At their best, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels elegantly blend the two major genres of detective fiction. The rotund, intellectual Wolfe is a reasoner, a puzzler in the mold of Hercule Poirot or Peter Wimsey. His assistant, Archie Goodwin, is a wisecracking tough guy who can handle himself in any situation but has a weakness for pretty dames, a la the hardboiled detectives of writers like Hammett and Chandler, though with a much gentler disposition and a fondness for cold milk. The Silent Speaker, however, […]
And now you know the rest of the story…
Like a book-length Paul Harvey radio segment, Candice Millard’s new book provides some interesting and enlightening background on a well-known historical figure. Here, that’s Winston Churchill, the corpulent, heavy-drinking Prime Minister who inspired England to withstand the bombings and defeat Hitler. That admittedly simplistic overview aside, most of us probably aren’t familiar with Churchill’s life before WWII. Something had to propel him into the upper levels of the British government, and it turns out that it was his remarkable service in the Boer War. As […]
The United States vs. Me
What’s the opposite of magical realism? A sense of unreality permeates The Sellout, but it’d be hard to describe it as magical. Not when the setting is a minority-majority LA County community so down on its luck that the state of California wipes it off the map in shame. Not when the nameless narrator is the product of a sociologist single father whose cracked worldview and constant experimentation has permanently altered his son’s relationship with reality. And certainly not when that son attempts to save […]
That’s Patricia to You
Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of the newspaper magnate who inspired Citizen Kane, was kidnapped from her apartment in February 1974 by a group of far-left crackpots who thought of themselves as revolutionaries. They called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, and they had little to no idea what to do with their heiress once they had her. Thanks to their lack of foresight and a badly botched FBI investigation, Hearst’s ordeal dragged on an on until something curious started to happen. Patricia, who had always had a […]
Who Turned on the Lights?
I’m a commuter, so a lot of my reading gets done while riding on or waiting for trains. When I’m stuck on the commute, I pretty much have to read or I’m stuck looking around at the strangers who surround me, imagining what kinds of communicable diseases they have. No matter what I think of the book I’m carrying I can guarantee I’ll get a certain amount of reading done on my way too and from work. The real test of a book’s quality, to […]
Good Year for the Roses
This is what in less P.C. days would be called a boys’ book. It’s a tale of outlaws and adventures, bravery and chivalry, fair maidens and feats of strength. Set in the midst of The Wars of the Roses, Robert Louis Stevensons’s episodic novel follows young Dick Shelton, a ward of the lord of his manor who comes to be torn between his various loyalties in an uncertain time. Shelton has been under the protection of Sir Daniel since the death of his own father […]
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