Too Many Women

Some have criticized Stout's postwar Nero Wolfe stories as reactionary and lacking sparkle and creativity. Not this one. Yes, the plot device is predictable: that Archie is irresistable to women, and would do well planted in a big office disguised as an efficiency expert. The office has hundreds of good-looking women for Archie to interview, and he thinks he's died and gone to heaven for a while... Here, the dialogue sparkles and the plot is pretty good. Now, it is true that you have to put aside your wince reflex regarding rampant sexism in this one. If you can manage that, though, it's a great read. Michael Prichard once again does a spectacular job on the audiobook version. I especially appreciate his ability not only to do Wolfe better than anybody, but to handle multiple female roles distinctly and without flummery.

There is a crime - well, a hit and run, that may BE a crime - a murder. Archie and Nero are hired to clear it up - was Waldo Wilmot Moore murdered or was his death an accident? The Wall Street Firm he use to work at must know or it might damage its image - you know how that is. The problem comes down to the fact that there are hundreds of female employees, and a few male ones, who could have wanted him dead. The story, like many of the Nero Wolfe mysteries is detailed, complex and, near the end, with a surprise. The only problem is that this story seems to move slower than most and, like Archie and Nero, you start to become a tad frustrated with the rest of the people in the novel - they seem short-sighted, sly, dense and sometimes rude. The end, like most endings of the Nero Wolfe series, is still somewhat a surprise (and even a tad sad depending on your point of view).

With my reading of this, I have read every Nero Wolfe novel. This is one of the best, in my opinion. Archie is sent to investigate whether a company's employee was murdered, or it was an accident. His interactions with one of the owners, a vegetarian with a taste for the exotic, are worth the price of the book alone. Archie also gets to put on his charm, and literally wine and dine plenty of women in this story, not to mention engage in his virtual warfare with Wolfe, until finally the mystery is solved. All of our favorites, from Saul to Fritz to Cramer are also present in this story. I was kept guessing until the very last page; I was suprised at how the end turned out. For me, that's the hallmark of a good mystery. The Wolfe books are all fairly formulaic, and this is a classic of that formula, but it works quite well.

An employee of a very large corporation dies in a hit-and-run accident. Rumors abound that it was murder, disrupting morale. Nero and Archie are hired to either scotch the rumors or find the truth re: the mysterious death. These circumstances put Archie smack dab in the middle of hundreds of young working women -- many of them suspects, most of them of interest to Archie on other levels. This case gives him a chance to put many steak and wine dinners and many evenings of dancing on the old expense account, while he is in search of clues in this particularly confounding case. Neither the police nor Wolfe have much luck solving it for the longest time, and even Archie is frustrated by their lack of success (if not by the scenery he encounters along the way). This is very much Archie's story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I figured out the mystery myself rather early on -- something I'm proud of, since that seldom happens to me in Wolfe stories. Still, I had a wonderful time with this book, and especially got a kick of Wolfe's snorting dismissals of Archie more personal interest in the ladies. I also enjoyed reading about women in the workplace in those long ago days. How times have changed! All the women seemed to be in administrative positions. If they wanted power within the corporation, they got it through working for progressively more powerful men -- or in the case of Mrs. Pine, installing her husband on the board of directors. In that regard, this was a bit like unearthing a time capsule.

Every Wolfe book is really about Archie Goodwin, but this is especially true of Too Many Women. For the first time, he is given the role of sex magnet. Although the plot is only so-so, the result is one of the more entertaining and humorous Wolfes.