Over My Dead Body: A Nero Wolfe Mystery

The novel opens with a beautiful Balkan émigré entering Nero Wolfe’s office on West 35th Street, pleading for assistance on behalf of her friend. The friend, she claims, has been falsely accused of stealing some diamonds. When Wolfe expresses reluctance to accept the case, this mysterious femme drops the bombshell: the girl accused is no other than Wolfe’s long-lost adopted daughter!

From such hokey beginnings, the storyline unfolds: Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s ever-faithful assistant, is despatched to the fencing school, where the petitioner and Wolfe’s allegeded daugther work as instructors. Once there, Archie stumbles across a murder – not to mention agents of foreign governments, heirs to rich industrialists, shady dealings with European royalty, blackmail...

Over My Dead Body was El Tarangu’s first introduction to Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout’s corpulent detective. Over My Dead Body, like the rest of the Nero Wolfe stories, is recounted in the first person by Archie, just as the Sherlock Holmes stories are relayed to the reader via Watson. In fact, there are a number of similarities in the dynamic that exists between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, and that of Holmes and Dr. Watson (while reading Over My Dead Body, El T was also reading the second Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of the Four). The hobbies of both Holmes and Wolfe are referenced in their respective stories: Holmes enjoys playing the violin and intravenous cocaine usage, while Wolfe prefers tending to his orchids and getting sozzled on beer at eleven in the morning. And the undercurrent of sexual tension between Wolfe and Goodwin runs even stronger than it does between Holmes and Watson. Sure, Wolfe and Goodwin both display a mutual antagonism towards one another, but that’s just the manner in which their repressed mutual desire manifests itself. And Goodwin once or twice passes remark about the desirability of certain female characters, but you can tell that he’s just doing it to make Wolfe jealous. To complete the closeted ménage, it is stated that Fritz, Wolfe’s chef-cum-manservant, is afraid of women, and hides whenever one comes to visit Wolfe’s brownstone.

Such latent longings aside, Over My Dead Body is a fun, well-structured, all-round enjoyable detective novel. The appeal of the Nero Wolfe mysteries lies not in the plot, but in the characters. The grouchy Wolfe frequently displays his dry, sardonic wit, while Goodwin regularly interjects with smart-alecky asides. Goodwin also occasionally comes out with pearls of ‘40s slang such as: “She sounded darn unconcerned for a girl who has just escaped being thrown in the hoosegow as a sneak thief”.

Nero Wolfe doesn’t like to leave the comfort of his brownstone, and co-ordinates all of his investigations from behind the desk in his office. This inevitably results in Goodwin performing most of the legwork, aided sometimes by Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather. Wolfe’s reluctance to leaving his office also means that any set piece perpetrator-unmasking dénouement is reliant on Wolfe getting the culprit to agree to come to his office. As Over My Dead Body is only about the seventh of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, this device worked fine, but I imagine that by book twenty or so, Rex Stout was beginning to run out of credible foils to have the murderer/criminal trot along meekly to Wolfe’s office to be caught.

Good novel with well-crafted, very engaging characters; El Tarangu would definitely recommend.

Hat tip: Thanks to Kinky Friedman for introducing El T to the Nero Wolfe mysteries in When the Cat’s Away.

Cover image from the Wonder Publishing Group blog, which El T also recommends.

Buy Nero Wolfe mysteries on Amazon.

Robert Brandenburg: "Pooh... and Other Sh*t"

From the Robert Brandenburg exhibition at Gallery 1988 - before you go clicking on any links, some of the images are borderlin NSFW.

via Super Punch

Under the Eagle

Under the Eagle is the first instalment in Simon Scarrow’s Eagle series of historical novels, which are set around the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 CE. The novel begins on the Upper Rhine in Germany (which is referred to as “Germany”; throughout the novel, Germany is “Germany” and Britain is “Britain”, but France is “Gaul”, Avenches is “Aventicum”, and Boulonge-sur-Mer is “Gesoriacum” - only mildly disconcerting). Quintus Licinius Cato is a raw recruit in the Second Legion. Cato does not match the typical profile of a prospective legionnaire; he is a skinny, awkward, former palace flunky, a slave who has enlisted in the legion in order to secure his freedom. Whatever is Macro, the battle-hardened veteran who has fought his way up from the ranks to become a centurion, to do with his new charge?

Inevitably, Cato proves his mettle in the heat of battle, and he and Macro strike up a hearty friendship in the time-honoured tradition of odd couples everywhere. Then, on the eve of the invasion of Britain, Macro is assigned a secret mission that could alter the fate of the empire itself…

The flyleaf of Under the Eagle informs the reader that the book’s author, Simon Scarrow, is a history teacher (El Tarangu’s edition is quite old; it is likely that Scarrow has given up the day job by now). This detail resulted in El T feeling a little disappointed upon finishing the book; for a military history novel written by a history teacher, Under the Eagle didn’t contain a huge amount of historical detail. Aside from learning that all Roman fortresses were laid out to the same specifications, and that new legionnaires trained with wooden swords for the first few weeks, the reader does not learn much about day-to-day existence in a Roman legion. El Tarangu wasn’t expecting the level of scholarly minutiae that Robert Graves provides the reader, but a little more historical detail, without it unduly interfering with the plot, would have been nice – Robert Harris struck a nice balance with Pompeii, for example. Inevitably, there are a number of anachronisms. Macro does at one point ask Cato if he has “scored” – this in relation to an attractive slave-girl that Cato is enamoured with – and legionnaires are referred to as “squaddies” by one character (late 20th century British Army slang, for those of you not familiar with the term), but the historical inaccuracies are seldom, and are usually not too distracting.

