This was the first Nero Wolfe mystery I ever read. I found it on my mother's bookshelves when I was around 11 or 12 years old and instantly fell truly, madly, deeply in love with Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's wisecracking, handsome legman. His description of Lois Jarrell from their first meeting hit me like a brick, and not only because I myself wore my brown hair in a ponytail and had greenish brown eyes:

"I pivoted. A girl all in white with bare tanned arms and a bare tanned throat down to the start of the curves and a tanned face with dimples and greenish brown eyes and a pony tail was coming. If you are thinking that is too much to take in with a quick glance, I am a detective and a trained observer. I had time not only to take her in but also think, Good Lord, if that's Susan and she's a snake I'm going to take up herpetology, if that's the word, and I can look it up."

It's a great book, is what I'm saying. I've read it at least a dozen times, and I will probably read it a dozen more before I turn my last page. You should read it at least once. ( )

4/9/22

If Death Ever Slept (1955) by Rex Stout. A very successful private businessman, Otis Jarrell, tries to hire Nero Wolfe to get the goods on his daughter-in-law. He believes she used information she got through her husband to queer several deals he had been working on over the past year. She supposedly told a “friend” of hers who cut into the deal costing the Jarrell a million bucks or more. All the client wants is proof she did it and to separate her from his son without losing the son in the bargain. Archie gets sent undercover as secretary to Jarrell, given a room in the swanky duplex Jarrell shares with his wide, son and daughter-in-law, his own daughter, his brother-in-law Roger Foote and Nora Kent, Jarrell’s stenographer, a butler, cook and a pair of maids.
Soon there is the clever theft of a gun, murder and lies a plenty. Goodwin and Wolfe are in the wringer with the case, the cops are being stalled, and things get very complicated. Wolfe faces a deadline for solving the case before the police grab onto Archie as perhaps the gun hired for more than undercover work.
This is, as usual, a highly knit thriller that will have you wondering who the real killer is and just why it happened. A fun, fun read. ( )

Archie finds himself living amongst a "hive of predators and parasites," and apparently one killer as well. He and Wolfe must discover the murderer before they end up in jail as accessories after the fact.

This is a book for Archie. He is at his best. Dancing, observing with his eagle eyes, making witty remarks and wise cracks all the way through. I enjoyed this very much, but then I can't think of a Nero Wolfe book I don't enjoy, unless it is the last one. ( )

I have a notion this was one of the first Nero Wolfe stories I read I read them in no particular order, mostly out of the Bowling Green (Ohio) Public Library. It is not precisely a favorite of mine, but it is one that sticks in my mind --for little things, like Archie Goodwin suggesting he 5ake the name Adonis Guilfoyle while serving as Randall Jarrett's secretary. Jarrett (Prodded by Archie) has agreed to help Jarrett find evidence that will let him get his daughter--in-law out of the house while keeping his son. There is rather a neat scene in which a rug (obviously powered by a hidden person) opens an office door set to photograph anyone who opens it, In one sense this case is very obvious --there is a designated villain from the beginning --but the question is, is the rather unpleasant Mr. Jarrett right about her? He also has an attractive daughter who makes a point of telling young men she is interested in (including Archie) about how she shot a squirrel at the age of nine and later wrote a poem about it. The title of the novel derives from the poem. ( )