The brownstone house of Nero Wolfe [Hardcover]

Ken Darby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1983

book

Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316172804
• ISBN-13: 978-0316172806
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #463,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Where Nero Wolfe Lives, March 21, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The brownstone house of Nero Wolfe (Hardcover)

Reviews the career of the famous fictional detective, Nero Wolfe, as recorded in the books by Rex Stout. Since Wolfe "stoutly" refused to leave his house, practically all of his detecting took place here. Discussions of events are provided, with detailed layouts of the house and of individual rooms. There is also a bibliography of the seventy or so cases in which Wolfe acted. Ken Darby is a well-known choir director, composer, and lyricist, and clearly a Nero Wolfe enthusiast.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book Marred by a Strange Anti-Gay Rant, December 3, 2004

By 

Hayford Peirce (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The brownstone house of Nero Wolfe (Hardcover)

This book is, in my opinion, superior to the better known (and much earlier one) by Baring-Gould. It has, for instance, what appear to be beautifully drafted and absolutely correct floor plans of the famous brownstone on West 35rd -- in sharp contrast to the infamous plan on page 100 of Baring-Gould's book, in which the first-floor rooms are grotesquely wrong.

It is, however, marred by a bizarre rant beginning on page 152, supposedly in the form of a letter written by Wolfe himself, about the use of the word "gay" as a synonym for homosexual. Whether Darby was homophobic or not, I don't know. And, of course, in 1978, "gay" was still far from being universally accepted in the sense that it now is. Perhaps Darby was just being ultra-conservative in a rear-guard action about the shifting meanings of words (as has occurred through the history of the English language). But the purported letter is strangely out of place in this otherwise estimable work.