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jdcorley's review
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Putting a big cast of girls in a room with Archie is always a delight, but what I think this book pulls off quite well is Wolfe's determination to look past the most obvious "next thing" that the lawyers, cops and rival PIs are unable to surpass. Everyone else is just reacting to the "most recent thing", but Wolfe's more comprehensive understanding leads him to a solution, one you can get too - as he tells Cramer, he doesn't really have anything else that you don't - and the ending is just as charming and satisfying a classic mystery as one could want.
ladyluna83's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
alice_horoshev's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
5.0
agmaynard's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Crisply and competently narrated by Michael Pritchard. Archie gets it done on both Coasts, solving three related murders, and cornering the culprit into a confession letter. All with lots of different kinds of help, both professional and amateur pressed into service.
liliales's review against another edition
4.0
This is the second of eleven Nero Wolfe books I'm gathering this season in order to complete my collection. It was written about 15 years after the one I read a few days ago, The League of Frightened Men, and is quite different in style and tone. It's the style most people think of when they think of a Rex Stout book, that is, if they do at all. Much less prosey, much more Archie's story. In a way, this is a strength, because if Archie is telling us a story, despite his near-perfect memory, he's going to share more "goddammits" and fewer retellings of Wolfe's theories on life and the meaning of it all. And it's almost endearingly sexist in a way a book just couldn't be these days.
As to the story itself. It's a pretty good one. I could easily imagine it adapted for the screen, which for me means an organized story with good pacing, good characterizations, and just enough action to break up all the dialogue these stories are built on. The only passage I take real issue with is a nine page letter shared in full in the second half of the story. I'd have handled that in another way if I were laying out the plot myself.
If anyone reads this series of reviews, you'll notice I don't go into much or any specific detail about the plots. That's because to me, a series like this is much more about the characters than about the story. But I will say that if you have never read a Nero Wolfe story before, this one would be a fair one to begin with, keeping the time period in mind for context.
As to the story itself. It's a pretty good one. I could easily imagine it adapted for the screen, which for me means an organized story with good pacing, good characterizations, and just enough action to break up all the dialogue these stories are built on. The only passage I take real issue with is a nine page letter shared in full in the second half of the story. I'd have handled that in another way if I were laying out the plot myself.
If anyone reads this series of reviews, you'll notice I don't go into much or any specific detail about the plots. That's because to me, a series like this is much more about the characters than about the story. But I will say that if you have never read a Nero Wolfe story before, this one would be a fair one to begin with, keeping the time period in mind for context.
judyward's review against another edition
3.0
This book was published in 1951 and it is the 19th book in the Nero Wolfe series. While I often find this series to be a bit uneven, I have to admit that this particular book kept me guessing up until the very end. Two seemingly unrelated events come to Nero Wolfe's attention. First, Inspector Cramer shows up at Wolfe's office with a list of names found at the residence of a murdered man wanting to know if any of the names seems familiar to Wolfe. And then a wealthy businessman from the Midwest wants to hire Wolfe to discover who murdered his only daughter in an apparent hit-and-run. Leave it to Nero Wolfe to uncover the links between the two events and unmask the killer.