Fer-De-Lance – Rex Stout

Rex Stout is another American author with quite a prestigious bibliography. His novels top out in the seventies and span over six decades. His popularity is accounted by simply browsing his numerous titles in used bookstores that crowd the shelves ragged, worn, and dog-eared. Each paperback’s spine cracked in a million places resembling spidery varicose veins. Luckily, I found a copy of Stout’s first Nero Wolfe novel at a Goodwill store several months ago, that has waited patiently on my shelf for discovery.

Like most literary series, it is always best to start at the beginning. However, Fer-De-Lance drops the reader right into Wolfe’s world, as if several novels had already taken place. Already established as a great mind for detective work with several references of past triumphs and adventures, Wolfe is a practically larger than life character that enjoys his agoraphobic state while consuming copious amounts of beer and food. Comically, not only does Wolfe never leave the house he never varies his schedule even when clients come at his request. A designated rule is in place that prohibits entry in the upstairs greenhouse when Wolfe is brooding amongst his true friends, the plants.

Archie Goodwin represents the irritable body to Wolfe’s brain marching out on foot to do the investigating groundwork. Dutifully reporting all findings and feeding them into the brain, Archie comes across at times as a cocky smart ass, but manages to remain humble, respectable, and likable throughout the novel. Archie is at once at awe with Wolfe’s brain prowess and at the same time frustrated at feeling an outsider to his mentor’s working methods.

I found the duo a nice mirror to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Watson characters. Stout playfully makes Watson the brain and Holmes the documentarian since the novel is entirely from Archie Goodwin’s perspective. However, I can argue that Nero Wolfe is the amalgamation of Holmes and Watson’s brains combined and Goodwin is merely the commentator. The character comparison is a topic that’s well worth exploring in a larger format with ample research of seventy novels to read.

Goodwin, along with a few other tail-men and strong-arm types flex Wolfe’s grip on New York City’s underworld at the tail end of the depression. Although not destitute, money is tight, expenses are cut and extemporaneous help cut back. Goodwin is one of the few hired hands that manage to stay within Wolfe’s employment. When asked by one of Wolfe’s part-time tail-men as a favor to help his wife’s friend find her brother, Carlo Maffei, Wolfe devises a probable turn of events, which leads, of course, to murder stemming from only a brief interview from Maria Maffei. After finding a clue in a picture cut from the daily newspaper of a seemingly separate death by natural causes of a well-respected professor, Wolfe directs Archie to place a $10,000 bet with the District Attorney’s office that the professor died from a poisonous needle shot out of a golf club. Intrigued, but confused, as to how all of these events tie into the disappearance of Carlo Maffei, Archie is game for the work.

And that’s where it get’s good! Archie’s dispatched to interview the medical examiner, the district attorney, the family of the professor, golf caddies, and groundskeepers. A nice assembly of suspects gathers at the house, at his and Archie’s invitation, for interviews only on Wolfe’s designated time-schedule. All of Wolfe’s visitors have their patience tested by his stated genius, but its Archie’s frustration with the pace of genius that occasionally erupts into bickering spats that provide the comic relief of the novel. There is a substantial amount of zingers where I found myself chuckling aloud.

The resolution works well and includes a fiery plane crash. Yes, that $10,000 bet still stands at the end for Nero Wolfe to collect. To combat Wolfe, the suspect plants a surprise when a lethal snake pops out of a drawer, as it seems the best way to attack a man in his own castle. A tremendous amount of excitement for a book about a genius detective that is famous for never leaving his house!

Many authors I have known about peripherally for many years but I never bothered to read and I kick myself after I realize what I’ve been missing out on. It amazes that Rex Stout’s creations continue to live a life of their own almost 80 years after their creation. I will continue to explore Stout’s work as I find it. I don’t believe that reading each work in order is essential, but I will do my best to maintain a sense of continuity.

A Stranger in my Grave – Margaret Millar

I felt it was about time to discover some female authors in the crime genre. My pick was none other than Mrs. Ross MacDonald. I’ve read several Ross MacDonald books and I’ve always enjoyed his stories that centered on fractured families and maintaining an air of normalcy within the ideas of socially acceptable society. Drawn to that subject matter and intrigued by the plot synopsis on the back of the book, I decided Millar’s A Stranger in my Grave would be the perfect introduction to the feminine side of the crime genre.

Originally published in 1960, Stranger in my Grave revolves around housewife Daisy Harker’s vivid dream of visiting her own grave at a quaint seaside cemetery marked with her death dated four years ago. What’s troubling about the dream is that Daisy can’t quite place the significance of the grave or the date. Daisy’s family matters seem to play a crucial role in her lack of happiness and unease. Distanced from her well to do husband, Jim, after the discovery of her inability to bear children and irritated by her meddlesome live-in mother who claims that her dreams are unsubstantiated, Daisy also copes with a mostly absent alcoholic father whose hand perpetually extends for handouts and who literally disappears and reappears as any situation dictates.

After a bail bondsman/private detective, Pinata, contacts Daisy to bail her father out of jail, Daisy hires him to piece together the date from her dream that’s etched onto her tombstone. Together they begin an investigation of Daisy’s past with literally no bank accounts, records, or firm memories of where to start. Is Daisy having a memory? Is Daisy having a premonition or a ghostly flashback? Eventually, the seaside cemetery from the dream offers the pair the first clue to the mystery when they find Daisy’s tombstone marked with the name Carlos Camilla. An elderly man that police records indicate committed suicide on that date. As the story unfolds, Daisy discovers a payoff that her husband has obscured for four years and her father has a connection to a Hispanic woman that Daisy once helped at the clinic where she worked precisely four years ago.

Slowly the story’s plot mechanisms begin to turn and build into a grand crescendo that mixes the fractured family histories into an intriguing crime story. Margaret Millar’s story telling is superb. I felt like the author was using the tropes of the Sentimental novel as a springboard cranking it sideways and stuffing it into a mystery novel. It works very well at a slow burn pace. I will say that the twist ending wraps up all the story threads very nicely. Millar, and her husband, MacDonald, excel at these family stories that feature families that use a façade of happiness or normalcy to mask their misfortunes to society. The crucial piece to understand is that all families have something swept under the carpet or hidden in the closets somewhere.