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Title: Three at Wolfe’s Door
Series: Nero Wolfe #33
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 153
Words: 71K
Another three novellas. A great way to spend your time in fact. Of course, if you’ve been reading my Nero Wolfe reviews for this long and haven’t decided to dive in, nothing I can say at this point will get you to change your mind.
Which actually brings up a very cogent blogging point.
What is the point of a review? Am I writing this review in hopes that you will take my advice and read these books? Am I TRYING to be an influencer and make a vast fortune from you all? Or am I just a hobbyist sharing his love of a something (or hatred in the case of that blasted Neuromancer) that I feel needs more time in the limelight? Or am I just an obsessed reader who HAS to chronicle everything he reads so that when I have forgotten that I read this in 10 years, I can go look at this, remember that I read it and say “Ah hah! I DID read that book 10 years ago. You cad and bounder, bow down in abject awe at my greatness”. So many options, so many reasons.
Well, I can assure you that I don’t give a fig what you think about the books I read. If you want to read them, that is great, because it means you’re going to have a cracking good time. If you don’t, it’s no skin off of my nose. This is America and it’s a free country. If you use that freedom to waste your time and poison your mind with crap, that’s your choice. A bad choice, a VERY bad choice, but you can do it. And if you’re not an American, well, that’s STILL your choice. You can’t help that you were born with that handicap after all 😉
On a serious note though, it is so easy to fall into that trap of writing a review with the end goal being to get others to read the same book. It might be from just simply wanting to share something that you love, but it also might spring from deeper, darker motives. Like a lust for control of all those who you come into contact with. So next time you post a book review, make sure to ask yourself “Self, WHY am I doing this?” and make sure you have a good answer. Otherwise you’ll bring dishonor on you, dishonor on your family and dishonor on your cow!
And Nero Wolfe wouldn’t like that one bit.
★★★★☆
Table of Contents:
- Poison a la Carte
- Method Three for Murder
- The Rodeo Murder
Synopses from Wikipedia:
click to open
Poison a la Carte
A group of gourmets, who call themselves the Ten for Aristology, invite Wolfe’s chef Fritz to cook their annual dinner. Wolfe and Archie are included by courtesy. Twelve young women, one per guest, serve the food — they are actresses supplied by a theatrical agency, and are termed “Hebes,” after the cupbearer to the gods in the Greek pantheon (later replaced by Ganymede). A member of the Ten, Vincent Pyle, is poisoned and Wolfe quickly concludes that arsenic was administered by a server. Pyle is an investor in Broadway productions, and it’s clearly possible that he knew one or more of the Hebes.
Then the murderer is trapped into making incriminating statements at John Piotti’s restaurant, a location used for an identical purpose in Gambit.
Method Three for Murder
After discovering a body in the back seat, Mira Holt drives the taxi she has borrowed for the evening to 918 West 35th Street. She walks up the front steps of the brownstone just as Archie Goodwin is walking down — having just told Nero Wolfe that he’s quit. Archie and Wolfe solve the case, a murderess is caught and Mira and the murderess’s husband get married a year after the murderess is executed.
The Rodeo Murder
A party at Lily Rowan’s Park Avenue penthouse includes a roping contest between some cowboy friends, with a silver-trimmed saddle as the prize. One of the contestants is at a disadvantage when his rope is missing. When it is found wound more than a dozen times around the neck of the chief backer of the World Series Rodeo, Lily asks Nero Wolfe to sort out the murder. Turns out one of the organizers had been stealing money and investing it in cattle and was caught by the murdered cowboy.
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