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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nero and Archie are always worth a visit,
By
This review is from: Fer-de-Lance (Nero Wolfe Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)
Compose yourself, Archie. Why taunt me? Why upbraid me? I am merely a genius, not a god. -Nero Wolfe Rex Stout was in the midst of an unusually interesting life (including being a child math prodigy and serving on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht) when he created one of the great detective series of all time, introducing Nero Wolfe for the first of 72 adventures in Fer-de-Lance. The brilliance of Stout's creation lies in the blending of Wolfe--an eccentric, elephantine, misanthropic, misogynistic, beer guzzling, gourmand--and his footman, Archie Goodwin--a classic, wise cracking, hard boiled dick. The combination, sort of like teaming Mycroft Holmes and Sam Spade, allowed him to use the best elements of both the British drawing room mystery and the American private eye novel. The result has enchanted readers for almost 70 years. Fans include everyone from Oliver Wendell Holmes to PG Wodehouse, James M. Cain to Kingsley Amis. Nero Wolfe, logging in around 280 lbs and quaffing 6 quarts of beer a day, rarely leaves his 35th Street brownstone in Manhattan, preferring to tend his orchids and worry over the exquisite meals prepared by his butler/chef Fritz. To support his high living, Wolfe takes on investigations in a very unofficial capacity, relying on Goodwin to do the physical work and periodically summoning the principals in a case to his home for an exhibition of his deductive genius. His arrogant manner is nicely captured in the following admonition to a sporting goods salesman who has condescendingly demonstrated the proper use of golf clubs: You know, Mr. Townsend, it is our good fortune that the exigencies of birth and training furnish all of us with opportunities for snobbery. My ignorance of this special nomenclature provided yours; your innocence of the elementary processes provides mine. Meanwhile, Archie narrates the stories in the familiar sardonic banter of the great noir novels: When I consider the different kinds I've seen it seems silly to say it, but somehow to me all lawyers look alike. It's a sort of mixture of a scared look and a satisfied look, as if they were crossing a traffic-filled street where they expect to get run over any minute but they know exactly what kind of paper to hand the driver if they get killed and they've got one right in their pocket. This sets up an amusing dramatic tension between the two, as when Nero tells Archie: Sit down. I would prefer to have you here, idle and useless...As I have remarked before, to have you with me like this is always refreshing because it constantly reminds me how distressing it would be to have someone present--a wife, for instance--whom I could not dismiss at will. Lest it seem that Wolfe is to much of an egomaniac to be tolerated, Archie makes it clear that he stays around just for the sheer joy of watching the elephantine savant in action and Wolfe himself acknowledges that much of his facade is mere pretense when a District Attorney commands his presence in Westchester, he tells Archie to refuse, saying "I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action." And Wolfe sometimes lets slip his admiration for Archie, telling a witness in the case, "Mr. Goodwin is a man of discretion, common decency and immeasurable valor." It has long been a theory of mine that if you create characters of sufficient interest to enrapture your audience, you can get away with not always cranking out a top flight story, we'll show up just to spend some time with familiar friends (this carried Magnum PI and Cheers through some mighty lean episodes & even whole seasons). Nero and Archie are always worth a visit, never more so than in this their inaugural case. GRADE: A
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The first step of a great journey,
By
This review is from: Fer-de-Lance (Audio Editions) (Audio Cassette)
Rex Stout wrote 47 Nero Wolfe books. Some are great, some are good, none are bad. You might as well start with the first one -- and if you like it, you will read them all.
I think my main takeaway is how books written 60 years in the past can be so topical. No more 5 cent phone calls, or having to go to a drugstore to make a call, or having Archie gripe about having to pay for two sandwiches costing a total of 95 cents -- yet Rex Stout engrosses you in his mysteries as if they were contemporary. I read all of them I could get from libraries in the 1960's -- now I have chosen to listen to the whole series read by Michael Prichard. I own them all on tape, and I'm currently on number 18, taking my delicatable time. The fact that they were written that long ago sets the hook -- this is not a contemporary writer trying to recreate the past, but a writer writing in the here and now, it seems. Just as we get comfortable with characters in modern TV series, so will you get comfortable with the idiosycracies of Wolfe and Goodwin. You will have a compulsive desire to read them all -- which is why this remains an immensely popular series. Read two or three, and if you think you are a mystery fan ..... and don't get hooked ..... then switch to romance novels.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Introduction to a Great Series,
By
This review is from: Fer-de-Lance (Nero Wolfe Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)
Rex Stout was truly an amazing man. (A brief bio is included in the Bantam Crime Line series.) He published his very first Nero Wolfe novel at the age of 48, after having completed extraordinary careers as a warrant officer on Theodore Roosevelt's yacht, a sightseeing guide, a bookkeeper, and devising a banking system. (Whew!) While "Fer-De-Lance" is not the best Wolfe story, it is the first. I originally read all the novels as I found them and am now reading them in chronological order. It really doesn't matter what order you take them in. Just try one or two. For those who are unfamiliar with the Wolfe novels, Nero Wolfe is a New York private detective who detests work, spends four hours a day cultivating his orchids, drinks gallons of beer, and tolerates women only when absolutely necessary. His assistant, Archie Goodwin, does the legwork for Wolfe. Goodwin is a good looking, wise-cracking, milk-drinking foil for Wolfe. Other assorted characters appear from time to time who are just as colorful. The great thing about the Wolfe novels is the way that Stout brings each character to life. To be honest, you really don't care that much "whodunnit" because the characters and atmosphere are so entertaining. A great, great series. If you've never tried them, what are you waiting for?
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