Vintage Mystery #2

I read this book for the Vintage Mystery Bingo Reading Challenge 2014. The challenge is to read 6 or more Vintage Mysteries. All novels must have been originally written before 1960 and be from the mystery category.

I read this for O-2: Read a Book Published under More than One Title

The Rubber Band aka To Kill Again– Rex Stout

First serialized in six issues of the weekly Saturday Evening Post in 1936, The Rubber Band is the third novel featuring the heavy agoraphobic detective Nero Wolfe and his active wise guy of a personal assistant  Archie Goodwin.

The story begins with a highly successful businessman trying to persuade the lazy Wolfe to investigate the apparent theft of $30,000 from his office suite. Coincidentally enough, the woman that his colleagues are convinced is guilty of the theft, aptly named Clara Fox, visits Wolfe’s office. She tries to persuade Wolfe to take up the case of collecting an old, undocumented debt.

Given the debt, the theft, and the inevitable murder, the plot becomes complex. Count on Stout to keep the balls in the air, play fair, and end with a surprising reveal. On top of the story, though, is the attraction of being the fly on the walls of Wolfe’s brownstone on West 35th Street.  As J. Kenneth Van Dover wrote in At Wolfe's Door, “It is the center from which moral order emanates, and the details of its layout and its operations are signs of its stability.”

Though populated by four males, nothing brings to the mind the locker room as the place is spotlessly clean and gourmet meals are served on a rigid schedule. The place becomes a madhouse, however, because Wolfe allows Clara Fox to hide from the cops in the brownstone. Misogynist Wolfe falls for her a bit, while Archie looks askance and ribs him about reading her Hungarian poetry.

With such a safe domestic interior as the brownstone, I can’t see the Wolfe novels as hard-boiled. Archie is tough and ready with weapons, but he’s too funny and nice a guy to be compared with Sam Spade or Lew Archer. Sensing Goodwin’s genial soul, in the early Sixties a cousin of mine – a reader down to her shoes  -  named her basset hound Archie in his honor.

Plus, Stout hit on something with character of Wolfe. Wolfe is the thinking device, the heir of Sherlock Holmes, but his conceits and pompousness are a hoot. . "Confound it, Archie. I have you to thank for this acarpous entanglement." Stout, a lover of big words, reverses the roles when he has Archie complain about Wolfe’s eccentric ways: “I exploded, ‘If this keeps up another ten minutes I'll get Weltschmerz!’”

The League of Frightened Men and Fer de lance were the first two Wolfe novels. Both were too long, nearly painfully so. The Rubber Band is long also but it never feels long.  I think I would recommend The Rubber Band to a reader new to Wolfe, but tell them an even better place to start would be with the post-WWII outings such as The Silent Speaker. Then read Black Orchid and Some Buried Caesar. The novellas, which number about 50, are, in a word, perfect.

Mystery in Manhattan

The Rubber Band – Rex Stout

First serialized in six issues of the weekly Saturday Evening Post in 1936, The Rubber Band aka To Kill Again is the third novel featuring the heavy agoraphobic PI Nero Wolfe and his active wise guy of a personal assistant  Archie Goodwin.

The story begins with a highly successful businessman trying to persuade the indolent Wolfe to investigate the apparent theft of $30,000 from his office suite. Coincidentally enough, the woman that his colleagues are convinced is guilty of the theft, aptly named Clara Fox, visits Wolfe’s office. She tries to persuade Wolfe to take up the case of collecting an old, undocumented debt.

Given the debt, the theft, and the inevitable murder, the plot becomes complex. Count on Stout to keep the balls in the air, play fair, and end with a surprising reveal. On top of the story, though, is the attraction of being the fly on the walls of Wolfe’s brownstone on West 35th Street.  As J. Kenneth Van Dover wrote in At Wolfe's Door, “It is the center from which moral order emanates, and the details of its layout and its operations are signs of its stability.”

Though populated by four males, nothing brings to the mind the locker room as the place is tidy and gourmet meals are served on a rigid schedule. The place becomes a madhouse, however, because Wolfe allows Clara Fox to hide from the cops in the brownstone. Though his default setting are misogynistic, Wolfe falls for her, while Archie looks askance and ribs him about reading her Hungarian poetry.

With such a safe domestic interior as the brownstone, I can’t describe the Wolfe novels as hard-boiled. Archie is tough and ready with weapons, but he’s too funny and uncomplicated a guy to be compared with Sam Spade or Lew Archer. Liking Goodwin’s genial soul, in the early Sixties, a cousin of mine – a reader down to her toes  -  named her basset hound Archie in his honor.

