Customer Reviews

A Prize for Princes (Stout, Rex)

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Yes, indeed, there are times when reading an early, possibly previously unknown or unpublished work by a favorite established author can be a joyous reading experience. Not so in this particular case, however. This one should have died aborning.

To be sure, anything written by Rex Stout cannot be other than gracefully written, while exhibiting a thorough knowledge of the setting and any other details necessary to the plot. This IS well-written, and as far as I can tell, an accurate recreation of the period of 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I, when there were still myriad little princedoms scattered about Europe, each with their own Prince. Or Duke, perhaps, although here we have a prince.

We have also a Mata Hari type who quite defies description! And a TSTL male lead character. (That means 'too stupid to live' for the uninitiated.) There is an ingenue, and a quite nice young diplomat and a villain who isn't really, plus the aforementioned prince.

Richard Stetton, a wealthy young American afflicted with wanderlust happens on a riot in Fasilica, wherever that is in middle Europe, somewhere, more near the Orient and Asia than the continental areas with which we're more familiar, such as France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and so forth. When he sees the out-of-control troops attack a convent, he rushes to assist anyone he can find. Thus he meets up with a devastatingly beautiful blonde, Aline Solini and her younger, orphaned friend, Vivi Janvour. Better he had run in the opposite direction several hours earlier. But he didn't, and for the next 300+ pages, the reader is treated to the impossible, the improbable, and the unbelievable.

Frankly, I cannot believe that Rex Stout approved this venture--having the 25 chapters put into book form, rather than being spread out over several months in the telling. Perhaps if one were to read it, one chapter per week, it would be more palatable and less laughable. It won't tarnish Stout's brilliant reputation, except to those who've never read the Nero Wolfe books. What a pity if it should discourage anyone from reading those books or the short stories or novellas about Nero and Archie and their cohorts, which are entirely splendid.

This effort, however, reeks of an attempt by someone to generate income using the defenseless author who died several years ago, and is no longer able to defend himself from such nefarious schemes.

I've read Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories all my adult life and never regretted a moment spent doing so. His earlier work, though, could have been pruned to the ground and no loss would have ensued. How the author of "A Prize for Princes" and its plummy, purple prose ever made the transition to 35th Avenue and Nero, Archie, Fritz and Theodore is beyond me.
"Her Forbidden Knight", written in 1913, a year before "A Prize for Princes", is somewhat satisfying in a Damon Runyonesque kind of way. "Prize", though, is overblown, overwritten, incessantly stupid, though ultimately rewarding in the double murder of the two main characters at the end. I believe Stout became weary of the machinations that fettered this serial, much later, book. Stout must have been writing to pay the bills in those early years while he was working on his highly successful school banking system. I find it interesting that it was 20 years later when he wrote "Fer-de-Lance" that the Wolfe canon began.
I'll stop searching for early Stout and stay with what worked so well for him and all of us. I suggest you do the same.

Yes, I bought this book used because I have enjoyed the Nero Wolf series. It certainly doesn't come up to those books. It started really slow for me, but I've become more invested while reading. It's not terrific, but it's not awful. I've certainly started worse books and refused to finish them.