Some Buried Caesar/The Golden Spiders

This latest double-novel re-issue of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories is most welcome! "Some Buried Caesar" was first published 70 years ago, and it's one of Stout's best early Wolfe novels, here combined with a good later-style novel, "Golden Spiders". "Some Buried Caesar" is an "away from the brownstone" story. Wolfe travels to rural upstate New York to exhibit his albino orchids at a county fair. Odd for an agoraphobic, or at least travel-phobic man? Yes, but Wolfe was confronting someone Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's dogsbody, calls "an enemy". In Archie's words: "The above-mentioned enemy that Wolfe was being gracious to was a short fat person in a dirty unpressed mohair suit, with keen little black eyes and two chins, by the name of Charles E. Shanks. I watched them and listened to them as I sipped the milk, because it was instructive. Shanks knew that the reason Wolfe had busted precedent and come to Crowfield to exhibit albinos which he had got by three new crosses with Paphiopedilum lawrenceanum hyeanum was to get an award over one Shanks had produced by crossing P. callosum sanderae with a new species from Burma, that Wolfe desired and intended to make a monkey of Shanks because Shanks had fought shy of the metropolitan show and had also twice refused Wolfe's offers to trade albinos, and that one good look at the entries in direct comparison made it practically certain that the judges' decision would render Shanks not only a monkey but even a baboon. Furthermore, Wolfe knew that Shanks knew that they both knew, but hearing them gabbing away you might have thought that when a floriculturist wipes his brow it is to remove not sweat but his excess of brotherly love, which is why, knowing the stage of vindictiveness Wolfe had had to arrive at before he decided on that trip, I say it was instructive to listen to them." As always, Archie tells the story, in his own cheeky & genuine way, with many sharp observations. It's not Stout's terse late-style, but it's still very much Archie and lots of fun! In "Some Buried Caesar", Archie's long-term "lady friend", Lily Rowan, makes her first appearance. This isn't the Lily of later Wolfe novels, but there are several Lily-Archie sparks & dialogues, right from the beginning where she calls him, "Escamillo" -- the manly bullfighter who stole Carmen away from her solider lover in Bizet's opera, "Carmen". That has ironic bite in context, a context I won't share. I'm not giving any plot hints, because surprises start in the first chapter, and why spoil them? But to tease you into the book, let me add some dialogues from Archie/Lilly. This begins with Archie: "Oh, possibly Clyde's father sicked them on. I know when I mentioned your name to him last night and said you were there, he nearly popped open. I got the impression he had seen you once in a nightmare. Not that I think you belong in a nightmare, with your complexion and so on, but that was the impression I got." "He's just a pain." She shrug

This latest double-novel re-issue of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories is most welcome! "Some Buried Caesar" was first published 70 years ago, and it's one of Stout's best early Wolfe novels, here combined with a good later-style novel, "Golden Spiders". "Some Buried Caesar" is an "away from the brownstone" story. Wolfe travels to rural upstate New York to exhibit his albino orchids at a county fair. Odd for an agoraphobic, or at least travel-phobic man? Yes, but Wolfe was confronting someone Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's dogsbody, calls "an enemy". In Archie's words: "The above-mentioned enemy that Wolfe was being gracious to was a short fat person in a dirty unpressed mohair suit, with keen little black eyes and two chins, by the name of Charles E. Shanks. I watched them and listened to them as I sipped the milk, because it was instructive. Shanks knew that the reason Wolfe had busted precedent and come to Crowfield to exhibit albinos which he had got by three new crosses with Paphiopedilum lawrenceanum hyeanum was to get an award over one Shanks had produced by crossing P. callosum sanderae with a new species from Burma, that Wolfe desired and intended to make a monkey of Shanks because Shanks had fought shy of the metropolitan show and had also twice refused Wolfe's offers to trade albinos, and that one good look at the entries in direct comparison made it practically certain that the judges' decision would render Shanks not only a monkey but even a baboon. Furthermore, Wolfe knew that Shanks knew that they both knew, but hearing them gabbing away you might have thought that when a floriculturist wipes his brow it is to remove not sweat but his excess of brotherly love, which is why, knowing the stage of vindictiveness Wolfe had had to arrive at before he decided on that trip, I say it was instructive to listen to them." As always, Archie tells the story, in his own cheeky & genuine way, with many sharp observations. It's not Stout's terse late-style, but it's still very much Archie and lots of fun! In "Some Buried Caesar", Archie's long-term "lady friend", Lily Rowan, makes her first appearance. This isn't the Lily of later Wolfe novels, but there are several Lily-Archie sparks & dialogues, right from the beginning where she calls him, "Escamillo" -- the manly bullfighter who stole Carmen away from her solider lover in Bizet's opera, "Carmen". That has ironic bite in context, a context I won't share. I'm not giving any plot hints, because surprises start in the first chapter, and why spoil them? But to tease you into the book, let me add some dialogues from Archie/Lilly. This begins with Archie: "Oh, possibly Clyde's father sicked them on. I know when I mentioned your name to him last night and said you were there, he nearly popped open. I got the impression he had seen you once in a nightmare. Not that I think you belong in a nightmare, with your complexion and so on, but that was the impression I got." "He's just a pain.

Haven't read the book yet - however it arrived instantly (almost) & is in perfect condition. Many thanks

This is a wonderful printing (high quality paper and binding, etc.) of two great stories. The new introductions are also fun. I'm giving this as Christmas presents!