Which is the Nero Wolfe novel in wich Arnold Zeck is killed?
In the Best Families. See.
Thanks!
If you can find it, please pick up the trilogy Triple Zeck.
That’s what I’m reading now.
I always expect the plot to whack Zeck to be much longer than it is. I also misremember the last lines as being Wolfe telling Archie to get some partridges started on blueberries, and Archie begging him not to start eating again.
As supervillians go, Zeck always seemed very disappointing. His three wicked plans are fairly tame, IIRC. And he was pretty easily bamboozled by Archie, like, how stupid can a super-villain be?
Having not read them all again yet, the black mail scan from * And Be A Villian * had beauty in it’s tamness and simplicity. It was only when someone was truly guilty of the accusation that it went awry.
Nero Wolfe is like James Bond in that you shouldn’t intimidate him; whack him right away, don’t mess with the phone calls. Then you can confound Archie with a Captain Crunch Decoder Ring or an explosive inflatible floozie.
BTW that’s why I started with orchids, the CPs came later.
Yeah, but it was worth putting up with him just for the unforgettable image of Lily Rowan making out with Wolfe in the backseat of a car.
Is it just me, or do the Wolfe stories seem “cold” to you? Archie, who is superficially charming, is really quite hardhearted & cynical, and of course Wolfe gave up on the human race long ago. I’ve read them all, and enjoyed them, but I don’t like Archie and Wolfe nearly as well as I like the Literary Doctor and the Great Detective…
Archie is the hard boiled school, like Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade, although the stories are written more from the Agatha Christie style than the Chandler or Hammett.
There is also the cultural difference of Victorian England and WWII America.
As for Wolfe, there are some who say Holmes is his Daddy, although I can’t see “The Woman” in Montenagro. Wolfe’s schtick as you said is that he is remote from people.
Was that Bernard DeVito who came up with that wacky theory? Or William Baring-Gould?
As to the first point, remember that the Wolfe stories were published between 1934 and 1974, and always reflected the world in which they were written…Archie was in uniform in the early '40s and stopped wearing hats by the mid-sixties, for example. To my mind, the best of the series were written during the 1930s (THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN, TOO MANY COOKS, e.g.), so I tend to think of the whole Canon as '30s novels.
VOTO. Bernard De VOTO.
I think it’s writing style.
Hammett wrote in the 20’s, Chandler in the 40’s; Archie is more of an observer who reports to Wolfe (and gives us ‘clues’). In the later books there is even an admission that ‘the books’ are ‘real’. Hmmm, Watson did that, too…Maybe Watson is Archie’s Grandfather. 
Archie isn’t really an action guy, he’s an observer and cataloguer. There is much more description in Stout’s stuff and less action altogether than the ‘hardboiled’ school.
Yeah, but if you try to pull any funny stuff in Wolfe’s office, Archie’ll have you slapped down and your ass back in that red leather chair quicker than shit through a goose.
Indeed, and to violate logic:
He will never shoot Canino six times in the gut, and when he does, the of the theatre will not applaud.
Bogie, the Big Sleep. They clapped at at that scene when I saw it at the Arts Center.