Word: nero
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...books were not so wildly interesting I could have kicked the habit. Agatha Christie, who has all the psychological insight of second year algebra, couldn't have maintained interest like that, and if you've ever tried Rex Stout you'd know after three of four books that Nero Wolfe is really just a fat old fart. Almost every collection of one-author-one-genre books gets repetitive after a while: critics betray this by calling thrillers a "craft" or a pulp writer a "masterful technician," generally revealing that the formulas don't hold up for long and that while...
Died. Rex Todhunter Stout, 88, premier American whodunit writer, whose corpulent orchidologist-detective, Nero Wolfe, with the help of his faithful legman Archie Goodwin, solved crimes in 46 books that were translated into 22 languages and sold more than 45 million copies; at his home in Danbury, Conn. As sinewy and energetic as his protagonist was fat and lethargic, Stout would work out the story line for such mystery novels as The Doorbell Rang and Too Many Cooks while puttering about his daily cooking or gardening chores, then sit down and type out a complete mystery in 38 days...
Poirot: deceased. Maigret: retired. Martin Beck, Commander Gideon, Inspector West: gone, all gone with the recent deaths of their creators. Of the old breed, only Nero Wolfe is still doing business at the same old stand, his orchidaceous town house in Manhattan, backed and fronted as always by the ineffable Archie Goodwin. Like his corpulent hero, Author Rex Stout, 89, continues to confound the actuarial tables-and his followers. In this latest outing, Stout ups the stakes of the game he plays with readers. Three-quarters of the way through, Narrator Archie realizes the identity of the criminal and concedes...
HUMDINGER. Yes, indeed. Jerry Ford hums and we all get dingered. Nero, at least, had the good taste to play a fiddle...
Praise be to Nero's Neptune...