Title:

Fer-De-Lance

Author:

Rex Stout

Category:

Mystery / Thriller

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

June 12, 2023

er-de-Lance is the first novel in the Nero Wolfe detective series, there are 46 more volumes after this one, so I definitely won't be reading them all. I was curious to try at least one of the stories penned by Rex Stout because he is considered one of the original masters of American detective novels, along with Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and a few others. I read some of Chandler's books long ago, and I remember liking them. I should go back and reread them. I haven't read any of Hammett's works, which is an oversight I should rectify.

What I found most interesting about Fer-de-Lance is that it was written in 1934 - so long ago that it now reads like a historical novel. When Archie Godwin offers someone a dollar - that is real money. When sums like $10,000 are bandied about, it is a princely sum, equivalent to millions of dollars today. The corpulent detective Nero Wolfe never leaves his apartment; Archie marvels at how Wolfe can simply turn on the radio and listen to talks by educated speakers for free, from the comfort of his own living room! Archie drives around New York in his roadster - the concept of a freeway didn't even exist yet. Women needed to be chaperoned. Men, of course, wore suits and a hat.

At one point, a copy of Who's Who in America is hauled out by Archie, checking up on one of the suspects. I had forgotten all about Who's Who - I remember my dad showing me his entry in the book, decades ago. Back then, if you got listed in their book, you were Somebody. Who's Who still exists, but now it is a vanity website where you pay money to have your own name listed, as if anyone ever goes there anymore.

The star of the novel is Nero Wolfe, a genius detective, famous throughout New York City for his ability to solve puzzling cases, despite the fact that he never leaves his multi-story NY apartment. Wolfe is an eccentric, very heavy - he consumes quarts of beer every day, and has a personal chef, Fritz, who concocts the most tantalizing meals (the novel was released in the throes of the Great Depression, when hungry stalked America, so a story about a fat man enjoying sumptuous meals must have seemed like even more of a fantasy than sums of $10,000.) Wolfe deliberately cultivates his eccentric behavior, it makes his sleuthing results seem even more amazing to the cops and reporters when he solves a case.

Archie Goodwin is Wolfe's right-hand-man. Archie lives in the expansive Wolfe apartment. Often, Archie is sent out to interview a witness or suspect, or persuade them to come back to the apartment to talk to the great Wolfe himself. Archie isn't a fool, he has his own evaluations of the clues to the case, but of course he plays the part of Dr. Watson to Wolfe's brilliant Holmes. Archie often is grinning at people, but I couldn't decide if he was a happy-go-lucky sort, or if those grins were meant to taunt the other characters - because of his association with Wolfe, Archie knows a lot more about the crimes than the police detectives. Archie drinks so many glasses of milk during the course of this novel that I would suspect the National Dairymen's Association of buying a product placement ad, if such a thing existed back in 1934.

The novel begins with Wolfe being asked to investigate the case of Carlo Maffei, an Italian metalworker who was going to sail back to Italy. Instead, Carlo has disappeared and his sister, Maria Maffei, would like her brother found. At the same time, word comes that a famous college president, Peter Barstow, had died of heart failure on the golf course. From reading the newspaper descriptions about Barstow's demise, Wolfe concludes that Barstow was in fact murdered, and that his death is somehow related to the disappearance of Carlo Maffei.

Wolfe bets the District Attorney $10,000 that Barstow was murdered. Wolfe predicts that a small dart of poison will be found in Barstow's belly. How could Wolfe possibly know such a thing? The body of Barstow is exhumed, and of course Wolfe is correct. But who would do such a thing? Barstow hadn't an enemy in the world. It is up to Wolfe and Archie to ferret out the culprit from the circle of suspects.

The murder seemed rather contrived to me - couldn't the killer have found a simpler scheme than having a poison dart fired into the victim's belly? And it also seemed unlikely that it would occur to Wolfe to suspect such a thing just from reading newspaper accounts. When this book was released in 1934, such ideas must have been incredibly original and clever. I might read the next volume in the series, I did enjoy the portrayal of Depression era New York City.