Over My Dead Body by Rex Stout

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Published in 1939 after being serialized in The American Magazine, this is the seventh of the series that starred rotund PI Nero Wolfe and his more active assistant and sidekick Archie Goodwin. Wolfe has enough eccentricities for three people: indolent, orchid-fancying, woman-hater in the old-fashioned manner. But he is as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes. Archie is the archetypal American: athletic, brash, wise-cracking, and a hit with the fair sex.

Nero Wolfe confronts consequences of his own decisions made the last days of the troubled Hapsburg empire and its unhappy seething possessions in Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. That is, he adopted a baby girl, left her with people he trusted, but lost touch with her when they were killed for their revolutionary sympathies by the secret police.

The situation gives Archie a chance to tease Wolfe:

“I’m resigning as of this moment.”

“Resigning from what?”

“You. My job.”

“Rubbish.”

“No, boss, really. You told the G-man you have never married. Yet you have a daughter. Well,” I shrugged. “I’m not a prude, but there are limits —”

The daughter does not necessarily want contact with the famous rotund agoraphobic PI in Manhattan, but a spot of trouble brings her to Wolfe’s brownstone seeking help. Later two murders occur. They revolve around a fencing school where the daughter, her friend Carla, and the odd Miss Vorka work.

This mystery has the right amount of plot and character. Stout includes a number of scenes full of high-jinks. The reveal of logical and plausible. Unlike the other novels, Manhattan itself does not play a major role, but this is a quibble. Storm clouds of World War II hang over novel, reminding us that writers are canaries in the coal mine.

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Too Many Cousins by Douglas G. Browne

Review by Matt B. (buffalosavage)

Six cousins stand to inherit a substantial fortune built by a merchant prince of a grandfather. Then certain of them run into a singularly foul run of bad luck.

One is run down in a road accident.

One is poisoned.

One is drowned.

The fourth, a lucky survivor, is sure that she was pushed into the path of a lorry.

Living to tell her lurid tale, she captures the attention of Mr. Harvey Tuke — Senior Legal Assistant to the Director of Public Prosecutions. On his vacation – of course – he investigates these odd accidents.

Browne is a very clear writer, despite his employment of challenging vocabulary and complex grammar. The plot is seamless and the characters distinct and memorable. Browne captures professional wariness and rivalries so well that I wonder if he was writing from direct experience. The setting is London near the end of WWII so there are curious periodic touches of bombed ruins and saving electricity and gas.

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Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake

Review by Matt B. (buffalosavage)

Chet Conway, a cabbie in the Big Apple, gets a tip on horse race from an appreciative fare who enjoys Chet’s conversation. The horse comes in to the tune of $900.00. At the time the story was set, 1969, that’s about $5,300.00 in our post-modern dollars.

Chet, a gambler, badly needs the cash to pay off markers. But when he goes to collect his winnings, he finds his bookie dead on the floor, his chest looking as if he’d been “hit with anti-aircraft guns.”

Though he hasn’t a clue whodunit, Chet finds himself in the middle of struggles among the cops, two rival gangs of thugs, and the dead bookie’s hottie sister. Abbie’s a card mechanic in Vegas. She has flown in from Las Vegas to avenge her brother’s murder, since she figures her cheating sister-in-law is the perp. Chet and Abbie have slapstick adventures while they avoid the bad guys and get to the bottom of the murder.

Readers looking for a comic-caper stand-alone mystery will be entertained by this novel. Since many chapters end with a cliffhanger, it keeps us readers turning the pages. Westlake is deft with twists and turns and creates interesting characters. He keeps the language simple, so this is extremely easy to read. Westlake is a master of the quip. For instance, Chet ruefully observes that impetuous Abbie has “all the self-preservation instincts of a lemming.” The author is firmly in the tradition of mystery writers poking genial fun at the conventions of mysteries.

I hadn’t read Westlake, whom fans remember fondly for his humor, since I was teenager during the Nixon administration. Clearly, I don’t read in the comic-crime genre much. The reason is that for me comedy, however refreshing witty or farcical or absurd, pales into the merely facetious over the course of a 250-page book. In a mystery, character, setting, plot and suspense have to trump burlesque and high jinks. Still, I liked this return to reading Westlake and will read another of his before another 40 years go by.

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