Fer-de-Lance (Nero Wolfe)

There were many food and other stains on lots of pages but since I am beginning to read all of the Nero Wolfe mysteries in order and am loving them I preserved.

Rex Stout was a prolific writer. Like Edgar Rice Burroughs, he was also adept at getting paid. Over the decades, the characterizations of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe underwent a slow metamorphosis. The characters became slightly softer as Stout's readership grew. But that's not how things started. "Fer-De-Lance" was the first Nero Wolfe novel, and it's a bit more hard-boiled. The Nero Wolfe of this book is cold and somewhat ruthless, certainly as assured of his own genius as Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". Archie Goodwin is a glib tough guy, brilliant in his own right, and Inspector Cramer truly does hate Wolfe (unlike later tales, when he seems almost amiable). With so many Nero Wolfe books available, I think it's important that this be the first you read. It is undistilled brilliance. When suspicious characters or bloated egos encounter Wolfe's cunning, incisive interrogation, the result is quite entertaining.

This one started it all and is the best one of all. The old cliche, "Does he have a book in him?" applies absolutely here. Stout began his long writing career after a string of entrepreneurial business successes. He published this during prohibition and experienced a quick, deserved success. Fans of the gargantuan appreciate many dimensions of Stout's clean, well-lighted place: Archie's wisecracks and lifestyle, his internal ruminations. But I like best Wolfe's observations about life, and this book is extremely rich in them - more so than any other book, I believe. Among all the books, this one has the cleverest murder technique and one of the most subtle plot setups. Beware, though: it also contains some blunt instruments of racism and prejudice along for the ride. What a great book, though. If you've never read any of the series, please start here if you can manage.

Compose yourself, Archie. Why taunt me? Why upbraid me? I am merely a genius, not a god. -Nero Wolfe Rex Stout was in the midst of an unusually interesting life (including being a child math prodigy and serving on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht) when he created one of the great detective series of all time, introducing Nero Wolfe for the first of 72 adventures in Fer-de-Lance. The brilliance of Stout's creation lies in the blending of Wolfe--an eccentric, elephantine, misanthropic, misogynistic, beer guzzling, gourmand--and his footman, Archie Goodwin--a classic, wise cracking, hard boiled dick. The combination, sort of like teaming Mycroft Holmes and Sam Spade, allowed him to use the best elements of both the British drawing room mystery and the American private eye novel. The result has enchanted readers for almost 70 years. Fans include everyone from Oliver Wendell Holmes to PG Wodehouse, James M. Cain to Kingsley Amis. Nero Wolfe, logging in around 280 lbs and quaffing 6 quarts of beer a day, rarely leaves his 35th Street brownstone in Manhattan, preferring to tend his orchids and worry over the exquisite meals prepared by his butler/chef Fritz. To support his high living, Wolfe takes on investigations in a very unofficial capacity, relying on Goodwin to do the physical work and periodically summoning the principals in a case to his home for an exhibition of his deductive genius. His arrogant manner is nicely captured in the following admonition to a sporting goods salesman who has condescendingly demonstrated the proper use of golf clubs: You know, Mr. Townsend, it is our good fortune that the exigencies of birth and training furnish all of us with opportunities for snobbery. My ignorance of this special nomenclature provided yours; your innocence of the elementary processes provides mine. Meanwhile, Archie narrates the stories in the familiar sardonic banter of the great noir novels: When I consider the different kinds I've seen it seems silly to say it, but somehow to me all lawyers look alike. It's a sort of mixture of a scared look and a satisfied look, as if they were crossing a traffic-filled street where they expect to get run over any minute but they know exactly what kind of paper to hand the driver if they get killed and they've got one right in their pocket. This sets up an amusing dramatic tension between the two, as when Nero tells Archie: Sit down. I would prefer to have you here, idle and useless...As I have remarked before, to have you with me like this is always refreshing because it constantly reminds me how distressing it would be to have someone present--a wife, for instance--whom I could not dismiss at will. Lest it seem that Wolfe is to much of an egomaniac to be tolerated, Archie makes it clear that he stays around just for the sheer joy of watching the elephantine savant in action and Wolfe himself acknowledges that much of his facade is mere

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin remain the finest inventions of detective fiction; Chandler may have been a better writer, and Sayers may have been more properly literary, but Stout's books are the best as detective fiction. This is the first Nero Wolfe mystery--the characters aren't quite settled down into their comfortable places yet (and some of the members of the cast haven't appeared on stage yet--Lily Rowan doesn't appear until SOME BURIED CAESAR, perhaps my personal favorite of the series), and the mystery isn't Stout's best. However, Nero and Archie are there, and the sheer joy of listening to them and following Archie's narration are in full bloom. There is no particular reason to start with FER-DE-LANCE, but it's not a bad way to begin one of the most pleasureable creations (the series in full) of the 20th century.