Plus, Stout hit on something with the character of Wolfe. Wolfe is the thinking device, the heir of Sherlock Holmes, but his conceits and pompousness are a hoot. “Confound it, Archie. I have you to thank for this acarpous entanglement.” Stout, a lover of big words, reverses the roles when he has Archie complain about Wolfe’s eccentric ways: “I exploded, ‘If this keeps up another ten minutes I'll get Weltschmerz!’”

The League of Frightened Men and Fer de lance were the first two Wolfe novels. Both were too long, nearly painfully so. The Rubber Band is long also but it never feels long.  I think I would recommend The Rubber Band to a reader new to Wolfe, but tell them an even better place to start would be with the post-WWII outings such as The Silent Speaker. Then read Black Orchid and Some Buried Caesar. The novellas, which number about 50, are, in a word, perfect; see Trouble in Triplicate.

Back to the Classics #9

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018.

Red Threads - Rex Stout

The Barnes & Noble website touts its e-book version as “An Inspector Cramer Mystery” as if Stout made the hard-boiled head of NYPD homicide a series hero. Cramer was never a series hero. Cramer usually played the flatfoot foil in Stout’s classic mysteries starring the PI duo of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. And in this 1939 novel, he merely assists the heroine trap the perp.

This mystery contains the prototypical elements of a story from the so-called golden age of detective fiction. The close reader catches a whiff of the spiritualism and mysticism that was popular in the 20 years after WWI. The color prejudice – this time involving American Indians – is about what we would expect for the late Thirties. The usual whodunit snobbery is on display. The glamorous characters are well-off and famous in the arts, design and technology. The victim is a millionaire, killed in the ostentatious tomb of his wife, which is located on the grounds of his swanky country estate. As for the final debit, what can we say about the prose:

He stopped, gazing at her, and put out a hand and took it back again. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to plead with you. I did that, and what good did it do? But all the same, I won’t tolerate it – what you’re doing with Guy Carew. Now that the fortune is his – the wings for your ambition. I know you can do it – he’s a half-primitive infant – may be you’ve already done it – but I won’t tolerate it and I won’t allow it. I won’t, Portia! You’re mine! By God, you are!”

Pee-yew, is what I say, but maybe that’s just me. To be charitable, he wrote this in 1939, just after one of the better Wolfe and Archie novels, Some Buried Ceasar.  Too much to expect two home runs in a row.

On the credit side, Stout is a reliable feminist whose female characters work hard and enjoy success on their own terms. Smart cookies, too. A textile artist and fashion designer upstages Inspector Cramer by using a peach pit, a red thread from an antique weave, and the call of a whippoorwill to solve the mystery.

Also to his credit, Stout has a longish set piece with Cramer and the DA playing tag-team interrogating the fashion designer. Besides yelling and pressure, they use sleep and sensory deprivation, denial of food and drink, denial of clean clothes and hand and face washing, and denial of the toilet to break down the fabric artist’s resistance to answering questions about The Obvious Suspect who happens to be on the edge of being her boyfriend. Stout doesn’t make a big deal of sleep deprivation as torture, but the reader can tell Stout is not a supporter of harsh interrogation techniques routinely used in the good old days on basically anybody. It's admirable of Stout to kick against a practice that most people of the time accepted as part of the normal course of things.

Finally, in the tradition of Golden Age mysteries, the reveal tests patience and credulity in terms of to what degree will we accept silly and over the top.  I can recommend this one only to hard-core fans who have already read a fistful of Nero Wolfe mysteries and, bless us reading gluttons one and all, even read an Alphabet Hicks or a Doll Bonner.

Reviews of other Stout Novels
The Golden Spiders
Hand in Glove
Not Quite Dead Enough
The Rubber Band
The Second Confession
The Silent Speaker
Where There's a Will
The Case of the Black Orchids
Too Many Cooks
Trouble in Triplicate
Over My Dead Body
And Be a Villain
In the Best Families

Perry Mason 162: TCOT Duplicate Daughter

Note: I’m not a reader that pays much attention to titles. The thing is, titles of Perry Mason books always promise meaning, but often in the same way horoscopes do: vaguely, and only after you’ve shrugged off confirmation bias. In this 1960 production, the title is practically the only clue we get - until the courtroom explodes like a Fourth of July firecracker. Is it fair that the next real clue arrives when the novel is 96% over? Of course not. But fairness is for afternoons in May and virtue ethicists, not Perry Mason plots. Gardner knows his readers will wait patiently for that last-minute twist, because nothing tastes sweeter than watching Mason pull a rabbit out of a hat while Burger is still deciding between the homburg or the fedora.

