Customer Reviews

The Rubber Band/The Red Box 2-in-1

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

 

 

It has been 20 years since I have read all the Nero Wolfe series. What is amazing is how vividly I still remember characters, plot, etc. Nevertheless, recalling who the murderer is does not diminish my pleasure in re-reading these books. Rex Stout will always be the master. I am looking forward to future releases.

This is the 2nd book I bought in the " Nero Wolfe" series by Rex Stout and I have found every single story great. I have, as people told me I would, tried to buy every book written about Nero and they are all a joy to read.

I warn everyone if you buy one and read it, you will want the rest of them as I did.. You will feel like you are there with Nero and Archie, with the flowers on the roof, listening to Nero go "PFUI" and with Archie doing all the work, Nero calling together all the suspects and fingering the guilty party.

Don't want to give anything away for new readers, but both these involve secrets from the past. Love these new dual collection editions with the added essays. The Rubber Band might be the closest thing to a western in the Wolfe canon. The Red Box is interesting as it solves by not solving, if you follow.

I (again) purchased this (dual) book as a gift - this time for Christmas. I own both mystery novels in another format. As I have reread them both a few times with pleasure I thought they would be appropriate as a present for a relative that is just discovering the qualities and involvement in the best of the genre.

Both of these stories are from the early works of Stout, and one notices that both are indicative of a maturing writer. I have always found Stout's early Nero Wolfe books rather difficult to warm up to, but these two show a much more skillful and smoother style, and a much better and more compact plot development. The main characters (Wolfe & Archie) are also more finely drawn, and their depictions are more realistic. I would venture to say that both are worthy precursors to Stouts golden era that began just after WW II.

Since mysteries are written to be puzzles I will not touch on the specific plots here. However, the stories are completely diverse from one another, and one of the two reflects I believe something in the past that the author probably had known about from his own life in the western USA.

Recommended