Over My Dead Body
Rex Stout
Having heard of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, I bought a collection entitled Nero Wolfe Mysteries, by Rex Stout. I was under the impression at the time that it was a complete collection, but that seems unlikely, as Amazon lists 47 books in its Nero Wolfe Series. In the meantime the book I purchased seems to have vanished from Amazon and is not listed on Goodreads. It is still there in my kindle library though. It does not have a copyright page. So although I still have it, I do not know what book I read. It includes two novels Over My Dead Body and Where There's a Will, and five collections of shorter stories Trouble in Triplicate, Curtains for Three, Three Witnesses, Three for the Chair, and And Four to Go.
I read this collection ten years ago (12-Nov-2012) and remember being amused but not greatly impressed. The Nero Wolfe mysteries are not bad, but don't come close to Sherlock Holmes or Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries, in my opinion. I must admit, though, that I am not really a huge fan of the classic mystery-as-intellectual-puzzle style. Agatha Christie mostly leaves me cold, and Dorothy Sayers was only slightly more interesting. I read mysteries the way I read other novels -- as stories with characters and plots. Absurdly implausible characters like Hercule Poirot and Nero Wolfe don't interest me so much.