I read this book for the Mount
TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.
Double for Death
– Rex Stout
Solid, briskly-paced whodunit from 1939. Stout himself
supposedly thought this was one of his best-plotted mysteries.
Millionaire Ridley Thorpe lies in his bungalow, murdered.
He was shot dead and PI and bon vivant Tecumseh Fox has to save his friend
Andrew Grant, whom the police consider the killer, from the prosecutor's
clutches.
It seems almost as if Stout is toying with the current conventions
of the whodunit with multiple victims, scads of suspects, forces of motives,
pairs of guns. Stout has his hero stick his thumb in the eye of the police and
prosecutors, an irreverent tone he always used in the Nero Wolfe books for hero
vs. authorities confrontations.
Tec Fox has foibles but they don’t make him distinct from
Stout’s other non-Nero experiment with Alphabet
Hicks or Doll Bonner
or Inspector
Kramer. Readers into this one: Stout completists, fans of Golden Era Whodunnits,
fans of high society mysteries, seekers of entertainment, and 1930s buffs.
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