might do more with his character, might explore the depths of his depravity more than Stout did, but they wouldn’t do so as effectively. (incidentally, he has to be played by Michael Emerson if they were ever to film this). I really can’t describe his wife without getting into spoiler territory, but the pair are amongst the most memorable of all Stout’s creations.

This is closer to the fully-formed Wolfe novel than Fer-de-Lance, but it’s not all the way there yet. For example, Inspector Cramer was smoking a pipe, not chewing a cigar; the chairs used in the office for the guests are non-descript (now that I’m looking for its first appearance, I’m really missing the red leather chair); and Wolfe uses a top-of-the-line atlas instead of his giant globe to take his fantasy trips away from a complicated case. But we are introduced to what will be mainstays of the series: large crowds assembled in Wolfe’s office a time or two; his very dramatic revealing of the solution to the case; and best of all, the introduction of Wolfe’s rival, foil, colleague, champion, and almost friend–Inspector Lionel Cramer of Homicide.

As with any Stout, there are a few handfuls of lines that deserve quoting and requoting, I really should’ve kept a notebook or something handy to jot them down. As it was, I only got three of them noted:

…with the quarry within reach, the purpose fixed, and the weapon in hand, it will often require up to eight or ten minutes to kill a fly, whereas the average murder, I would guess, consumes ten or fifteen seconds at the outside. – NW

She was following what Wolfe called the Anglo-Saxon theory of the treatment of emotions and desserts: freeze them and hide them in your belly. – AG

I felt uncertain too, when I saw her. They don’t come any uglier…At that she wasn’t really ugly, I mean she wasn’t hideous. Wolfe said it right the next day: it was more subtle than plain ugliness, to look at her made you despair of ever seeing a pretty woman again. – AG

Rex Stout’s Fer-de-Lance is the first of 40+ books (novels or short story collections) featuring the exploits of private investigator Archie Goodwin (2 parts Huck Finn, 1 part Philip Marlowe) and his eccentric employer, Nero Wolfe (1 part Sherlock Holmes, 1 part Mycroft Holmes)–yes, I am one of those who think that Archie’s the main character in the mis-nomered Nero Wolfe Mysteries.

In reading about Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe (either by fans or professionals) there’s an oft-quoted line from Walter D. Edmonds that you simply cannot avoid seeing, “I shall never forget my excitement on reading Fer-de-Lance, sprung like Athena perfect form the Jovian brow, fresh and new and at the same time with enough plain familiar things in scene and setting to put any reader at his ease.” Aside from Oliver Wendell Holmes’ margin note (“This fellow is the best of them all.”), there’s nothing that sums up Fer-de-Lance better, sprung like Athena indeed.

It really doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read it, but upon re-reading (and probably even initial reading if this isn’t your first encounter with Wolfe and Archie–my initial read was more than 20 years ago, so I don’t remember) you can’t help be struck by how much Fer-de-Lance fits the model of a mature Wolfe novel–almost all the elements are there. These characters are introduced in practically their final format–a little tweak here and there over the course of the first few novels (off the top of my head I can’t say how many) will get them in their final form, plus the addition of a few other characters will be necessary, but the cast of characters is already over 90% complete. In the first chapter we already have Wolfe, Archie, Fritz, Theodore, Fred and Saul presented in a manner fully recognizable to the familiar reader. The story follows a fairly typical route (‘tho the identity of the murderer is revealed far earlier than is the norm), and the essential environmental elements are there–the beer, Wolfe’s eccentric schedule, the orchids, a relapse, the food, a cocky scheme to land a client, an outrageous stratagem for getting that last essential piece of evidence (not that Wolfe needs it to solve the crime, merely to prove he was correct)–the only thing missing is the gathering of the witnesses/suspects/clients for Wolfe to reveal everything in his characteristically dramatic fashion. One recurring thought I had while reading it this time was that this could just as easily have been the fifteenth installment in the series as the first.

As I don’t recall reading about Stout consulting notes–and he’s known not to rewrite any part of these stories–the fact that he can keep all the idiosyncrasies he establishes here well-intact over the next 40 years is a testimony to his mental prowess as much as anything else could be. (Contrast Stout to contemporary authors who find themselves re-writing their own protagonist’s biographies thanks to their refusal to check their facts/fix errors).

Enough of that–what about the book itself? Wolfe takes a small case as more of a favor/indulgence/get-him-off-my-back to one of his operatives and in doing so, stumbles upon a fact or two that leads him to conclude that a university president has been murdered in a preposterous manner. Seeing (and seizing) the opportunity to earn a large fee from this, Wolfe sends Archie to place a $10,000 bet with the District Attorney responsible for the area the president died in–wagering that an exhumation of the body will produce two particular evidences of homicide. No bet is made, but since it’s Nero Wolfe suggesting it, the body’s dug up, the evidence found and we’re off…

A fun read, a decent mystery (Stout will get better at this), great characters, and a good introduction to a wonderful world fit for revisiting over and over again.