Mount TBR #14

I read this book for Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2019.

Prisoner’s Base – Rex Stout

When I first read a Nero Wolfe novel in college, I was not impressed though people whose taste I respected recommended the stories starring the rotund agoraphobic Manhattan- dwelling PI. I thought Wolfe was more a collection of quirks and ornerinesses than a character. But now in middle-age, I have seen the light.

In the course of this 1952 outing, three women are strangled to death. The killings are all connected to an $8 million inheritance and the control of a large maker and distributer of towels (Stout’s wife was in the textile industry so we often get references cloth and woven products). The incidents are knitted together skillfully with only once scene – Wolfe typically gathering all the suspects in his office for the first time – slowing progress down. Stout also shows his grotesque lapses of good taste in his descriptions of people and, sorry to say, wounds.

As usual, the cops are mean and thick-headed but they do get off a couple of nifties that barb Wolfe’s right hand man, Archie Goodwin. Of course, Archie narrates, as the soul of brashness and American confidence. Wolfe gets in his licks too. Upon being told he was free to leave the cop shop after being dragged down there by a cop martinet out of cussedness:

His reaction was humane, romantic, and thoroughly admirable. As if we had rehearsed it a dozen times, he arose without a word, got his hat and stick from a nearby table, came and gave me a pat on the shoulder, growled at the audience, “A paradise for puerility,” and turned and headed for the door. I followed. No one moved to intercept us.

Stout indeed liked the big word. Why use “childishness” when “puerility” gives better alliteration?

I don’t like the Wolfe novels as much as a novelettes but this is worth reading for both fans and novices. Be warned that besides the violence against women, a sadness at the loss of life is inescapable in this book, unlike most whodunnits, where murder is just a signal “Let the game begin!”