The author does conjure up one intriguing scenario in having Vitellius and Vespasian enter a sort of Machiavellian pact with regard to taking over the empire. The impact of this was almost lost on this reader, however; even though both characters feature frequently from the book’s very beginning, El Tarangu had forgotten that both Vitellius and Vespasian later went on to become emperor until the two enter into their uneasy alliance towards the end of the book. And while El T has previously read Suetonius and probably should have realised the historical significance of the two characters earlier, this reference was probably lost on some readers, particularly younger ones. And, while on the subject of historical personages, El Tarangu spent the first hundred-or-so pages wondering if the Macro in the novel, a grizzled, somewhat coarse soldier of humble origins, was the same person as the historical Macro, who was also a soldier of the legion from a similar background. They weren’t the same person, by the way - wrong reign; we really must dust off our copy of Suetonius and give it another read.

Plot-wise, the book is a page-turner. There are two good battle scenes, some political intrigue, a brief love interlude – Under the Eagle reads very well in a rollicking sort of way. A little lightweight, but never less than enjoyably diverting, Under the Eagle would be good for a holiday read.

Buy Under the Eagle from Amazon.

Buy Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars from Amazon (the Robert Graves translation, naturally).

Image from  thusread.com

Merry Christmas, and goodwill to all

The Junky’s Christmas by William Burroughs, from the collection Interzone. A text version of the story to supplement Burroughs’s croaky narration, if required, is available here.

Buy William Burroughs books on Amazon.

Book Covers: The Book Design Review

Make Room! Make Room!, Harry Harrison (David Pearson)

Violence, Slavoj Žižek (Henry Sene Yee)

All the Sad Young Literary Men, Keith Gessen (The Heads of State)

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (David Pearson)

Images from the excellent Book Design Review; now, alas, defunct (though you can still find the author on Twitter).

//Where do bicycles go to die?// Skeletons NYC

Images by Marko Vourinen, via Broadsheet.ie

Paranmanjang

This passed El Tarangu by completely when it came out in January, but South Korean film director Park Chan Wook (he of Oldboy fame) has shot a short film entirely using the iPhone 4.

No English subtitles, unfortunately, but insofar as the Internet tells us, Paranmanjang is about a family consulting a shaman to find out the circumstances of the death of a relative (the fisherman gentleman).

Nice poster, too.

Buy Park Chan Wook films on Amazon.

The Chrysalids

The Chrysalids is John Wyndham’s take on a post-apocalyptic North American theocracy. The novel focuses on David Strorm, a child growing up in Waknuk, a community in Labrador. Most technological processes have been lost to humanity during ‘the Tribulation’ (nuclear war); civilization has regressed to an agrarian, almost feudal state. Genetic mutations, resulting from the aftermath of the long-distant Tribulation, are rooted out and sent to live in ‘the Fringes’ - areas deemed uninhabitable due to nuclear fallout.

David, the book’s narrator, realises from a young age that he can communicate telepathically with his half-cousin, Rosalind. Soon David and Rosalind discover a number of other children who can communicate in this way. Though outwardly normal in appearance, the children grow up in constant fear that their secret will be uncovered, and they be deemed ‘Deviations’ and sent to live in the Fringes.

Not to give too much away, there is a catalyst that causes the children’s (though by this point, they’re young adults) secret to be discovered. David and Rosalind flee, along with David’s ultra-telepathic sister, Petra, encountering all sorts of dangers along the way, until the story reaches its dramatic conclusion.

The Chrysalids differs from much of the rest of Wyndham’s oeuvre. The book isn’t a ‘cosy catastrophe’, like The Day of the Triffids or The Kraken Wakes. Also, The Chrysalids doesn’t feature an educated everyman as its narrator and main protagonist. The book’s dystopian, post-nuclear war totalitarian setting is kind of reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale (always a good thing). The book also reminded El T of Keith Roberts’s Pavane (not exactly an unqualified recommendation).

The most unusual aspect of the novel is its skewed moral compass. For most of its length, The Chrysalids reads like an allegory promoting tolerance. When a childhood friend has to go on the run from the authorities on account of an extra toe, young David doesn’t understand why everyone can’t just get along. The book then ends in an odd coda, with it being suggested to David that it is all right for telepaths to kill off the norms, as telepaths represent the next stage in the race’s evolution; natural selection will kill off all the non-telepathic humans eventually, so why not lend a helping hand? David questions this notion briefly, and then seems to go along with the idea.

Its inconsistent position on the subject of eugenics aside, The Chrysalids is kind of a dull book. Genre novels in the classic 200 page format really need to get going from the first page; The Chrysalids meanders along for its first 100 pages and then, just when it has begun to get moderately interesting, finishes. A real disappointment for a book that some people compare favourably to Triffids (at one time, El Tarangu's favourite novel).

Not one of John Wyndham’s better efforts, El Tarangu would not recommend.

Buy The Day of the Triffids on Amazon.

Image from A Penguin a week.

The Moon

Images by Laurent Laveder; via Bad Astronomy.

Steampunk Computers

Images from The Hottest Gadgets.com