I've been reading Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books for well over 50 years now, but I'd never read any of his mystery novels outside that series. I decided that it was time, and since a beaten up old Mapback of Bad for Business was handy, that was the one I chose. Unfortunately it's the third and final book in the Tecumseh Fox series, and it's supposedly a bit different from the other two. However, I enjoyed it on its own merits.Fox has contributed $2000 toward the purchase of a wonderful violin for a young man named Jan Tusar to play in concert. The concert turns out to be a disaster, not because of Tusar's playing but because of the sound of the violin. Distraught, Tusar commits suicide at the intermission. But was he driven to it? And if so, how? The violin disappears but turns up later at a meeting of the contributors, one of whom is poisoned at the meeting. Fox takes possession of the violin and discovers that it's been tampered with. He believes that Tusars' suicide was, in effect, murder. After that, things get complicated, but Fox figures it all out, and there's a gathering of the suspects much like in the Wolfe books.
While I don't think this book is in the same class with the Wolfe novels, it's still fun to read, and I might check out the earlier books in the series eventually.
6 comments:
I like the Tecumseh Fox books quite a bit & this is probably the best of the 3. (Stout re-uses one aspect of the book in a later Nero Wolfe novella, by the way).
I should add that the other two Fox books (Double for Death and Bad for Business) are also pretty good (I enjoy them, even though I've read them more than once), but not as good as The Broken Vase.
I've read all of the non-Wolfe mysteries, but as devoted a Stout fan as I am, I find them far lesser beasts. Archie, Wolfe and the Archie/Wolfe relationship are everything.
I'm awaiting your verdict on Red Threads & The Hand in the Glove. I'm still holding off reading those, as they star important Wolfe Universe supporting characters (Cramer & Dol Bonner), and I'm afraid Rex will have messed up the characters. I wonder if Stout ever contemplated doing a novel with Saul Panzer as the star; Saul certainly would have earned it.
Art, my memory of THE HAND IN THE GLOVE is that it's okay. My memory of RED THREADS is that Cramer didn't seem like Cramer without Archie and Wolfe to bounce off. Bill may have a better, more reliable take than mine. I recall MOUNTAIN CAT, a non-series mystery, being very readable.
Red Threads is OK, but for one fairly glaring thing (of which more in a few lines). It's also not really an "Inspector Cramer" book, for all that Cramer appears in it. Most of the detecting is done by the designer (Jean ????).
The glaring thing is Stout's botching native American culture so badly, especially for someone who actually did spend a lot of time in Montana, Colorado, and Utah.
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