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Originally Posted by HarryT
My final four books of the year:
"Fer-de-Lance" by Rex Stout.
The first book in the "Nero Wolfe" series. This is my first encounter with this author (and series), and I really didn't know what to expect, since I am mainly a lover of classic British detective fiction, in which the clues are laid out, and it's the reader's task to try to solve the crime along with the detective. This isn't like that at all. In case anyone else hasn't read it, Nero Wolfe is an "armchair detective" - an enormously fat man private investigator who never leaves his New York home, but has a team of helpers, primarily Archie Goodwin (the narrator of the book) who does his "legwork" for him.
In this story, Wolfe is commissioned to try to track down Carlo Maffei, an Italian immigrant who is the brother of the wife of one of Wolfe's associates. Carlo turns up dead, and Wolfe is embroiled in a case involving the death of a high-profile university president and booby-trapped golf clubs.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and look forward to reading the rest of the series.
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Lots of books as good as Nero Wolfe, but few better IMO. Rex Stout is an interesting person in that he seemed to live up to the standards of Nero Wolfe. Put his money where his mouth was.
Very good A&N TV series as well.
Helen