Gambit (A Nero Wolfe Novel) [Paperback]

Rex Stout (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 137 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books (1967)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000NLO2AU
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,650,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Stout's Best, April 10, 2005

By 

John P Bernat (Kingsport, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gambit: A Nero Wolfe Mystery (Audio CD)

Michael Pritchard's typically outstanding reading of "Gambit" cannot overcome an often-repeated comment about this book: that Rex Stout in the 1960s was on the way down in creative powers.

Gambit was written in 1962 and contains intriguing contemporary references: Bobby Fischer, television news, the cold war. These are always fun, and revealing of Stout's attitudes toward contemporary society. However, some elements of Stout at his best are conspciuously absent.

For one thing, he has Wolfe accepting a case largely because a pretty woman appeals to his vanity concerning his detecting ability and genius. It verges on Wolfe becoming a stereotypicaly dirty old man, and is not satisfactory. Then, the interplay between Cramer and Wolfe portrays Cramer in an uncharacteristially mean-spirited and even loutish manner. The Cramer we know is better than that.

Perhaps worst, though, is the absence of the wise observations we've come to expect from Wolfe. In this one, he gets peevish (not necessarily a bad thing) but also skittish - not like him at all. He shows an indecisive streak which is so inconsistent with the "better Wolfe" that the faithful wonder whether Wolfe should consider nursing home care.

Finally, the plot. If Stout has to have Wolfe explain what a gambit actually is, you can sense trouble coming. The plot outline seems rigged-up and contrived, and the characters seem to have some trouble sticking to it.

Must mention, though, the typically wonderful job Michael Pritchard does with this one. But for that, the audio version would be worth only 2 stars, not three...

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mix a 12-game blindfold simul, hot chocolate, and arsenic, May 4, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: Gambit (Mass Market Paperback)

This book was my introduction to Nero Wolfe, so I, like his new client Sally Blount, first encountered him not in his office, but in the front room, feeding Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged (3rd edition) to the fire for the crime of threatening the integrity of the English language. Archie says that's nothing - Wolfe once burned a cookbook for a bad suggestion - and it's material only because Wolfe's mental processes are muddled, what with the open fire and his anger.

Sally brought $22,000 in cash to engage Wolfe to investigate the murder of Paul Jerin, who was poisoned while playing 12 simultaneous blindfold chess games at the Gambit club. Sally's father, Matthew, wanted Jerin's nose rubbed in the dirt after Jerin creamed him (Jerin's giving odds of a rook in their last game made it even worse), and not only arranged the blindfold match, but provided the hot chocolate that appears to have been the vehicle for the arsenic, so now Matthew's in jail. Sally doesn't trust her father's lawyer, Dan Kalmus, to handle a criminal case in which the husband of Anna Blount is on trial for his life, but she couldn't persuade him or her father to face facts and hire Wolfe, so she's come to do it herself.

After hearing everything that Matthew is known to have done with regard to carrying chocolate and clean cups that evening, Wolfe states that either Blount's "an unexampled jackass, or he is innocent." Sally wins points for being very frank with Wolfe, plus saying that he's a wizard, and bringing a big wad of cash, so Wolfe takes the case.

Unfortunately, the case really *needs* a wizard: they soon discover that only a handful of people had an opportunity to poison Jerin's hot chocolate, and of that handful, only Blount even knew Jerin, let alone might have had a motive. So Wolfe takes the position that Jerin's death was itself a gambit: the early sacrifice of a piece (Jerin) to gain an advantage (the removal of Matthew Blount), and that it's not Jerin's murder, but the planned judicial murder of Blount that he needs to investigate.

Apart from the lovely opening scene, this book is distinguished by what Archie considers to be one of the best charades Wolfe has ever staged (Archie pretends to have been fired, so Wolfe and Saul have a field day play-acting as he watches through the waterfall peephole). It's also the only case I remember in which Archie reached the answer before Wolfe did (granted, because he got the crucial piece of evidence first).

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gamut of Gambits, June 12, 2003

By 

George R Dekle "Bob Dekle" (Lake City, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Gambit: A Nero Wolfe Novel (Hardcover)

The dictionary defines "gambit" as a stratagem. In chessplay it is a particular type of stratagem in which a piece is sacrificed in order to gain an advantage. The victim in this story is a chessmaster who agrees to do a simultaneous blindfold exhibition for the "Gambit Club" a chess club for rich snobs. In a blindfold simul, the master plays several opponents without looking at any of the boards. It is usually accomplished by the master sitting with his back to the array of boards. In this exhibition, the master sat in a different room sipping cocoa while four messengers brought the moves to him from his twelve opponents. One of the opponents actually played a counter gambit.

When the master keels over dead from arsenic poisoning, the club member who brought him the cocoa becomes the prime suspect. Wolfe refuses to believe that the cocoa deliverer committed the murder because he will have to return the $22,000.00 retainer paid him by the suspect's daughter if the suspect actually proves to be guilty.

Wolfe decides that the only way the suspect could be innocent would be if one of the messengers had sacrificed the master as a gambit to incriminate the suspect. But he lacks one essential fact to be able to prove his case.

Wolfe devises a gambit to get that fact, but someone sacrifices the witness who can give it to him. He then decides that he can find the true killer in the first murder by the stratagem of solving the more easily investigated second murder.

Then Wolfe gets the fact which cost the second victim his life, and he decides that his only hope to solve either murder is to devise a gambit which sacrifices his confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin.

Wolfe calls all the suspects together, announces he has fired Archie for incompetence, and then . . . .