If Death Ever Slept [Import] [Paperback]

Rex Stout (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Time Warner Paperbacks; New Ed edition (1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0751501670
• ISBN-13: 978-0751501674
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid but Unexceptional Wolfe, July 9, 2000

By 

Chris Yanda - See all my reviews

This review is from: If Death Ever Slept (Paperback)

The Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout are timeless. Nero Wolfe is a fat, bad-tempered genius detective who almost never leaves his brownstone mansion in New York. The stories are told through his self-styled man-Friday, Archie Goodwin. Archie is Wolfe's foil: witty, active, and charming to the ladies.

In "If Death Ever Slept" Archie leaves the brownstone to go undercover as a secretary to a rich and important financier. It's classic mystery stuff -- a house full of suspects, some of whom get killed off as the story progresses and enough clever banter to keep you interested between the murders.

And that's exactly what I want in a mystery. Mysteries are supposed to be about clever people. There should be someone clever enough to think they can get away with murder. And there needs to be someone cleverer than that to catch them. Clever people should have clever dialogue. I'm not much a spine-tingling suspense mystery buff. I read mysteries for the fun of it. There has to be humour. Murder should be a funny business.

The other important characteristic of a good murder is that it should be a struggle to figure out who did it. All the clues should be there to find but it should be far from obvious.

If Death Ever Slept has the humour but it only partially succeeds on the mystery/clue front. I enjoyed the ride to the end. But once I'd finished the book I realised that for the last third of the book I had paid only scant attention to who the murder might be. When it came I wasn't surprised or gratified because I wasn't really interested any more.

I think I just like being in the comfortable brownstone with Wolfe and Archie eating good food, sitting in comfortable chairs and discussing the intriguing business of murder. In this book, I had absolutely no connection with either the victims or the killer.

Still, I enjoyed it as I enjoy almost all Nero Wolfe books.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stick with Wolfe's earlier adventures, November 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: If Death Ever Slept (Audio Cassette)

Just finished this book and my overall reaction was ... yawn. All the elements are there -- Archie, Fritz, Wolfe, beer, orchids, etc. But this is one of the later books in the series and there's a certain ennui evident. The mystery seemed over plotted, the characters under developed, and any genuine charm was missing. Of course even subpar Nero Wolfe is entertaining, so I'm not sorry I read it. I just enjoyed the earlier books so much more, and seeing the series go downhill is depressing.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Archie goes undercover, April 27, 2002

By 

Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: If Death Ever Slept (Audio Cassette)

Unlike Archie's last such assignment (in _Too Many Women_, written 10 years before this book), this case gives the reader a decent chance to solve the puzzle.

Ordinarily, Wolfe wouldn't ask where Archie's been when he comes in at 2 a.m. But when Archie walked out on Lily Rowan's party because she'd invited some people he didn't like, she started calling the brownstone, starting at 8 p.m. and ending at 1:30 ("So I, not you, have spent the evening with her, and I haven't enjoyed it.") The conversation went downhill from there, so when Otis Jarrell appeared for his first appointment with Wolfe the next day, he got the benefit of a rather stormy atmosphere, with Wolfe exerting himself to be pleasant, just to show that nothing's wrong with *him*. (To be fair, the brown envelope with $10000, cash, offered as a retainer, might have helped.)

Unfortunately for the exchequer, what Jarrell wants is to break up his son's marriage: Wyman married "a snake", and Jarrell believes that Susan has leaked damaging business information to his competitors several times. He wants to pass Archie off as a replacement for his own newly fired secretary, Jim Eber, until Wolfe and Archie come up with the goods. Archie's beginning to feel sorry for the rejection Jarrell has coming at this point - not only a near-divorce case, but depriving Wolfe of his services indefinitely - when Wolfe responds, "You realize, Mr. Jarrell, that there could be no commitment as to how long he would stay there." Archie, always a quick thinker, runs with this rather than squawking, and "Alan Green" becomes Jarrell's secretary.

Archie's new assignment palls very quickly. But matters become deadly serious when someone bypasses the security cameras in Jarrell's office to steal Jarrell's own gun, and Jarrell is too fixated on Susan as a suspect to get serious about finding it. Then matters escalate to plain deadly...

Leavening the mix of emotional relationships and industrial espionage are several timetables distilled from police reports, but they're provided in one big block so that you can ignore them at your own peril if you prefer. (Personally, I can enjoy this one just fine without worrying much about trying to work out the puzzle.) More interesting points include: Jarrell's daughter Lois, who (despite writing the poem from which the book's title is taken) is one of the 3 best dancers Archie's ever escorted; the measures taken by Archie to appear as Alan Green when the group is interviewed by Wolfe; and how Wolfe manages to escalate their quarrel to a new and more frightening level. :)