Book Review: A Forbidden Romance And An Even More Forbidden Murder

A Right to Die by Rex Stout is a mystery featuring Nero Wolfe and is apparently some attempt to address the civil rights movement going on when this novel was published in 1964.

A black man firsts visits Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, to ask for help in looking into a white woman who has become engaged to his son. Wolfe and Paul Whipple had met once before, and that chance encounter made an impression on Whipple. When Wolfe decides to see what he could come up with, the young women is brutally murdered, and the young man is on the hook. Wolfe is convinced that Dunbar Whipple is innocent, and he has no shortage of suspects to investigate as he attempts to make sure that true justice prevails.

This isn’t one of the more memorable entries into the Nero Wolfe series, but it isn’t bad. The plot doesn’t get overshadowed by the cultural issues that serves as the backdrop. Wolfe’s lack of racial animosity seems more of a matter of practicality more than any real sympathy or sentiment.

There is still the familiar humor stemming from Archie and Wolfe sort of bickering, which is one of the draws for me to this series. This series is a somewhat unique because the narrator and assistant to the lead detective isn’t really in awe of his deductive abilities and is willing to give him a hard time when his ego seems to be getting a bit too inflated. Archie also has the street smarts and charm to gather the information Wolfe needs to hit upon the correct answer to these problems that come to their door.

Even if this particular novel failed to make an impression with me, the series as a whole is one that I would recommend for mystery readers with a sense of nostalgia. Rex Stout is dubbed as “the grand master of detection” on the cover. I don’t know about that, but it’s still pretty fun to indulge in the exploits of the brilliant, pompous Nero Wolfe, and his snarky, debonair assistant, Archie Goodwin.

In my next literary indulgence, the sidekick gets the spotlight. Windsor Horne Lockwood III is the ruthless, yet loyal friend to Harlan Coben’s creation, Myron Bolitar. This time, he has his own story to tell, simply entitled Win.