Customer Reviews

Homicide Trinity (Crime Line)

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This is an excellent collection of Nero Wolfe short stories--some of the best Stout ever wrote, but they are still short stories. While they are great introductory reading for the new Stout enthusiast (highly recommended if this applies to you), the stories seem rather abrupt for anyone who's read the novels. Just as Wolfe, the cantankerous, lazy, overweight, yet completely endearing detective, and Archie, the CLASSIC unflappable sidekick, seem to begin solving the murder, they've found the solution, and the story is over. Other than the general abruptness of the stories, the book is wonderful, and the stories themselves are some of the best Stout ever wrote--if only he had fleshed them out into novels...

In "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo," 'it's a wily killer who dares to strike on Nero Wolfe's hallowed turf--and leave a corpse strangled with Wolfe's own soup-stained tie.' This is the story that was turned into an A&E movie, and the one that got me started on Rex Stout's novels.

In "Death of a Demon," 'Wolfe faces a gun-toting wife who serves up a confession of homicidal intent--only to become the sole suspect when her husband's corpse is found.' This one is a little confusing, keeping all of the guns (some toted by the aforementioned wife) straight.

Finally, in "Counterfeit for Murder," 'a cop-hating landlady brings Wolfe counterfeit cash--that leads to genuine murder.' This story introduces a very likeable character in the landlady, one of the few women Wolfe (by no means a woman-hater; they just seem to get in the way of his orderly existence) moderately respects.

This book consists of three novelettes or short stories, each featuring a singularly perplexing murder.

In "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo," Wolfe gets a spot on his tie, removes it, places it on his desk, goes to his upstairs greenhouse, and returns to find the tie tied tightly around the neck of a prominent attorney's secretary. He becomes so embarrassed by the incident, he finds himself incapable of thinking clearly. Wolfe swears he will find the killer, but he hasn't got a clue how to go about it. Archie gently prods trying to get Wolfe back on track. Wolfe finally regains his composure and . . . .

"That's the gun I'm not going to murder my husband with," the lady says as she puts it on Nero Wolfe's desk. The only trouble is, he's already dead. In "Death of a Demon," Wolfe finds himself in the unenviable position of possibly concealing the murder weapon from his arch nemesis, Inspector Cramer. He must walk a fine line between legitimate investigation and obstruction of justice in order to exonerate his client.

In "Counterfeit for Murder," Archie thinks it will be great fun to try to induce Wolfe to act for a homely old landlady who has a bagful of funny money. When the landlady's beautiful tenant is found dead and the landlady is arrested, Wolfe must fend off Inspector Cramer and the Secret Service as he tries to free his homely client and find the real killer. I must admit that when I read a Nero Wolfe mystery, I'm usually in the dark until Wolfe unveils the killer. In this one, the killer is obvious to the careful reader.

This edition now boasts "As Seen on TV!" on its cover, alluding to the fact that 1 (so far) of the 3 short stories herein has been adapted by A&E. Apart from Stephen Greenleaf's forward and the afterward, the book is pure Stout.

All 3 are murder investigations.

"Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" - The A&E adaptation is faithful to the story, although it has a little extra trimming - specifically, A&E added a prologue, where Archie begins telling the story at the Thursday night poker game while Orrie is preparing to bet, as a bridge to the next A&E episode, "Disguise for Murder", which picks up with the poker game after Archie finishes the story.

Bertha Aaron, a valued employee of Otis, Edey, Heydecker, and Jett, fears to go to Otis with her problem because of his heart condition. She caught a member of the firm meeting secretly with the opposing client in a major case, confronted the offender, and doesn't know what to do. (She won't say which, hence the title of the story.) Unfortunately, the firm's client is Morton Sorrell, and the opposing client is his soon-to-be-ex wife Rita Ramsey Sorrell - a divorce case. And while Archie tries to persuade Wolfe that the divorce has nothing to do with Ms. Aaron's problem, somebody gets into the office and leaves her dead on the floor.

Strangled with one of Wolfe's neckties.

