Cleaning out my bookshelves I ran across the collection of Nero Wolfe mysteries I had collected over several years in either used paper back editions or reprint compilations in hard cover.  I discovered the I own nearly all of the and it has been a long time since I read any so I decided it would be fun to read them in order over the next couple of years.  At the least if will give me something to reach for when I don’t now what to read next!  I actually don’t own the first one so I got it from the library.

Fer-de-Lance (1-1934)

This is the first Nero Wolfe novel Stout wrote and, although enjoyable, it lacks many of the signature touches of the later ones.  The most obvious is that there is no “charade” staged at the dénouement.   The story revolves around the murder of a prominent College president by means of a devious device engineered into a golf club driver-on impact with the ball a needle smeared with poison is ejected into the golfer’s stomach.  It doesn’t take long for the reader to decide the wrong person was killed and as soon as the intended victim is identified the culprit is obvious.  The problem is knowing and proving are two separate events and the person who may have the proof, although she likes Wolfe and Archie (especially Archie) refuses to even admit she has the evidence-or what it may be.  The rest of the story involves a charade that Wolfe devises but Archie has to carry out because it has to be done outdoors with the aid of Wolfe’s other operatives and lots of activity.  As to these other operatives, Orrie and Saul do not even resemble the Orrie and Saul of later novels although Fred is pretty much himself-but I can’t remember if we ever again hearing about his Italian wife.  There is a newspaper crony of Archie’s, but his name is Harry Foster and the Lon in the book doesn’t have the last name of Cohen and he’s a former client who feels a lifelong debt to Wolfe for saving his young son in a kidnapping case several years ago.  Purley Stebbins works for the DA’s office and there is no Inspector Cramer.  The schedule for the orchids is the same in this novel and Nero, Fritz and Theodore are at least recognizable. Archie is definitely Archie; any changes that may seem to occur to him in later stories can be attributed to growth, maturity, and character development.  Perhaps Archie was Rex’s alter ego.  I own the 2^nd Wolfe-The League of Frightened Men-and I think I’ll read that this month just to see how the characters develop.

Three Witnesses (27-1956)

This was in the collection ROYAL FLUSH which I got from the library because I wanted to read Fer-de-Lance so I decided to read it out of order since I don”t own it.  (The other novel in the collection was Murder by the Book-which I own so I’ll read it in order.)  I prefer either full length mysteries or short stories to novellas.  Full length novels give time for character development or analysis and background information, description and more scope for hiding clues.  Good mystery short stories present a puzzle to solve where you must pay close attention-but for a rather short time.  Novellas often use too much filler to get the length without adding anything satisfying in terms of personalities of the characters or ingenious ways of hiding clues.   These three stories were okay but I had the solution to each mystery figured out by at least the halfway point.

“The Next Witness” has Nero and Archie walking out on a trial for which they have received subpoenas to testify because Wolfe thinks they are trying the wrong man.  The plot revolves around a telephone answering service and Wolfe’s trick of getting the solution of the murder to the right people without being arrested for contempt of court was ingenious and the biggest surprise in the story.

“When a Man Murders…” is about a man who is declared dead as a war casualty and then returns three years later after his estate has been settled and his wife remarried.   He is murdered within a few days after returning just when his wife and her erstwhile new husband, after trying to contact him to solve the marriage problem and losing their nerve, go to Nero Wolfe to ask him to handle the matter with the husband.  This one was the easiest to solve.

“Die Like a Dog” gets Wolfe involved in a case when Archie goes to exchange a raincoat that was mistakenly left at the brownstone when a visitor left in anger taking Archie’s coat instead of his own.  When Archie gets to the apartment where the man lives the police are there and he decides to not go in.  A dog follows him home.  The dog becomes linked to the murder and Wolfe wants to keep the dog.  Again the solution to the mystery was pretty obvious.

The League of Frightened Men (2-1935)

The second Nero Wolfe novel has a better story relying more on psychology rather than gimmicks and winding up with one of Wolfe’s signature charades in the office for the dénouement.        Inspector Cramer is in this one, although he’s not nearly as feisty as he becomes in later novels (maybe Wolfe hasn’t diddled him so many times yet!) and he smokes a pipe.  There is a large cast of characters and many weren’t well delineated so I had to keep going back to the “master list” which Wolfe was given that had the names and occupations of the “clients.”  The other operatives are still not too well defined although Saul Panzer seems to be coming to the forefront.  When a doctor is needed Dr. Volmer, Wolfe’s neighbor, is called.  Rex Stout is working to make this a series that will involve good puzzles with psychological implications and he’s beginning to be more subtle in hiding his clues.  He still isn’t keeping the solution really as well hidden until the “reveal” by Wolfe as he does in later works.  The characters may be fooled but the reader isn’t.

