Classic Mysteries

Come Discuss!

For Nero Wolfe fans living in the New York City area, the next book discussion of The Wolfe Pack will be held this coming Monday evening, January 23, at Jackson Hole, a bar and restaurant located on Third Avenue between 34th and 35th Streets. The group will be discussing three of the four novellas in And Four to Go - "Easter Parade," "Fourth of July Picnic" and "Murder Is No Joke." A discussion of the first novella in the book, "Christmas Party," was featured last month at the Black Orchid weekend festivities.

If you enjoy the company of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (not to mention the rest of Rex Stout's marvelous creations), you would enjoy these meetings. There's no charge for the discussion itself - everyone orders his/her own dinner and drinks and pays separately. The conversation is usually lively and the people friendly. So, if you haven't been to one yet...why not drop by Monday evening? (And if you're not a member of The Wolfe Pack...shouldn't you be? The membership fee is VERY inexpensive...)

Full details are available at The Wolfe Pack's website.

More Gaslight Favorites

If you enjoy the kind of marvelous crime-by-gaslight stories you'll find in "The Dead Witness," you may want to read some more of them. Lucky you: Michael Sims has edited a couple of other first-rate anthologies featuring Victorian/Edwardian-era detectives and criminals. Both of them are available from Penguin Classics, whose taste in crime fiction is to be commended.

On the side of law and order, you'll find The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime: Forgotten Cops and Private Eyes from the Time of Sherlock Holmes. It's a very readable anthology of favorites featuring female detectives, bringing a whiff of fog and the flicker of gaslight to your comfortable armchair (or wherever you do your reading). And, on the other side, you may enjoy The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime: Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes, with its fine collection of rogues, thieves and borderline villains.

You'll find podcast reviews here of both these books on the Backlist page (see the link in the right-hand column of this page; the books are alphabetical by author/editor). It's amazing how well most of these stories have remained enjoyable over the years.

Watching Nero Wolfe

I must confess that I watch next to no television. I may watch a little news here and there, but, on the whole, I'd rather be reading. I particularly dislike most TV adaptations of classic mysteries, especially the ones which feel they have to "update" or "modernize" the stories.

But then along comes Nero Wolfe. Or, to be more accurate, along came Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin and a superb troupe of regular players to bring Nero Wolfe and his stories to the home screen via A&E TV. I've actually sat down and watched some of them. They are good. And - miracle of miracles - they are quite faithful to the original stories. The writers and producers had the sense to take Rex Stout's carefully written stories, which are first-person narratives for Archie Goodwin, and simply put the words into Archie's off-camera voice. It's like having Archie on hand to tell you the story himself.

With the holidays coming up, I want to call your attention to an Amazon deal: they are offering the whole series on DVD for a remarkably low price - it's only about a third of the original list price. You get all 20 episodes that were produced for the two seasons of the television show, including the original two-hour pilot based on "The Golden Spiders." There are assorted other extras in the package as well. Frankly, I think it's a present Wolfe fans ought to be giving themselves. (Yes, if you click through on my link above and order the package, I get a remarkably small cut. Full disclosure.)

Most of the earlier Wolfes and Goodwins on TV and in the movies ranged from awful to embarrassing, but the Chaykin-Hutton shows are really worth watching. Do yourself a favor and get them.

"Murder is No Joke" Revisited

One of the short Nero Wolfe novellas in And Four to Go rates some special attention from readers because it is one of the few Rex Stout stories to appear in two different versions.

According to Stout's official biographer, John J. McAleer, after Stout finished writing "Murder Is No Joke," he was asked by the Saturday Evening Post to revise and expand it for publication in the magazine. He did so, turning what McAleer says was originally a 48-page story into one that ran 79 pages. Surprisingly, it continues to exist in both formats. As "Murder is No Joke," it was published in the collection And Four to Go, but it appeared in the Saturday Evening Post as a three-part serialization - and, after Stout's death, in the posthumously-published Death Times Three - as "Frame-up for Murder."

Writing in an introduction to Death Times Three, McAleer says the revised version is much better than the original. I leave that decision up to you, as you can easily get both collections and compare the two stories for yourselves.

"And Four to Go"

Rex Stout's novels about Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are generally good-to-excellent. Rex Stout's novellas, as a general rule, are as good or better than the novels. Stout was a master of the novella, the elongated short story format, and some of Nero Wolfe's most memorable cases come in those stories.

And so we are presented with the collection of four novellas called "And Four to Go," our book reviewed today on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here. "And Four to Go" is an excellent group. It begins with a deadly "Christmas Party," attended by Archie Goodwin, where all the signs point to an anonymous Santa Claus as being the most likely killer. Only there's a problem with that theory - and I'll leave it at that.

Next, there's a murder at New York's "Easter Parade" down Fifth Avenue - and, naturally, Archie Goodwin is on the scene, attempting to carry out a rather secretive errand for Nero Wolfe. So, once again, the irascible and overweight genius finds himself forced to solve the murder in order to keep some things secret that, in his opinion, should remain secret.

Murder is on the menu at a "Fourth of July Picnic" - and, once again, it takes place practically in the presence of Wolfe and Archie - and Wolfe has plenty of reason to regret having left his house for a very rare public appearance.

And finally, in "Murder is No Joke," there's no holiday - but a murder which may have taken place while Wolfe and Archie were on the phone with the victim. Things are never quite as simple as they seem, of course.

Four stories, all written in the mid- to late-1950s. Four opportunities to enjoy Wolfe's genius tempered by Archie's wit. The inclusion of "Christmas Party" makes it particularly appropriate for this time of year. If you want to give yourself a present, "And Four to Go" will give you some good reading for a cold winter's evening. There's even an edition for the Amazon Kindle .

Happy Birthday, Rex Stout!

