Over My Dead Body

Does Nero Wolfe have a daughter? What he does have is a lot of connections with the Balkans and the Balkans was not more stable in the 1930s than it is today. ( )

After re-reading the book, I was able to understand a great deal more about the overall interactions between the principles. Maybe I was a little dense the first time I read the book, after having seen the A&E NW episodes, but upon a 2nd reading, more made sense regarding the interactions of players. Maybe a 3rd re-reading will clear up more. I still enjoy it as much as ever, however. ( )

This was definitely a political book written on the Eve of World War II, but it was interesting nonetheless. This episode gave some background on Nero Wolfe that it appears even his closest ally didn't know. There were lots of twists and turns because of the political intrigue, but it was interesting. I liked the ending, but this one didn't explain how Nero Wolfe discovered the true plot twist (or I missed it, I was listening to the audiobook). Trigger warning: prejudices of the era are apparent in the writing. ( )

Nero Wolfe is confronted by a beautiful, tempermental female from the Balkans. She has been accused of stealing diamonds from a man's jacket. She demands he prove that she did not steal the stones. Her reason to choose him is not only his notoriety of solving crimes, she also claims to be his long-lost daughter!

The diamond theft is solved but the dead bodies that appear complicate things even more. There are also documents, identities, rumours and questionable intrigues that also come into play. While Wolfe does the thinking, between his time with his orchids, wise-cracking Archie is doing the footwork to find out what is real and what isn't, who was where and who wasn't.

Add to this Sargent Cramer's men staking out Wolfe's house to see who comes, who goes and where they go, while Cramer hangs out in Wolfe's house. It is not one of the simpler cases that have come through Wolfe's door.

I've read a large number of these books, enjoyed them and was not disappointed with this one. ( )

It's an ordinary day at the brownstone when a young woman shows up, needing help from Nero Wolfe. She, like he, is from Montenegro and has recently emigrated to New York City, where she and her friend have gotten work at a fencing/dance studio (I remember the very idea that such a place existed boggling the mind of teenaged me). Now her friend's been accused of stealing some diamonds from a client's coat pocket, and they want Nero to bail her out. When he refuses, she plays her trump card: She is his adopted daughter, last seen by him in Montenegro when she was three years old.

Nero, of course, can't be bothered to stir himself from his gourmet meals or his orchids, but he sends sidekick Archie Goodwin to investigate. Along the way, the case is complicated by a murder and enough international intrigue to choke a fencing studio full of spies, which is pretty much what Archie and Nero are dealing with.

This is the seventh in the series, first published in 1940, and it suffers from the same affliction that the other early entries do: The characters haven't quite gelled and Stout seems not have decided whether he's writing gritty noir or lighthearted caper. That, combined with an excess of complicated political history that is only cursorily explained, presumably because people of the time were well acquainted with it, make this one of my least favorite entries. It's not terrible but it doesn't reach the sublime heights of Stout at its best. ( )