The Rubber Band (3-1936) 

In the third Nero Wolfe novel you can see Rex Stout hitting his stride.  Although I spotted the culprit very early on, catching the same clue that Wolfe did, this was a better “puzzle” than the two earlier novels and the characters for this story were better delineated so there was no problem keeping them straight.  His continuing characters are starting to settle into their recognizable selves that will appear in the later novels.  Saul Panzer has risen definitely to be the leading detective in Wolfe’s arsenal and Fred Durkin makes a typical Durkin mistake by thinking instead of calling in for instructions.  However, although Orrrie Cather is mentioned the roll he plays in later novels seems to be filed by Johnny Keems in this novel.  Inspector Cramer is becoming feistier and he now chews his cigar instead of smoking a pipe; Purley Stebbins is with homicide squad but not yet Cramer’s aide.  I didn’t realize that Lt. Rowcliff appeared so early in the series, but he leads a team with a search warrant for Wolfe’s residence looking for Wolfe’s client.  I love the ingenious way they hide her in the plant room.   Dr. Volmer has become Doc Volmer but the lawyer that Wolfe uses is called Henry H. Barber rather than Nathanial Parker.  It’s fun reading the earlier novels to see how Stout developed his series.

Stout, Rex:  The Red Box

The Red Box was entertaining if a little contrived. A model for a famous clothes designer is murdered by eating a piece of candy from a box she “swiped” from someone’s desk. First there is a question of who poisoned the candy and was the victim really the intended victim. When the clothes designer dies in Wolf’s office after taking one of the headache pills he has been taking regularly ever since his model had been murdered, we know the answer to the second question. Unfortunately he died before he could tell Wolf the location of the Red Box that contains the answer to the first question. Becaus th evidence iss out of reach Wolfe gets to the answer during one of his charades in the office.  Entertaining with a few surprises but not one of his best.

Haddon, Mark:  the curious incident of the dog in the night

This is an unusual but compelling story told through the viewpoint of the protagonist, an autistic teenager.  It is presented as a book that he has written and we get good idea of what goes on inside the head of a person with this condition.  He is extremely smart, especially in math and puzzles but finds it difficult to function-even to think-when his system is overloaded with too much stimuli.  The basic idea is that he has decided to try to detect who killed the neighbor’s dog with a pitchfork in the middle of the night.  He finds out more than he wants to which leads to a somewhat frightening adventure.  This is a great story well told-no wonder it was so popular.  This is a novel that would appeal to young adults as well as older readers.  It also gives the reader some insight into the difficulties that face people with autism and the people who love them.

Cowan, James:  A Mapmaker’s Dream

I find it difficult to describe this quirky little novel.  It essentially has no plot although you could argue that there is some character development as the one recurring character, Fra Mauro, seems to grow and develop as he processes the information that is brought to him.  The sub-title is “The Meditations of Fra Mauro, cartographer to the Court of Venice.”  The basis of the story is that Fr Mauro lives in a cloistered monastery on an island near Venice and he wants to draw a completely accurate map of the world including not just the boundaries and geographic features of the lands but also all the inhabitants, creatures, culture-in short, everything about each country.  Since he cannot and does not wish to leave his sanctuary travelers of all sorts come to him and describe what they have gleaned from their voyages.  Each chapter is the story a traveler tells and Fra Mauro’s impressions about what he has heard.  At first I found the book rather irritating-a mishmash of unrelated and often seemingly outlandish ideas.  I found, however, if I slowed down and read only one or two chapters at a time and tried to put myself into the time period of Fra Mauro-very early explorations and the making of the trade routes-that this was really fascinating.  Some stories were fantastic-but don’t travelers often have fantastic ideas when they see strange things?  Some resonated with me as ways in which I sometimes perceive the world.  Fra Mauro tried to keep an open mind when receiving all these ideas and images-and I did, too.  One of the thoughts that occurred to me is that in today’s information age we often feel bombarded with more ideas and images that we can process-much as Mauro must have felt.  We, too, are surrounded with a myriad of ideas and world views that need to be considered.   This is a book to expand your mind and to consider other ways of viewing the world-there is enough variety in these approximately 150 pages that every reader should find as least one idea that gives you that “aha!” moment.  There is also enough to disagree with that this would make a good discussion book-as long as your group can vehemently disagree about ideas without getting personal or having it affect your relationships.  Caveat:  if you prefer to read only ideas that support your own world view this is not the book for you.  If you enjoy expanding your mind to consider ideas foreign to you without feeling threatened by them, this is a delightful book-just take it in small doses.

