Nero Wolfe

Like any serious reader, when I find an author I really really like, I read everything that author has written. This is sort of like a love affair between author and reader. The author gives you as much as you want; the casual date takes a kiss and moves on, while the serious lover takes it all, sometimes even repeating a book when once isn't enough. This is not casually liking an author, or even loving a particular book. This is absorbing everything until there is nothing left. For most readers, this doesn't happen very often, just as with lovers in real life it doesn't happen very often. Who has the energy? But every now and then...

I've read a lot of mysteries, and enjoy a lot of mystery authors, and have even read the full works of some of them like Hammett or Chandler. But none have been such feverish affairs as the one I have had with Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe. I remember my first Wolfe novel, The Doorbell Rang. It comes in the middle somewhere of Stout's total output (48 Wolfe books altogether), but that doesn't really matter, because the first thing you notice about the series is that you can pretty much start anywhere. Most mystery authors nowadays, if you don't read their books in the order in which they were written, you're lost: they're one giant epic in serial parts, rather than stand-alone installments. This may be fine for committed fans, but it's murder on newbies who may pick up the latest and be immediately lost. You're never lost with Nero Wolfe, though. Still, there are occasional plot developments from novel to novel, and it doesn't hurt when you get serious to read them in order. But to start, pick any one at random. Then go back and do the rest. In other words, a real easy buy-in.

The novels are narrated by Wolfe's amanuensis, Archie Goodwin, and as Annabelle Mortensen points out in The Genius of West 35th Street, he is the perfect foil to his boss. Archie is hardboiled, while Wolfe is drawing room. They are from completely different traditions in mystery writing, yet they blend perfectly, and as some would have it, uniquely. No one else ever pulled off this mix like Stout. What you learn early on in any of the stories is that Wolfe has very specific rules about how he spends his time and where. One of the real joys of the series is seeing if those rules will broken. They often are, but they still remain as rules. Stout pulls this off beautifully.

If you don't know the Nero Wolfe books, I would recommend that, first, you read one. As I said, any one. Then take a look at Mortensen's fine article, to give yourself a sense of where these books fit in the genre. Then read the rest of them. Just to keep in with the spirit of things, I'm immediately going to put Fer-de-Lance on my Kindle. I need to read this book again real soon. It's been a couple of years since my last Wolfe. I need to rejoin the pack.
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