How long has it been since you read this one?
It’s been a long time, for me. I think I first read it – and this was the only time – in my twenties. It’s the first of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, and Stout wasn’t completely in the saddle yet. If you’re used to Nero Wolfe, there are aspects of the book that will seem strange. A little off.
But it’s excellent anyway. Stout was a phenomenal writer. I’d have to put spoilers all over to give you any sense, but I highly recommend it.
It interested me, too, because that time period – the FDR years – is right down my alley. I first got interested by reading Brandeis, by Melvin Urofsky – and how HE brings the period to life is a wonder – and Neal Gabler’s books Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity and An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. Walter Winchell was a phenomenon we can hardly imagine today. There never was anything like him, before or after. And the films of Fred Astaire, who was kind of the soul of his generation in a way no one else in America, before or since, has ever managed to be.
And so I was primed for good stuff before starting. I was not prepared to fall in love with one of the characters. How a woman that isn’t even REAL can get to me in that way is, well, probably an indication of insanity. Not that more evidence is really required. But she did. Try it and see. Sarah Barstow. See what you think. I’d like to know.
by tolkienfan2759