Customer Reviews

The Hand in the Glove

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

High-pitched and grating? We can't disagree with the one-star reviewer more. The voices are consistent and carefully chosen. We listened to this book while painting an apartment and found it thoroughly absorbing and well produced. We can't claim to own 30 unabridged Stout mysteries with which to compare this, but we can claim to know strong female characters strongly portrayed. Having listened to stories by writers such as Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, we think this performance ranks. It's consistent throughout, intelligently performed, and completely satisfying.

From time to time Nero Wolfe and Archie realized that they needed a female operative to help solve a case. They always hired the best, Dol Bonner, who had her own private detective agency. In this novel, for the first and only time, the focus is on Dol and describes how she came to be in this most unusual occupation.

Before the novel opens Dol had been a happy young woman, her father was wealthy, she was engaged to be married and then things began to go wrong. First her father lost his fortune, then killed himself, then her fiance left her and Dol was faced with the necessity of fending for herself. She considered her prospects and decided on the highly unusual occupation of private detective. As the novel opens Dol's business partner and friend is being pressured by her guardian to disassociate herself with the agency. Soon Dol finds herself without a partner but with the guardian as a client, at least for a short time. Before the final pages the body count has risen but Dol has been one step ahead of the police to solve the crimes.

THE HAND IN THE GLOVE was originally published in 1937 and the only novel featuring Dol although she appears from time to time in Nero Wolfe adventures. Stout's style is evident here, the characters are well defined, the problem is clever and complex but the snappy banter that marks the Nero Wolfe stories is missing. Another deviation from the Nero Wolfe novels is that the story is not told just from one point of view but jumps from Dol to her friend Sylvia's and others which is a bit confusing for the reader at times. Although this is not quite as good as the Nero Wolfe stories it is interesting for Wolfe fans to learn a bit more one of the few women in Wolfe's life.

Proof that even the best writers don't write winners every time. I have read all of the Rex Stout works that remain in print, and this was the first time that I had to force myself to complete one. As was noted in another review, this seemed to be an experiment that didn't quite work. Kind of like a great French chef trying his hand at a complex Indian curry or Mexican mole. Mr. Stout was best when he stuck with his tried and true voice and characters, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

If you are a collector, like me, of the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout, be advised: I had
hoped perhaps this would include how Wolfe and Dol Bonner met, but it is solely her mystery,
and her first case at that!

The story is an excellent one, containing all the highly individual and recognizable characters, many delicious red herrings, and certain amount of clever dialogue and description; it even includes our well known cigar biting friend, Inspector Cramer, although
his part is relatively small, and he enters near the end.

Judith West is an appropriate choice for a story with really two heroines, Dol Bonner and
her business partner and long time friend, Sylvia, the ward of the murdered person. The
reading and characterization begin well enough, but, even though the characters are well
differentiated as introduced, I found two aspects began to grate on the ears: one, when portraying an angry or stern male character, her voice became unpleasantly strident; two,
the vocal characterizations bordered on melodrama, causing the diminution of human connection and empathy with the characters. There was one, the wife of the murdered man,l
for whom this melodrama worked wonderfully well! It was humourous and charming; but with
the other characters, especially Dol, I felt an increasing dissonance and lack of sympathy
resulting in a desire to conclude the story, rather than delicious satisfaction and connection.

This is a pretty good "period" mystery. However, Nero Wolfe does not figure in it. A girl detective, which I guess was a novelty in the 30's has to solve the murder of a rich man who she had reason to dislike.

Others below have expressed concerns about the quality of the narration in this audio book. We're not talking much about this book itself...

Rex Stout tried to subfranchise Nero Wolfe many times. He sold to radio and hated what the scriptwriters came up with. He sold to movies and then criticized how the screenplays were.

Well, actually, he was right. These adaptations are pretty bad, in all truth.

But when he adapts his own stuff, and then tries to inhabit a woman's mind, it's a mess. Inspector Cramer is the only lucid, well-developed charater in this book - and this comes from a mystery author who developed such memorable characters.

Dol Bonner is a crypto-lesbian who cannot come out in 1938. The only love interests she has in this story are other women, so I think my last observation is credible. And Rex just cannot be that attitudinally flexible. The storyline is weak and not consistently interesting.

Most fatal flaw: the abandonment of first-person narrative style. We like Archie Goodwin because we can see ourselves as fantasy Archies. But Rex was not adventurous enough to make "Being Dol Bonner, Gay Detective" in 1938 as a first-person piece. Even though we do not see this story exactly from Dol's viewpoint, everything described is within her sight. About three-fourths of the way through, we're suddenly observing a too-long scene which is outside Dol's consciousness. It's jarring and might be worthwhile, if it really led someplace.

But it is just a little meander. Rex felt like exploring nonconventional religion, nonconventional relationships and nonconventional detectives, but the guy's just way too conventional for the job. It's a noble experiment, but it failed. Stout knew; he never tried again.

This is a Rex Stout book, but Nero and Archie are no where to be found. This adventure features Dol Bonner, the tough-talking female detective who has appeared briefly in some Wolfe books. As a character, she's interesting. She had her heart broken before the book begins, and consequently insists that she "hates men." Yet some of her closest relationships are with men. She's proud and efficient and good at her work. However, while it's interesting to watch Stout flesh out a new character and to hear him write in a new voice, it's still not great Stout. Sometimes the story is told from Dol's POV, sometimes it shifts to her partner and friend Syliva, other times the story is told by some one else altogether. This is no where near as satisfying a way to tell a mystery as by telling it all from the detective's point of view, and letting us solve the mystery along with our narrator. So, while this book will be fascinating for Stout's fans, I don't think it holds up very well as a mystery on its own.

I am an avid audio-book fan, and own 30 unabridged, Nero Wolfe audio books. Naturally, this book interested me, and I purchased it with a Christmas gift certificate. What a disappointment!! The narration is high-pitched and grating. I truly cannot understand how the producers chose to use this narrator. My mother listened to the set before me and refrained from saying anything so as not to spoil the set for me. Once I commented on the poor narration, she felt free to say that she strongly disliked the narration to. What was Audio Editions thinking? Please choose the narrators with thought next time.