Fer-De-Lance / The League of Frightened Men
I’ve long been intrigued by Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, especially with comparisons that place the detective character alongside Sherlock Holmes or Perry Mason. With Bantam now reissuing the mysteries in affordable two-in-one trade paperbacks, starting with FER-DE-LANCE / THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN, I was able to see what the fuss was all about.
I’m no longer intrigued. Now I’m just perplexed. There may be dozens upon dozens of Wolfe novels out there, but I honestly can’t see how he became so popular. Let’s face it: The guy’s an absolute asshole. There, I said it.
Call me crazy, but aren’t protagonists supposed to be likable? Or at least get to that point before the last page? In his introduction to FER-DE-LANCE, Loren D. Estleman makes a big to-do about Wolfe never changing over the course of some 46 books; in that case, I look forward to never reading the other 44. Wolfe is a morbidly obese man who rarely moves from his chair, talks down to everyone else when he isn’t merely insulting them, and has his younger associate Archie Goodwin do most of his dirty work. (Don’t get me started on Goodwin, either; he has arrogance to burn as well.) In short-story form, that’s tolerable; in novels, not for me, thanks.
Originally published in 1934, FER-DE-LANCE marks the first appearance for Wolfe and company. A man disappears, his concerned sister asks Wolfe for help in finding him, and suddenly our substantial sleuth has connected it to the mysterious death of a well-to-do patriarch on the links. So confident is Wolfe that the latter died of a poison dart released from within his golf club at the point of contact with the ball — oh, naturally! — that he bets $10,000 to have the body exhumed to prove it was no mere heart attack.
So where’s the snake of the title come in? Near the very end, when someone sends Wolfe the serpent as a warning. It’s dispatched within two pages, making one wonder why an element so insignificant merits having the entire novel named after it. At least the 1935 follow-up THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN is actually about that: a bunch of old Harvard pals scared shitless when they’re being offed one by one, presumably for their participation in a prank that left a classmate crippled for life. The mystery here is more ingenious, but Wolfe is far from the genius he thinks he is.
Perhaps in the days of the Great Depression, the idea of a man who weighed “a seventh of a ton” and drank six quarts of beer a day was an amusing novelty. Today, it’s everywhere you turn, and no laughing matter. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive; I read this collection at the end of two back-to-back vacations, where I watched people too overweight to walk inhaling funnel cakes and waffles topped with copious amounts of whipped cream. That’s not eccentric — that’s an epidemic; the only difference between them and Nero Wolfe is that they don’t harbor an orchid fetish.
Stout certainly couldn’t have known that seven decades later, America would be a fast-food nation that would make Wolfe’s weight commonplace. But remove even that from the equation, and you still have the problem of thoroughly unpleasant personalities. In real life, I wouldn’t want to spend two minutes in the same room with someone whose mood is so pompous and foul, so spending several hundred pages was a true struggle.
I’m fully aware all of the above will strike some as sacrilege. For them, you’ll be pleased to know this special edition includes Stout’s character sketches and drawing of Wolfe’s pad in between the two novels. Eat it up! —Rod Lott
I am left thoroughly dizzied by this review. Rod is one of the best critics of pop literature out there, so how he could fail to recognize the fact that Stout was parodying the notion of the “great detective” is beyond me. To quote Foghorn Leghorn, “It’s a joke, son, I say, a joke.” Stout was the guy who sent a staid meeting of The Baker Street Irregulars in New York in search of the digitalis when he read a paper proving that Dr. Watson was really a woman. Scholars of the detective story have suggested that Nero Wolfe is related to the Holmes family (his size mirroring Mycroft’s). The Wolfe/Archie relationship reflects the relationship of the classic detective and his hardboiled cousin–in addition to providing the squabbling between a stuffy dad and his smart ass son. Rod certainly doesn’t have to like the Wolfe stories–hell, some people don’t like ice cream–but he should like Rex Stout. Anyone who had a file over 300 pages long and ended up on J. Edgar Hoover’s “enemies list” can’t be all bad.
