Most helpful customer reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some Buried Caesar, Jan 23 2004
One of Stout's best Wolfe novels. The mystery itself is not really entirely gratifying, but the story and the characters that inhabit the mystery make it all worthwhile. The conflicts and dialogue of the characters add to the realism of the novel as well. One of Stout's most accomplished novels.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wolfe Stands the Test of Time, Aug 12 2002
I'm not sure I'd tale the time to sit down to read Stout's old classics, but Michael Prichard's audiobook narration captures both Archie Goodwin and his rotund boss in a way that makes a long summer car trip seem a lot shorter. Tom Pratt, who owns a bunch of fast food restaurants circa 1938, buys Hickory Caesar Grindon, a champion sire of prized Guernsey cows, for $45,000. The Osgoods, Fred and his children Clyde and Nancy, old money riding out the Great Depression on thousands of family owned acres around Crowfield, NY, want to stop the sale to Pratt who intends to barbecue Caesar. Pratt's niece Carolyn tells Archie of a vamp named Lily Rowan, who destroyed Clyde Osgood and has her brother Jimmy in mind for her next conquest. Lily, a precocious presumably promiscuous fixture in future stories, is fascinated by Archie, her "Escamillo" whom she is meeting for the first time.Clyde is found dead in the pasture with Hickory Caesar standing over him. Wolfe's only there because Archie ran his car into a ditch on the way to an orchid exposition, but he decides to stay on to prove the bull didn't kill Clyde. He finds a letter telling of a debt owed to Bronson, a mysterious man of questionable character who came to Crowfield with Clyde. The next day Bronson is found dead in a barn stall with a pitchfork through his chest, a stall Archie was in the day before. Police Captain Barrow believes Archie is holding out, which he is, arrests him as a material witness to murder and throws him in the county jail. A fun sidebar develops when Archie meets Basil, a con man who's mastered a game with three spoons and a pea. Basil shows Archie how to get things done in the lockup, and within a day Archie is organizing the inmates in the Crowfield County Prisoner's Union. Wolfe appears in DA Waddell's office in his "customary unhurried waddle" and browbeats him to release Archie with the notion that he needs him to solve the crimes the DA and Capt. Barrow cannot. They do, of course, and the solution seems so obvious once Wolfe ties together all the facts he saw that others missed. Isn't that what Nero Wolfe is all about?
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Piercing Mystery--And That's No Bull, Jul 11 2002
Tom Pratt, the nouveau riche owner of a chain of cheap eateries, buys a champion bull for $45,000.00 and announces his intention to barbecue it for 100 hand-picked guests. The Guernsey League is scandalized and tries to buy the bull back, but Pratt is obdurate. Nero Wolfe and his confidential assistant Archie Goodwin, on their way to an orchid show, crash (literally) the party in time to witness an idiotic bet made between Pratt and Clyde Osgood, the eldest son of Pratt's longtime rival. Soon thereafter, Archie is set to guard the bull against mischief. The bull isn't harmed under Archie's watchful eye, but he becomes distracted by the beautiful Lily Rowan and the next thing he knows, he finds the bull, with bloody horns, worrying Clyde Osgood's gored-to-death body. Wolfe gets hired to investigate the death, anthrax breaks out, a guest of Osgood's gets pitchforked, Archie gets arrested on suspicion of murder, and Wolfe (who solved the murder before anyone else knew it was a murder) slothfully allows all his evidence to go up in smoke. Funny and fast-paced, this story is the closest thing to a fair-play mystery that I have ever read in the Nero Wolfe corpus. If you grew up on a farm as I did, you stand a fair chance of figuring out who done it and how done it before Wolfe wins first place at the orchid show and eats his last fricassee at the Methodist women's food concession. The real trick in this one is how to prove it. Wolfe shakes off his indolence, springs Archie from jail, and engineers an elaborate caper designed to bring the killer to justice.
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