Below are a few passages that caught my eye:

[spoken by a traveler who was exiled from his homeland] “Quitting the place that we loved means we are condemned to inhabit our loss forever.” (p. 27)

[this resonates with me because it summarizes how I felt-and in some ways still feel-about leaving Savannah.]

“…thoughts on the value of experience as being an important guide in our quest.  ‘A man knows the truth only when he has tried it himself and has not gained it by way of hearsay or reading.’  He was suggesting that we are obliged to make mistakes if we wish to attain any degree of knowledge.  Conceivably he wanted us to accept that every error we make is one more brick fired in the kiln of grace.”  (p. 53)

[I underlined this because it agrees well with what I have experienced in my life-but as I was thinking about this I was struck by a disquieting thought:  since each man's experience is different does this idea negate the idea of a universal truth? Not that we can ever know universal truth-but is the concept impossible?]

[Fra Mauro commenting on his visitors:]  “I was struck by the thought that their observations were not independent at all.  Rather, they were affected by sentiments that each of them held to be an expression of himself.   In the end, the world they presented me was reflected through them.”  (p. 59-60)

“It is true, sometimes men in harness to grace are more powerful than an army whose allegiance is suspect.” (p. 101)

“Who but someone who has quit home and journeyed to distant lands would understand?  ….They now know that it is impossible to find elsewhere a place consistent with their own inner world.”   (p. 133)

Wiesel, Elie:  Night

It is difficult to understand how something this horrendous could have happened in my lifetime.  No wonder the people of Sighet couldn’t believe Moishe the Beadle when he tried to warn them about what happened to him when he was taken by the Gestapo.  If he had escaped, could it have been that bad, people reasoned.  While reading this book I had a hard time coming to terms that these events actually happened and not to just a few but to millions of people.  The mind can hardly grasp evil on that magnitude.  Yet, we must be aware that this can happen and that today similar atrocities are occurring.  It is important that we never forget what can happen if good people turn a blind eye and deaf ear to acts of oppression just because it doesn’t affect us.  Everyone should read this book as painful as it is.  Wiesel kept his account of that terrible year (spring of 1944 to April 10, 1945) short–if he could live it we at least can read about it.

Godfrey, Thomas ed.: English Country House Murders

Published in 1989, this is a wonderful collection of stories in a special sub genre of classic mysteries. The country house mystery was one of the most popular types of mystery from late Victorian Era until around the time of the post WWII era. The first story is a Sherlock Holmes classic and the last story is a Sherlock Holmes written by James Miles—probably the best homage to this famous series I have ever read. I love this story because it centers on a famous English composer who was active in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. In between these two gems Godfrey has included most of the best mystery authors of that period including a novella length entry by Wilke Collins and all the giants of the Golden Age of women mystery writers. There are also a couple of writers with whom I was not familiar. The scariest story is by Ethel Lina White who was also the author of the novel on which Hitchcock based his classic movie “The Lady Vanishes.” I’d love to find that book. Christianna Brand is another author that I had never read although she is still popular in England according to Godfrey. I plan to find her most famous book, Green for Danger, to see how she holds up in a novel length work. I was pleased to find Anthony Gethryn, the detective in Philip MacDonald’s The List of Adrian Messenger, represented here and the two penultimate selections are by two of the best women mystery writers of the mid to later 20^th century, Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. In spite of the title, not all the stories involve a murder and many of the stories are as much psychological studies as they are puzzles to be solved. Godfrey’s excellent introduction to the book and the informative blurbs he writes before each story contribute to the enjoyment and enlightenment of the reader. I highly recommend this as an outstanding anthology of this type of mystery.

Marsh, Ngaio:  False Scent

I guess you could classify this one as one of Marsh’s “theater” novels even though we never get to the theater.  The story revolves around the death of a famous, but now somewhat “over the hill” comedic actress at her birthday party.  The characters are all theater people (except the police, of course) even though the setting is more “country house.”  The house is actually in a square in London but we never get any further than next door so it seems more isolated.  It’s a good yarn but before the end I had guessed “who” and at least partially had a handle on “why” and “how” but the timetable Alleyn elucidated in the end was cleverly worked out.  My conclusions, although correct, couldn’t have been proved without that timetable.  It wa amusing, but not one of her best.