Rod,
Taking Doug’s comments to heart, I have one thing to say: I agree with you. Sure, I see all the points Doug made (BTW, thanks, Doug, for the insight) but I was, uh, bored with Fer-de-Lance, even accounting for the 80+-year difference. Granted, in my review of The Thin Man over at my blog, I, too, was perplexed by the seeming fame of Nick, Nora, and Asta. But I’ve since seen the movies and I now understand. Not so, Wolfe. I did, however like the method of death in Fer-de-Lance. I dunno; I might give Wolfe another chance but it won’t be in the near-term.
A while back, I got curious about Stout — you know, one of those names that keeps popping up whenever “classics of the genre” are discussed. But before I broke down and read any of the novels, I did a little research. And when it became clear that Nero Wolf was an obese, arrogant boor who bragged endlessly about his brilliance when he wasn’t busy stuffing his face, I quickly decided this wasn’t for me. (And the fact that the Nero Wolf Cookbook was as popular as the novels themselves didn’t help either.)
Rod Lott hates fat people.
Well let’s also add how Stout would hide clues from the readers. So at the end Nero Wolfe can look superior with his accusations. Having recently read a short story it really enforced my dislike.
I feel I should comment on Rod’s attack, but I really don’t know what approach to take. I discovered this series in the mid-60s, loved them, read all the ones that had been written up to that point, and continued to read them until Stout died in the mid-70s. Since I’ve never gone back and reread them, it’s impossible to say what I’d think of them now. But it was definitely clear to me when I was reading these 30-40 years ago that they weren’t so much crime novels (the plots were silly and always the least interesting thing about them)as comedies of manners. As such, they were wonderfully funny and entertaining. Think P. G. Wodehouse, not A. Conan Doyle.
I predict that twenty or thirty years from now, not only will everyone be fat, but orchid fetishists will be everywhere.
I agree with Mr. Bentin’s comment. I respect Rod’s reviews and base many purchases on their reliability but I am surprised by his take on Nero Wolfe. Yes, Wolfe is a complete ass but that’s what makes the series so enjoyable and popular. Whereas sidekick Dr. Watson was always kowtowing to Holmes, Archie is always deflating (or trying to) the big man’s ego. Come to think of it, Wolfe fits very well into our time not only because he’s fat but because people are less congenial today.
I also see Rod’s bad attitude towards fat humans. Why?
Of course Wolfe is an asshole. Isn´t that the point? I read Stout a long time ago and enjoyed him a lot. His concept was like the marriage between the brain and the brawn, the detective genius and the hard-boiled P.I. The fun is that Wolfe can browbeat everybody without consequences, without even leaving his house while indulging his idiotic eccentricities. He doesn´t need to be sympathetic.
I can see that the character and the novels may appear dated today - and the first two novels are not the best of the series -, but in many regards he is more interesting than a lot of those generic “troubled” heroes of today.
It’s not Wolfe you’re supposed to like. It’s Archie. Wolfe is largely (get it?) insufferable. Archie makes the Nero Wolfe stories work in the same way Watson made the Holmes stories work.
I mean, Holmes was dysfunctional, a drug addict, and a voyeur. People love the idea of him because of Holmes. Basil Rathbone changed the perception of Holmes for the movies, but he wasn’t an easy man to get along with either.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like Archie, either. He may be a saint by comparison, but he’s still a jerk.
Well, I’ve read the post and all the comments to date, and it’s obvious that Mr. Lott, while an adult, is quite a bit younger than I am (my DOB: 9/30/50). For the record, I started reading Stout/Wolfe in the ’60s, when Stout was still active and the shorter stories were running in the Saturday Evening Post. I was just getting started in the genre, and I always found Archie to be appealing in a smart-alecky kind of way, not the standard approach in those days. I’ll make the guess here that coming to Wolfe and Archie cold at this late date, when ill manners and rough speech are commonplace, would throw the 21st-century attitude for a loss (which may be why the A&Eseries was short-lived). I’d also add that anyone who can use words like “asshole” as casually as you do should really be more prudent abut characterizing others as jerks. Meaning no disrespect,of course…