Oh, boy. :)

"Death of a Demon" - Lucy Hazen hires Wolfe just to hear her say, "That's the gun I'm not going to shoot my husband with." She wants a divorce, which he won't grant, and she hates him so much that she's taking this step to shake the idea - discussing in detail how much she's been obsessed lately with the idea of killing Hazen. Unfortunately, as Wolfe points out, this puts her in a bad position if (and as it turns out, when) somebody *else* shoots him.

Barry Hazen likes (or rather, liked) making people squirm. He was a PR guy who didn't seem to give value for money; as Theodore Weed, an employee who's fallen for Lucy, can confirm, he had clients who didn't need PR at all, or who had other firms provide PR for their businesses, but paid Hazen for 'personal publicity'. All of which begins to leave the aroma of a blackmailer who squeezed someone too hard, or too many times...

"Counterfeit for Murder" (a.k.a. "The Counterfeiter's Knife") - Alternate, older version of "Assault on a Brownstone" (see _Death Times Three_). Hattie Annis in this version is an aging, unkempt woman rather than someone who'd attract Archie's fancy - that's the major difference.

Rex Stout wrote 33 Nero Wolfe novels and 13 Nero Wolfe books of three short stories, and I read them all decades ago. I enjoyed revisiting this collection with my 13-year old son. They are three good stories and Wolfe is in fine form. The subsidiary characters (Cramer, Stebbins, Fritz, and Saul, Fred and Orrie, and no Lilly Rowan) are there, but not as prominently as in some books (except for one story, where Saul essentially does Archie's job and solves the case). Also, not the harder-boiled Wolfe of the earilest books. Still, excellent fun for Wolfe experts and novices alike.

Critic Jacques Barzun divided Rex Stout's career into three distinct phases. This begins the third phase, where Stout explores ethical frontiers and takes the insularity of Wolfe's west 35th-street enclave into the world at large.

These stories, which first were serialized in various magazines, either take the chaotic world into Wolfe's home, or take Wolfe out of his sanctuary into the chaotic world.

In one, Wolfe's own necktie (with a yellow pattern) is used in a most foul manner. Of these three, this one's my favorite.

Stout was a liberal and would have fit into the late 60s well, you'd think. However, Nero is a little harder-pressed to adapt to this world, and it starts to show with these stories.

Finally, perhaps because they were written for magazine serialization, these are not the strongest of Stout's work. But they're still good, and so-so Nero is certainly better than none at all...

I enjoy all sorts of novels, contemporary fiction, crime fiction - you name it, I read it. Sometimes the books I enjoy are a little disturbing and not ideal for a night of untroubled sleep. So, nowadays, I keep two books on the go, the Michael Connelly, Stieg Larssen type thrillers during daylight hours (see my other reviews) and 'cosy' crime fiction for bedtime.

I have loved the Nero Wolfe stories written by Rex Stout forever, reading some of them again and again. This book is slightly different in that, although following broadly the same lines as other titles, it contains three shortish stories, novellas, I suppose one would call them. There is less emphasis on some aspects (usually there are glorious paragraphs describing the exotic food produced by the inimitable Fritz), but nevertheless, the stories are amusing and diverting and I thoroughly enjoyed having them on my Kindle. Maybe they should have been a little cheaper, since most of them I already have in hard copy, but maybe the publishers will eventually realise that we 'Kindlers' also love tree books, the e-books are bought in addition to, not instead of, the paper version.

I would urge you to buy this book and have the pleasure of reading prose of a very high standard both grammatically and descriptively. Highly satisfying read.

Stout somehow packs 3 novellas into 205 pocket-sized pages. Two concern rich Manhattanites, one working class down-to-earth ones. Although Nero Wolf is headlined, most of the investigating and narration falls to Archie Goodwin, his assistant. Wolf, according to Archie, is a genius, but to the reader appears overweight (he had his chair custom-made to accommodate him), self-indulgent (his chef prepares him gourmet meals), and irascible (voicing impatience with dull and uncooperative witnesses). There are enough surprises and twists (too many to summarize) to dizzy the reader. Entertaining.

A collection of three novellas featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. After awhile, there's not really much one can say about Stout's mysteries. They are always well done--I remember reading someone saying that Rex Stout never wrote a bad sentence, and I have yet to prove that false. But there really isn't much here that distinguishes these novellas from any of the other collections.