The Irresponsible Reader

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.