The Case of the Duplicate Daughter – Erle Stanley Gardner

The story begins with a game of deception so subtle that the reader, if reading too fast, will be left bewildered by its sudden reversals. Carter Gilman, investment wizard and pillar of respectability, vanishes one morning while his twenty-year-old daughter Muriel (talk about a name that screams dutiful daughter) is preparing the kind of Anglo breakfast that has sent generations of men to early graves - bacon, eggs, buttered toast.

When she returns, her father is gone. In his workshop, she discovers a broken chair, a pool of crimson liquid, and ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills scattered like confetti. Convinced she has stumbled upon a murder scene, Muriel obeys the instructions in her father’s briefcase: “If anything happens, call Perry Mason.”

Mason arrives to find the “blood” is paint, but the money is real - worth over a hundred thousand in today’s currency. He dispatches Paul Drake to probe the Gilman household: Carter, his daughter Muriel, his second wife Nancy, and Nancy’s daughter Glamis. Before the detective can report, Gilman materializes in Mason’s office, delivers cryptic instructions, and disappears again - this time for good.

Enter Vera Martel, a private investigator with ethics as flexible as a rubber band. She telephones Mason, warning him to abandon Gilman’s cause and to tell the man his troubles are worse than imagined. Mason, intrigued, consults Drake, who brands Martel a blackmailer - a woman who turns sensitive information into cash. Soon after, Martel is found dead, and Carter Gilman is indicted for her murder.

The courtroom becomes a theater of psychological warfare. Hamilton Burger, savoring the prospect of humbling Mason, subpoenas him as a witness for the prosecution. But Mason, master of timing, unmasks the killer before taking the stand. The solution, resting on an ancient fictional device, is not fair play - but it is dazzling.

Beneath the legal fireworks lies a motive steeped in the mores of mid-century America. Nancy’s youthful Bohemianism - she was an artist, which in the 1950s was shorthand for the moral laxity of beatniks - becomes a weapon in the hands of the prosecution. Gardner exploits this cultural hypocrisy with relish, reminding us that blackmail thrives where society clings to its taboos. Today, when scandal has lost its sting, such plots seem quaint.

This late-career Mason novel is a study in contrasts: the glitter of money against the shadow of murder, the brittle façade of respectability against the raw nerve of desire. It is a story of greed, fear, and the perilous games people play when secrets become currency.

The Red Box

The Red Box -  Rex Stout

In the fourth novel (1937) starring rotund PI Nero Wolfe, three poisoning deaths bestir the immovable orchid fancier and gourmet to solve the case with the assistance of his PA Archie Goodwin and operatives Saul, Frank, and Orrie. The pace moves much faster in this one compared to the longer Fer-de-Lance and the decidedly sluggish The League of Frightened Men (which I feared was never going to end).

Stout has little interest in describing so readers have to be patient with the vague depiction of the fashion house at the beginning. But this lack is balanced by many quips and quotable asides. Archie’s down to earth pragmatism comes out often. “…I’m a great one for the obvious, because it saves a lot of fiddling around….” And “…As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything unexpected happens, yells for somebody else to come and help him.”

Plus, a reader wishes our leaders read Stout when they teenagers so they could have thought about Archie’s realistic and logical view of torture:

They [the cops] had Gebert down there, slapping him around and squealing and yelling at him. If you're so sure violence is inferior technique, you should have seen that exhibition; it was wonderful. They say it works sometimes, but even if it does, how could you depend on anything you got that way? Not to mention that after you had done it a few times any decent garbage can would be ashamed to have you found in it.

Who says mysteries are just escapist genre fiction? The roots of the murder in The Red Box are as ghastly but plausible as in a Maigret novel by Simenon with the theme How Families Get Balled Up.

Wolfe, however, gets the best of the best lines. He loftily scolds a mouthy client, “…I know you are young, and your training has left vacant lots in your brain.” Touching on a theme dear to his fans, he chides Archie, “Someday, Archie, I shall be constrained … but no. I cannot remake the universe, and must therefore put up with this one. What is, is, including you.” He says with tongue firmly in cheek, “Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.” But he gets right to the pith of human relations with “The central fact about any man, in respect to his activities as a social animal, is his attitude toward women.”

I don’t read Nero novels in any kind of order so I don’t think other readers have to either. One critic said, “Stout's material succeeds on general mood alone.” I’d agree -  it’s the characters, humor, and the fantasy nostalgia of old time Manhattan  that make this one a classic Nero novel.

