Customer Reviews

Fade to Black

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Another delightful surprise to hardcore Wolfe fans! Fade To Black is very good. This is the second Goldsborough Nero Wolfe book I read; the first The Last Coincidence. The plot surrounds two rival advertising agencies and two soft-drink companies. I became enmeshed in the story and forgot it wasn't a Stout. An interesting and creative plot with very real-to-life characters, very believable. Goldsborough does a great job of writing in the same style, vein, and language as Rex Stout, and the main characters have continued to develop and evolve throughout the years and adapt to modern times and technologies - just as Stout did when writing his Wolfe mysteries. If you have read the original Rex Stout Nero Wolfe mysteries, you will have a treat in Goldsborough's new ones! And, having read all of Stout's Wolfe mysteries many times over, I have fresh reads to look forward to and enjoy!

In published interviews Rex Stout said that authors who wrote using other writers' characters were no better than cannibals and should roll their own. Unfortunately his family, blinded no doubt by the possibilities of royalties ad infinitum unearned by any of their own labors, disagreed. The results are these pale imitations. Where Stout's Nero Wolfe is eminently re-readable, Gainborough's are barely worth reading the first time.

The book was is great condition, and was received on time. The only complaint I have has to do with the author, who really tried MUCH too hard to seem like Nero Wolfe. There was only one Nero Wolfe -- and this man didn't even come close.