The Second Confession [Hardcover]

Rex Stout (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1949

When a millionaire businessman hires the sedentary detective to snoop on his daughter's boyfriend, Wolfe finds himself caught in a labyrinthine case involving drugged drinks, murderous debutantes, and a gangland boss. Reissue.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From AudioFile

Orchids and machine guns, the privileged rich, and tough private eyes make for a heady mix, which reader Michael Prichard spins in classic late 1940s' style. The phlegmatic, cerebral, orchid-and-food-fancying sleuth Nero Wolfe, like a twentieth-century Mycroft Holmes, accepts a case involving not only the players mentioned, but also a search for Communists. Prichard tells the story in the first- person point of view of Wolfe's right hand, the tough, canny, and pleasure-loving Archie Goodwin. This is a fairly cinematic listening experience, as we are treated to lushly described scenes and desperate, intelligent characters. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Viking Press (June 1949)
• ISBN-10: 999752487X
• ISBN-13: 978-9997524874
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,105,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Second Confrontation, July 14, 2001

By 

George R Dekle "Bob Dekle" (Lake City, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Second Confession (Nero Wolfe Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Nero Wolfe's favorite drink, beer, is not a beverage you can come to like on the first taste. You will find beer bitter and repugnant, but if you keep at it you will eventually begin to tolerate it, then to like it. So it is with Nero Wolfe. At first taste you will find him arrogant, eccentric, and thoroughly unlikeable. Keep at him. Because Rex Stout chose the novella as the format for most Wolfe stories you can read the stories at a sitting. After three novellas you will come to tolerate the corpulent crimefighter. After five, you will even come to have some affection for him.

"The Second Confession" might better be named "The Second Confrontation," because Wolfe faces his archnemesis, Arnold Zeck, for the second time. ("And be a Villain" chronicled the first confrontation). When Sherlock Holmes discovered the existence of Professor Moriarty, he immediately undertook to destroy the professor's criminal empire. When Nero Wolfe discovered the existence of Arnold Zeck, he immediately began to avoid Zeck at all costs. Holmes' course of action led to the Reichenbach Falls. Wolfe's led -- you'll have to find out in the final novella of the trilogy, "In the Best Families." Suffice it to say that Wolfe undertakes to expose a communist, runs afoul of Arnold Zeck, gets his orchids machine-gunned, and winds up trying to solve a murder for Zeck. Along the way Archie gets in deep trouble with the local constabulary, Wolfe confounds the police, the two manage to outright break several laws, and they severely bend a few more.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, February 10, 2003

By 

Gregory - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Second Confession (Nero Wolfe Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

I don't understand the reviewers who complain about loose ends. Do you normally expect the second book in a trilogy to wrap everything up? I'm guessing that those reviewers didn't realize that Zeck appears in three books (And Be a Villain, The Second Confession, and In the Best of Families, in that order). At any rate, any ends left loose in this book are tied up in the third.

But even if you know and care nothing about Zeck, you should still be able to enjoy this books; he does not dominate it. Wolfe and Archie are both in top form, and the ploy Wolfe uses to expose the murder is both enjoyable and clever.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cut Rex Some Slack..., September 6, 2005

By 

John P Bernat (Kingsport, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Second Confession (Audio Editions) (Audio Cassette)

Some of the reviews here disparage Rex Stout's "pandering" to the Red Menace thinking of 1949. Let's put this into perspective...

Long before it was fashionable or even easy to represent for civil rights, Rex had Nero Wolfe honoring people of all races. Nero never generalized about (we'd now use the term "stereotyped") people with one key exception: Rex, a devoted husband and father of women, had Nero suspecting and disparaging women as flighty, treacherous and dangerous.

So here Nero accepts a commission to prove that Louis Rony is a Communist. In all truth, the way this is treated in the story Nero might as well have been asked to prove Rony was a philatelist. It's a matter for factual establishment or disestablishment...

To place this book's purported view of Communism as outweighing Stout's lifelong commitment to freedom of speech and expression is illogical.

And, please, don't forget how this book ends. That, too, puts things into an important perspective.