Reviews of other Stout Novels
The Golden Spiders
Hand in Glove
Not Quite Dead Enough
The Rubber Band
The Second Confession
The Silent Speaker
Where There's a Will
The Case of the Black Orchids
Too Many Cooks
Trouble in Triplicate
Over My Dead Body
And be a Villian
In the Best Families
Some Buried Ceasar

Mount TBR #19

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

The Case of the Black Orchids – Rex Stout

AKA Black Orchids and Death Wears an Orchid

The novella opens with Archie Goodwin complaining about being sent to the Grand Central Flower show four days running. His boss, eccentric PI Nero Wolfe, wants him to collect intelligence on three new black orchid plants, developed by Lewis Hewitt, an arch rival in bloom fancying that "churns his beer."

While at the show, Archie is smitten with the model in a unique exhibition. A beautiful blond picnics in a sylvan (now there’s 1940s word) scene with her boyfriend, near a stream with mossy walls nearby. Crowds gather when she bathes her slim ankles and beautiful tootsies in a nearby pool. Archie is unsettled in a good way, to the point where it does not bother him to view thousands of flowers day after day.

On the fourth day, the following scenario occurs. She of the comely dogs tries to awaken her BF who was feigning a nap with a newspaper over his face. But she encounters Archie, who has jumped over the rope in order to examine the supine figure. He noticed the male model’s legs at an awkward angle and thought it deserved investigation. He probes the top of the man’s head with a finger, which goes  "straight into the hole in the skull, on the way in, and it was like sticking your finger in a warm blueberry pie. "

Yuck. Not for nothing did blurb authors describe Stout as "horrific, bloody, but gay." "Gay," as in a 1940s “carefree" way, you understand.

The method of murder is diabolically clever, as we veteran mystery readers would expect in classic mysteries of this bygone era. So complicated, in fact, that I doubt it would work in the real world.

This is the first novella Stout wrote but it is quite a strong entry in Wolfe canon. Wise-guy Archie's tone has its usual brash, snappy, friendly ring. The dialog between Archie and Wolfe is both acerbic and warm. As a whodunit, it plays fair. Like any good book in a series, however, it brings up the touchstones we fans expect: irascible Lt. Cramer; the red leather chair; the brownstone and its routines; a city woman with moxie; glasses of milk; bottles of beer; and Wolfe barking, "Archie!"

It was published in the August 1941 issue of The American Magazine (1906 - 1956). In modern editions it is bundled with another novelette Cordially Invited to Meet Death in the 0553257196 edition.

My reviews of other classic Wolfe mysteries:

·         The Golden Spiders

·         The Rubber Band

·         Too Many Cooks

·         And Be a Villain

·         Some Buried Caesar

·         Champagne for One

Mount TBR #39

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Where There’s a Will – Rex Stout

Internal evidence - references to the World’s Fair in New York City and the parlous state of Europe – suggests that this mystery was written in 1939. Slightly abridged, it was published in in the May, 1940 issue of The American Magazine (1906 – 1956). It was the eighth story starring eccentric private eye Nero Wolfe and his wise-cracking bodyguard, secretary, and legman Archie Goodwin.  

Since The American Magazine concentrated on female readership, Stout featured in the story three strong successful women. The mystery opens in Nero Wolfe’s office where the celeb Hawthorne sisters – April the stage actress, May the college president, and June the State Department spouse hostess – want advice on breaking the bizarre will of their multi-millionaire brother Noel . Clearly they are upset at being bequeathed, respectively, an apple, a pear, and a peach. But cops burst in with the unhappy news that the forensic evidence says their brother was murdered, not killed in a gun-related accident as originally thought.

In contrast to the earlier novels, this outing is shorter because less exposition makes for a more briskly-paced story. Depending on the reader’s tolerance for description or the extras we want to see in a Wolfe novel, this tightness may or may not be a good thing.

I missed the absent or slighted extras. Archie does not have his usual love interest Lily Rowan around. Wolfe has to leave the brownstone but Stout doesn’t exploit the fish out of water situation except for a mildly comic scene when Wolfe is served a lackluster lunch. Wolfe does little detecting and deducing nor is evidence clearly provided. The femme fatale does not have much banter in her, especially not with Archie. Homicide Detective Cramer is overbearing in an unfunny way.

Finally, the amazing Hawthorne sisters – the beautiful one, the smart one, and the practical one – must be based on actual celeb sisters of that bygone era. But it drives me crazy that I can’t identify the original versions since I regard myself as a Thirties buff.

Still and all, I recommend this one to Nero Wolfe fans. Newbies may want to start with The Rubber Band or Over My Dead Body or the great Some Buried Caesar. 