December 1 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Rex Stout, the creator of Nero Wolfe (and Archie Goodwin, and Fritz Brenner, and Theodore Horstmann, and Inspector Cramer, and Saul Panzer...the list goes on).

While it's a little difficult to sing "Happy Birthday" to Stout himself, the rest of us can celebrate in some appropriate fashion. This coming weekend marks the annual Black Orchid Weekend festivities in New York, with a book discussion, assembly, banquet and brunch. The banquet features a couple of significant awards to mystery writers - and a great deal of fun for all the attendees, with remarks by the guest speaker, Al Roker.

Rex Stout remains one of my favorite authors. I read and reread the Nero Wolfe books (as well as the few standalones featuring other detectives - Inspector Cramer, Dol Bonner, Alphabet Hicks and Tecumseh Fox) with some regularity. They are always enjoyable. For me, the plots (which I know though sometimes forget) are far less important than the characters and the settings, and I never tire of them. If you haven't read any yet, may I suggest that this Black Orchid Weekend would be a good time to get started?

"A Smell of Smoke"

I seem to recall that Sherlock Holmes claimed to have written a treatise on distinctive cigarette ashes. He might have done the same about the distinctive smell of certain types of tobacco. It is on such a scent that the mystery hangs in "A Smell of Smoke," by Miles Burton. It's the subject of today's Classic Mysteries podcast review, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

Miles Burton was one of the pen names used by Cecil John Charles Street, who also wrote mysteries as "John Rhode" and a couple of other names. While he is largely forgotten today, he turned out four mysteries a year for 37 years - quite an impressive output.

In "A Smell of Smoke," we meet a man named Matthew Calder. Taking a walk late one night, he hears a splash from a nearby stream. He also smells the scent of a distinctive brand of Turkish cigarettes - a brand used only by his nephew. He thinks no more of it until the next day, when the body of a generally disliked local resident is fished out of the stream. It appears to be an accidental death - but Calder cannot forget the scent of that cigarette. And he suspects foul play - and that his own nephew may have been responsible for it.

His suspicions will lead to another murder. And that will lead to the arrival of Burton's detective team - the police, in the person of Scotland yard Inspector Henry Arnold, and a "freelance" sleuth named Desmond Merrion, who work together to peel back the layers of this most enjoyable mystery.

Orchids for Wolfe

The Wolfe Pack, the organization for fans and students of Rex Stout, has announced plans for this year's Black Orchid Weekend, December 2, 3 and 4. It's the thirty-fourth year for this celebration, always held the first weekend of December. This year will be special, as it marks the 125th anniversary of Rex Stout's birthday, December 1, 1886.

The events are spread over three days, with the highlight being the annual Black Orchid Banquet on Saturday night. There's also a Friday evening book discussion (and video viewing), a Sunday morning brunch and a Saturday afternoon "assembly," where there will be papers and presentations about all things Wolfean.

You can find full details on the Wolfe Pack's website. The events are available individually or at a discounted package price, and the group even has standby hotel arrangements, should you need them. Based on my experiences there last year, it's a weekend not to be missed by Nero Wolfe fans. Check it out.

Guys and Dol

During the late 1930s, when Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were getting themselves established as Rex Stout's primary fictional detectives, Stout tried his hand at a few books featuring other heroes. There was Tecumseh Fox, for example, who operated completely apart from anyone in the Wolfe books. Even Inspector Cramer got his own book with "Red Threads."

But only once in that period did Rex Stout write a mystery featuring a female detective - Dol Bonner, who would later appear in a couple of the Wolfe books when Wolfe needed a female detective to help him gather evidence. Dol Bonner is the heroine of "The Hand in the Glove," which originally appeared in 1937.

The complicated plot has to do with Dol Bonner's investigation of a phony spiritualist who is leeching money from a rich man's wife. The rich man soon turns up murdered, with Bonner finding the body herself. As the victim was hanged and tied to a tree with thin wire, Bonner deduces that the killer must have worn gloves to protect his or her hands - and she manages to find where those gloves are hidden, after a police search fails to turn them up. Eventually, after another murder, she forces a confession from the killer.

Frankly, it's not one of my favorites. When it came to his detectives, Stout was much better with his guys than his dolls or his Dol (short for "Theodolinda," by the way). She's intended to be a tough private eye, but has some trouble controlling her emotional reactions to some of the plot twists, including a last-minute fainting spell. While much of the third-party narration follows her movements, there are a couple of other points of view that could confuse the reader somewhat. Inspector Cramer also makes a brief appearance, to help the local police, as do a couple of other official investigators.

"The Hand in the Glove" has been newly re-released in an e-book format for Amazon Kindle, although the book itself is out of print. In 1992, "The Hand in the Glove" was turned into a made-for-TV movie on NBC, called "Lady Against the Odds." Rex Stout fans in the New York City area should note that next Monday, the Wolfean group known as the Wolfe Pack will be discussing the book and screening the TV movie at one of the group's regular book discussion evenings. There's no charge (you order and pay for your own dinner and drinks), and the discussions are usually fun and lively. There's more information about where, when and how at the link.

Looking Back: "The Golden Spiders"

In my review (below) of Rex Stout's "If Death Ever Slept," I mentioned the fact that some of Nero Wolfe's most intriguing cases come about as the result of a practical joke or a minor feud between Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

One of the best examples of this is "The Golden Spiders," first published in 1953, and one of my overall favorites from the Wolfean corpus. Archie decides that Wolfe needs a lesson and plays a practical joke on his boss that will have tragic consequences - and result in both men becoming involved in a most unusual case involving greed, corruption and murder.

I reviewed "The Golden Spiders" last year, and there's also a podcast version of the review. As I say, it's a personal favorite among so many fine entries in the series. If you haven't read it, you really ought to consider finding a copy for yourself.