The Rex Stout Reader: Her Forbidden Knight and A Prize for Princes [Paperback]

Rex Stout (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2007

Her Forbidden Knight Prefiguring the devices and charades of the celebrated Nero Wolfe mysteries, Rex Stout's first detective novel follows the fortunes of the pretty, young Lila Williams, a telegraph operator at New York's swank Lamartine Hotel, as she becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the operations of a counterfeiting ring. For nothing here is quite what it seems, not even the safety Lila thinks she finds in the arms of the man who quickens the beat of her heart. A Prize for Princes Aline Solini has a face that men remember, and a demon's soul they strive to forget. A woman created for intrigue, the exquisitely beautiful Aline captivates a wealthy young American, Richard Stetton, who rescues her from a Balkan convent under attack by marauding Turks. Stetton also enables her to escape Vasili Petrovicch, the husband she has tried to poison, and introduces her into society's highest circles. There Aline proves her talents for deceit among men of power to be no less resistible — or deadly — than her seductive charm.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rex Stout (1886-1975) was the creator of the enduringly popular private detective Nero Wolfe. Other of his works include A Prize for Princes, Under the Andes, Target Practice, The Great Legend, and An Officer and a Lady and Other Stories, all of which are available from Carroll & Graf.

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (January 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786718625
• ISBN-13: 978-0786718627
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,307,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Two Aces and a Deuce, January 25, 2007

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rex Stout Reader: Her Forbidden Knight and A Prize for Princes (Paperback)

A PRIZE FOR PRINCES is a pretty good Rex Stout novel, but HER FORBIDDEN KNIGHT is just awful. Otto Penzler, I used to think you had some integrity, but calling this reprint of schlock THE REX STOUT READER is the act of a con man playing the shell game in old Times Square to rook the tourists. Wouldn't a real "REX STOUT READER" have something in it with Nero and Archie? Not these two undiscovered "gems" from a pre World War I period! A PRIZE FOR PRINCES has a kind of detective story plot, but really it's a sort of noir novel, the kind that Robert Hichens used to turn out by the carload in turn of the century England. This one, like many of Hichens' books, revolves around the evil antics of a continental vamp called Aline Solini, Princess of Marisi, who captures men like flies and twists them in her web of evil. Her dark glamor is contrasted with the lighter soubrette charms of a French girl, Vivi Janvour, whose lighter, sunnier disposition is ultimately what a real man presumably wants. She is "distinctly French from the tip of her toes to the top of her head." You can tell that Stout was writing by the word, for chapter after chapter comes out padded to ridiculous lengths. "I don't know." "What do you mean?" "Well--that is to say--I do know--and yet--I don't know really." Aline is the kind of part Theda Bara used to play in silent movies, dangerously irresistible, not the kind of girl you take home to Mother, sort of a vampire Goth feeling about her. She knows how to apply poison to the tip of a sword; why, she knows everything about men's bodies and how weak we poor saps are.

Penzler adds as a bonus a previously uncollected story from the same period, "Out of the Line." This brief tale takes us to the birthday of a well to do American woman, Agatha, who, at age 31, has entered middle age, so "henceforth Time's sickle would descend with increasing rapidity and more disastrous stroke." Brother, do I know the feeling!