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jdcorley's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
A collection of four Nero Wolfe short mystery stories - three holiday themed. Certainly Stout is able to get across Archie's charm and Wolfe's irascibility in only a few sentences, which is what, tonally, we all want. But there are enough missteps here that this becomes one of Stout's weaker contributions.
"The Easter Parade", for example, give us a hilarious setup - Wolfe demanding Archie hire one of his shady friends to steal an orchid from a woman's lapel, but the woman turns up dead. But the explanation that the story wants us to swallow is that she was killed by a dart fired from a camera, which seems just wildly implausible given the descriptions in the book. If we don't believe the misdirect then there really is nothing to go on and Wolfe doesn't seem smart when he solves it. It's fun Wolfe and Archie antics but it isn't a mystery, really. "Murder is No Joke" is equally contrived in setup and therefore it doesn't feel very exciting when Wolfe reveals the contrivance was foolish from the start. If you have to invent a Rube Goldberg machine to kill someone, it's disappointing when the solution is "it wasn't a Rube Goldberg machine".
"Fourth of July Picnic", similarly, has a bunch of fun Wolfe and Archie banter and manipulation, but very little in the way of detection or mystery-building. A guy is stabbed, one of five people could have done it, and Wolfe and Archie get one of them to give themselves away. That's it! There isn't much there from a "cleverness" perspective.
Probably the best of the stories from a mystery perspective is "Christmas Party" - the reader and Archie and Wolfe all slowly narrow the window of suspects one by one until a trick (the same one from "Fourth of July Picnic", really) is used to identify the culprit. Although the trick is the same, the way our heroes slowly work out who did what is much more effective. Unfortunately, the story is marred by a miasma of anti-Asian racism that persists even if you swallow hard and tell yourself "Oriental" was the polite term of the time. It's deeper than just a "wrong word". A pity too, because it's a well worked story overall.
"The Easter Parade", for example, give us a hilarious setup - Wolfe demanding Archie hire one of his shady friends to steal an orchid from a woman's lapel, but the woman turns up dead. But the explanation that the story wants us to swallow is that she was killed by a dart fired from a camera, which seems just wildly implausible given the descriptions in the book. If we don't believe the misdirect then there really is nothing to go on and Wolfe doesn't seem smart when he solves it. It's fun Wolfe and Archie antics but it isn't a mystery, really. "Murder is No Joke" is equally contrived in setup and therefore it doesn't feel very exciting when Wolfe reveals the contrivance was foolish from the start. If you have to invent a Rube Goldberg machine to kill someone, it's disappointing when the solution is "it wasn't a Rube Goldberg machine".
"Fourth of July Picnic", similarly, has a bunch of fun Wolfe and Archie banter and manipulation, but very little in the way of detection or mystery-building. A guy is stabbed, one of five people could have done it, and Wolfe and Archie get one of them to give themselves away. That's it! There isn't much there from a "cleverness" perspective.
Probably the best of the stories from a mystery perspective is "Christmas Party" - the reader and Archie and Wolfe all slowly narrow the window of suspects one by one until a trick (the same one from "Fourth of July Picnic", really) is used to identify the culprit. Although the trick is the same, the way our heroes slowly work out who did what is much more effective. Unfortunately, the story is marred by a miasma of anti-Asian racism that persists even if you swallow hard and tell yourself "Oriental" was the polite term of the time. It's deeper than just a "wrong word". A pity too, because it's a well worked story overall.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder
Minor: Racism and Racial slurs
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