Customer Reviews

Too Many Women: A Nero Wolfe Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
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With my reading of this, I have read every Nero Wolfe novel. This is one of the best, in my opinion. Archie is sent to investigate whether a company's employee was murdered, or it was an accident. His interactions with one of the owners, a vegetarian with a taste for the exotic, are worth the price of the book alone. Archie also gets to put on his charm, and literally wine and dine plenty of women in this story, not to mention engage in his virtual warfare with Wolfe, until finally the mystery is solved. All of our favorites, from Saul to Fritz to Cramer are also present in this story. I was kept guessing until the very last page; I was suprised at how the end turned out. For me, that's the hallmark of a good mystery. The Wolfe books are all fairly formulaic, and this is a classic of that formula, but it works quite well.

Some have criticized Stout's postwar Nero Wolfe stories as reactionary and lacking sparkle and creativity.

Not this one. Yes, the plot device is predictable: that Archie is irresistable to women, and would do well planted in a big office disguised as an efficiency expert. The office has hundreds of good-looking women for Archie to interview, and he thinks he's died and gone to heaven for a while...

Here, the dialogue sparkles and the plot is pretty good. Now, it is true that you have to put aside your wince reflex regarding rampant sexism in this one. If you can manage that, though, it's a great read.

Michael Prichard once again does a spectacular job on the audiobook version. I especially appreciate his ability not only to do Wolfe better than anybody, but to handle multiple female roles distinctly and without flummery.

An employee of a very large corporation dies in a hit-and-run accident. Rumors abound that it was murder, disrupting morale. Nero and Archie are hired to either scotch the rumors or find the truth re: the mysterious death. These circumstances put Archie smack dab in the middle of hundreds of young working women -- many of them suspects, most of them of interest to Archie on other levels. This case gives him a chance to put many steak and wine dinners and many evenings of dancing on the old expense account, while he is in search of clues in this particularly confounding case. Neither the police nor Wolfe have much luck solving it for the longest time, and even Archie is frustrated by their lack of success (if not by the scenery he encounters along the way). This is very much Archie's story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I figured out the mystery myself rather early on -- something I'm proud of, since that seldom happens to me in Wolfe stories. Still, I had a wonderful time with this book, and especially got a kick of Wolfe's snorting dismissals of Archie more personal interest in the ladies. I also enjoyed reading about women in the workplace in those long ago days. How times have changed! All the women seemed to be in administrative positions. If they wanted power within the corporation, they got it through working for progressively more powerful men -- or in the case of Mrs. Pine, installing her husband on the board of directors. In that regard, this was a bit like unearthing a time capsule.

Every Wolfe book is really about Archie Goodwin, but this is especially true of Too Many Women. For the first time, he is given the role of sex magnet. Although the plot is only so-so, the result is one of the more entertaining and humorous Wolfes.

The atmosphere in the brownstone has become chilly of late: Wolfe wants Archie to replace the office typewriter with a silent machine (he won't), Archie wants Wolfe to trade cars (he won't), and Wolfe has riled Fritz with a new experiment in sauce. Wolfe has even annoyed Theodore (who believes that any non-orchid is a weed) by taking up valuable plant room space with a *begonia* (a gift).

All in all, it's a good time for Archie to get out of the house on assignment, particularly since Wolfe's bank balance needs a transfusion to meet his obligations, such as paying Archie, Fritz, and Theodore. When Kerr-Naylor's president, Jasper Pyne, wants Archie to go undercover in the stock department, Archie's willing - and more than a little offended that Wolfe doesn't squawk. But when Archie learns that the stock department's typing pool consists of 500 good-looking young women - almost all young and never-married - he feels that this assignment could take quite awhile. :)

Pyne failed to mention some facts Archie considers relevant.
- Waldo Wilmot Moore was hired on Mrs. Pyne's recommendation to her brother, Kerr Naylor - he who started the ball rolling by indicating that Moore was murdered.
- According to Archie's newspaper friend Lon, and naturally not mentioned by Pyne, Mrs. Pyne's in the habit of keeping gigolos, and Moore was about #8.
- According to a jealous woman from the typing pool, Moore's fiancee of a month, Hester Livesey, had been naive enough to think he'd settled down upon their engagement, to learn that he was still working his way through the women of the stock department.
- One of the few men in the department was a rival for Hester's hand, and was serious even if Moore wasn't.
- The other 5 correspondence checkers, not to mention their boss, had no use for Moore. He not only didn't pull his weight, but made extra work since they had to do his work over, and to add insult to injury, he'd received a raise not long before his death.

Really, not surprising that a so-called hit-and-run driver killed Moore, is it?

Lots of nice touches. Kerr Naylor is quick-witted enough to be able to catch Archie off-balance in conversation, and can rile Archie so much that he can't think straight. Archie at one point has to put up with health food (horror!).

And Archie learns that women, like Turkish delight, can be the kind of delicacy where too much of a good thing gluts the palate. :)

There is a crime - well, a hit and run, that may BE a crime - a murder. Archie and Nero are hired to clear it up - was Waldo Wilmot Moore murdered or was his death an accident? The Wall Street Firm he use to work at must know or it might damage its image - you know how that is.
The problem comes down to the fact that there are hundreds of female employees, and a few male ones, who could have wanted him dead.
The story, like many of the Nero Wolfe mysteries is detailed, complex and, near the end, with a surprise. The only problem is that this story seems to move slower than most and, like Archie and Nero, you start to become a tad frustrated with the rest of the people in the novel - they seem short-sighted, sly, dense and sometimes rude.
The end, like most endings of the Nero Wolfe series, is still somewhat a surprise (and even a tad sad depending on your point of view).

I purchased this as a gift for somebody who loves listening to Nero Wolfe mysteries. He particularly enjoyed this one. I've read the novel a couple of times and liked it very much. I think the title, "Too Many Women," is humorous because even one woman is too many for Nero, but the 500 employed by the Naylor-Kerr engineering firm of this novel are just barely too many for Archie, who is working undercover as an efficiency expert, trying to determine who murdered one of the firm's employees. Archie enjoys meeting all the beautiful women, but he realizes that all, or perhaps only most, of them are not telling the truth. So he counters with lies of his own, in order to trap the killer. This is definitely one of the best of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, with lots of witty dialogue, reversal of situations, the whole cast of Nero's helpers, and a surprise ending.

Archie gets sent incognito into a Manhatten office to find out if a dead employee was murdered, and if so, by whom. The comings and goings of all of the office's female employees gives Archie and Nero plenty to chew on. When another dead body appears, it gets even more interesting. You will be stunned when you find out the killer.

I ordered this book as a birthday gift for my son; I was confident in the purchase because of the Amazon "rating" of this vendor. The book arrived well within the time promised and in the condition described. Everything was 'as advertised'.

Having lived in Thailand for a while, I could definitely relate to the antics found within the book. I recommend this to anyone interested in the stranger sides of Thai life, but ex-pats will get the most out of it I believe.