Kaye, M.M.:  Death in Cyprus
In the ‘60’s and 70’s I read a lot of romantic suspense novels mainly by Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt (pseudonym of Jean Plaidy) but somehow I never came across MM Kaye, even though she published her first novel of this type a few years before Mary Stewart and almost a decade before Jean Plaidy created Victoria Holt as the name under which she would publish her novels in this genre.  It’s been quite awhile since I’ve read a novel in the “damsel in distress in an exotic locale” style but Death in Cyprus appeared on an Amazon list of best mysteries of the 20^th century so I decided to give it a try.  It was much better than I had expected and actually better than I remember the Mary Stewart’s novels being.  MM Kaye seemed to me to develop her characters more in depth and her descriptions of the locale were superb. The heroine, 21 year old Amanda Darrington, has just come into her inheritance so decides to leave the trip she is on with her guardian and take a side-trip to Cyprus.  Even before she arrives there is a murder on board ship and danger seems to be stalking her everywhere in Cyprus.  Although the villain was not difficult to spot there were enough interesting characters - especially some really “bitchy” women characters that were fun. I also loved the elderly and eccentric Mrs. Moon, with whom Amanda is staying, who chooses the color of her clothing according to what day it is and is highly observant in spite of seeming to be a bit scatter-brained. Persis, the American romance novel author also is quite an interesting character.  I found it refreshing to read a G rated romantic novel-very difficult to find these in this day and age unless you stick the “Christian fiction.”  This was a delightful two evenings of bedtime reading.

June 13-Friday

[note:  When I wrote this I didn't have a blog.  It was my difficulty being active in the challenge that prompted me start the blog.]

I’m really falling down on the job for journaling.  I’ve been struggling trying to get active in the Classics challenge I plan to do the last 6 months of this year.  Because I don’t have a blog site I’m experiencing a little difficulty getting my post on.  Also, I’ve discovered that they do not plan to actually discuss the books we are reading but just record them and get credit for them.  I’m disappointed about that because I thought this would be a chance to “talk” about books.  This was the post I left to answer a questionnaire they posted (I’m hoping it made the list):

My favorite classic?

Wow!  What a decision!  I probably have one for every day of the week.  The 2 classics I have reread the most are Pride and Prejudice (1st read in 8th grade and reread it probably every couple of years) and Lord of the Rings trilogy (1^st read during Easter vacation the 1st year I was married and have reread at least a dozen times–most recently in 2006 when I led a seminar at my church about it).

The classic I most wish to reread?

The Brother Karamazov: I read it in both HS and college (not assigned–I just wanted to) and loved it.  I would like to see how I would react now.

Classic I had the toughest time finishing?

The Three Musketeers–tried it several years ago and couldn’t get into it; tried it again this year and had the same problem.  Maybe I should read it for the challenge.

Recommendations for those who are concerned about classics:

There are lots of children’s and YA classics that are worth reading and go quickly-The Secret Garden by Burnett and A Wrinkle in Time by L’Engle come to mind.

I am not a fan of horror novels but there are three 19^th century classic horror novels that I have read and loved that are short–quick reads if you are concerned about getting bogged down.  This will give you another genre and also 3 countries are represented:

THE TURN OF THE SCREW by Henry James (American): Eerie and has an open ended dénouement.  This is thought provoking and the scariest of the three in my opinion.  Don’t read it if you demand closure; read it at the same time as a friend and you can have great discussions about it.  I read this in college just before the movie came out-now I’m motivated to read it again and see how it “wears.”

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley (Great Britain/ England):–wife of the poet and written when she was about 19 years old-forget the movies; this is a great short novel.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson (Great Britain/Scotland):  After seeing the musical a couple of years ago I wanted to read the original. Yesterday I finally did it so I could include it on this list. This is another one to forget any dramatized versions-this is classic good vs. evil.  I only wish I could have read it before I knew the secret.  That’s pretty hard to do now but the story still holds your interest especially as a psychological thriller of the 19^th century-pre-Freud.  It is short-more of a novella-but a great story.

If you want to read a longer 19^th century horror story I highly recommend DRACULLA by Bram Stoker.  I have avoided vampire stories all my life-definitely “not my thing!”  When THE HISTORIAN by Kostova came out a couple of years ago I had several people insist I read it so I decided I had better read “the original” Dracula novel first.  I was astounded at how much I liked Stoker’s novel-essentially a classic tale of good vs. evil told in a very riveting way.  (If you like WOMAN IN WHITE I think you would like this, also.)  I liked Stoker’s novel much more than I did Kostova’s.  One of my sons suggested I should have read them in the opposite order and I might have enjoyed Kostova’s more-it just seemed pale after DRACULA.