Classic #6

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2016.

Over My Dead Body – Rex Stout

Published in 1939 after being serialized in The American Magazine, this is the seventh mystery that starred rotund PI Nero Wolfe and his more active assistant and sidekick Archie Goodwin. Wolfe has enough eccentricities for three people: indolent, orchid-fancying, woman-hater in the old-fashioned way, agoraphobic, and most shocking of all, a voracious reader. But he is as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes. Archie is the archetypal American: athletic, brash, wise-cracking, and a hit with the fair sex.

Nero Wolfe confronts consequences of his own decisions made in the last days of the troubled Hapsburg empire and its seething possessions in Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. That is, he adopted a baby girl, left her with people he trusted, but lost touch with her when they were killed for their revolutionary sympathies by the secret police.

The situation gives Archie a chance to tease Wolfe:

"I'm resigning as of this moment."

"Resigning from what?"

"You. My job."

"Rubbish."

"No, boss, really. You told the G-man you have never married. Yet you have a daughter. Well," I shrugged. "I'm not a prude, but there are limits —"

The daughter does not necessarily want contact with the famous PI in Manhattan, but a spot of trouble brings her to Wolfe’s brownstone seeking help. Later two murders occur. They revolve around a fencing school where the daughter, her friend Carla, and the dodgy Miss Vorka work.

This mystery has the right amount of plot and character. Stout includes a number of scenes full of high-jinks. The reveal is logical and plausible. Unlike the other novels, Manhattan itself does not play a major role, but this is a quibble. Storm clouds of war hang over the novel, reminding us that writers are canaries in the coal mine.

My reviews of other classic Wolfe mysteries:

·         The Golden Spiders

·         The Rubber Band

·         Too Many Cooks

·         And Be a Villain

·         Some Buried Caesar

·         Champagne for One

·         Black Orchids

Mount TBR #56

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2015. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Some Buried Caesar – Rex Stout

This mystery is the sixth the Nero Wolfe series, first published in 1939. Like many Golden Age mysteries, it is rather long but it is not too long like the first four are too long (Fer-de-Lance, The League of Frightened Men, The Rubber Band and The Red Box).

The draw of this one is that it is the first appearance of Archie’s love interest Lily Rowan. Also, Nero Wolfe has to leave the brownstone. Archie and Wolfe are taking a road trip to fictitious Crowfield, NY where Wolfe is showing some orchids when they have a car accident. Archie and Wolfe end up in a paddock being chased by a bull.

While the car is being repaired ($66.00, i.e. $1,100 in our 2015 money). He is hosted by the founder, Pratt, of a fast food chain, Pratteria. The vulgarian’s plan is to barbeque a $45,000 ($755K now) prize bull, Hickory Caesar Grindon, as a publicity stunt. His neighbor deplores this plan and then hires Wolfe to find the killer of his son who was found dead, apparently gored by the bull.

As mentioned above, this novel never feels too long except in one place near the end when Archie is jailed by local cops as a material witness (I assume this novel was first serialized in a magazine). The incidents are consistently funny

April Fool’s Day

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

This strange book has been called the first travel narrative. In fact, scholars believe it to be a compilation of materials from various medieval sources. One acerbic critic said that the farthest point Mandeville reached was the nearest library.

The writer calls himself Sir John Mandeville. He claims to be a knight who traveled the Holy Land and North Africa. He confidently asserts that he advised a sultan and otherwise hobnobbed with the Great Khan. He describes bizarre creatures and weird human animal hybrids.

The reader is a dupe who looks to this short classic for genuine history or geography. The attraction of this book is the writer’s style and wit in stitching together information from various sources as a record of his own journey. With deadpan humor he implies that non-Christians aren’t half bad and that Europe may not have the market cornered in scholarship and civilization. The writer is matter-of-fact as he simultaneously tells stretchers himself and warns us against believing things he hasn’t seen with his own eyes. He’s comically skeptical. He’s engaging.

His hoaxing appeals to us readers who like putting on spouses, siblings, parents and friends. I know of a kid who tied a rubber band around his tongue when he noticed that doing so made his speech sound weird. He then went to his mother, garbling, “Ma, I don’t feel so good, My head hurts.” Thinking he was having a stroke, the mother held the little prankster to her breast, saying “Oh, honey, we’ll get help. Don’t worry.” The poor woman still tells this story on the embarrassed son who has no recall of such an incident. Anyway, if you find pranks like this and tall tales amusing, you the kind of hoaxer and trickster who will like this book.

Read it an edition in modern English, such as the edition published by Penguin Classics, translated by W.R.D. Moseley.