Bibliophilic Friday: The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

Over three thousand years in the future, a New York City police detective named Elijah Baley is charged by his Commissioner with solving a politically sensitive murder. But the politics of the Cities, huge concrete and steel caves that exist mostly underground and support between 10 to 20 million people each, differ vastly from the politics of today. 

There are over 800 Cities on Earth.  In Elijah’s world, families live in community facilities with private rooms for the family, but shared bathrooms and kitchens that are more like cafeterias. Earth’s inhabitants no longer live in open spaces, but in the confines of the Cities’ steel caves. For many Earth people, walking outside under an open sky is unthinkable and uncomfortable, if not debilitating. In the less distant past, because of the pressures of expanding population, Earth colonized space, but the colonies grew in isolationist directions and limited immigration from Earth to the barest trickle. (Colonists are called “Spacers” by Earth people).  The colonies have vastly outpaced Earth technologically—for example, they have robots that are almost indistinguishable from humans. Earth, on the other hand, adamantly opposes the use of robots in the Cities because they fear they will take away jobs from humans who need them. 

New York City is also the location of “Spacetown,” a space port where those few Spacers who have business on Earth land. 

Elijah is tasked with solving the murder of a prominent colonist, Dr. Sarton, a task he is reluctant to undertake especially when he is told one condition of the task is that he must partner with R. Daneel Olivaw, one of the humanoid robots Earth (and Elijah) are so opposed to. 

In The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov wrote a brilliant novel blending two popular genres, science fiction and mystery, that rarely get a chance to mix. The novel is even more fantastic when you consider that it was written in 1959, a world where PCs and the internet were every bit as much science fiction as the world Asimov created in his novel. 

Every good story has more than one subplot, and without diminishing the mystery one iota, Asimov also explores the reactions and social consequences living in the Cities has created for the people of Earth, and the social interaction between his two dissimilar detectives, Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw. 

Without giving it away, the solution to the mystery is both believable and satisfying, as is the resolution of the other plots in the book. If you like mysteries, or science fiction, give The Caves of Steel a try. Who knows? It may encourage you to explore whichever of the two genres you are less familiar with. And even if it doesn’t, it’s a fun book to read. 

Bibliophilic Friday: Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

Murder with Peacocks is the first of (currently) 36 books in the Meg Langslow series, a cozy mystery series written by Donna Andrews. The series is one of my favorites, partly because the books are well written and partly because each book has parts in it that are laugh-out-loud funny. There aren’t many books that do that for me. Many books amuse me, or make me smile, or leave me with a warm humorous glow inside when I finish reading but laugh out loud funny is a higher level. Each book is just as funny on subsequent readings as it was the first time. When I am re-reading the series and Mark is around, he will be regaled with various scenes I read out loud to share the humor with him. 

Ms. Andrews often, but not always, publishes two books in the series a year – the first one usually comes out in August and is a “normal” mystery in the sense that it is not restricted to a particular time of year, while the second one usually comes out in October with a Christmas theme. I like to reread an entire series when a new book comes out, although in Meg’s case, I compromise just the tiniest bit with a complete reread for the August book that I let count for the October book as well. 

Murder with Peacocks is one of the funniest of the books in the series. Since it is the first book, it introduces the reader to the main character, Meg Langslow, as she returns to her hometown of Yorktown for the summer to serve as the maid of honor in three weddings – her best friend’s, her brother’s and her mother’s. Meg narrates the book and I enjoy her voice, often the sole voice of reason in the madhouse that is otherwise known as her extended family, but a voice that tackles the role of “sensible” with panache and humor, recognizing there are some eccentricities in even the best families that must not only be dealt with but celebrated.  Meg is a blacksmith by trade. 

Other regular characters introduced in the book are Michael Waterston, a drama professor from a college in Northern Virginia spending the summer minding his mother’s dress shop while she recuperates from surgery, and Meg’s father, mother and brother, who figure heavily in subsequent stories. Cousin Horace, who is introduced in the first book as a mild-mannered, shy individual who often goes to parties dressed in a moth-eaten gorilla costume, blooms out later in the series to become a full-fledged crime scene investigator. 

The writer also describes small-town Southern culture accurately with the gentle humor that only someone who has lived with it can. I’ve been in the small-town South since 1991, and I recognize the authenticity. Even after so many years though, every once in a while, someone in the grocery store stops me when I’m talking to them to say, “You’re not from around here, are you?” 

The juxtaposition of weddings and murder is unusual, but the author manages it well. Actually, weddings and murders may not be so unusual come to think of it. My husband Mark and I consider wedding preparations to be a sort of “hell week” razing preparatory to marriage. Before my own wedding, my mother and I got in a serious argument over the color of the bridesmaid dresses – she wanted a blue and I wanted a teal – only to find out at a bridal show we were talking about the same color. My youngest sister still rolls her eyes at me over that one, thirty-seven years after the wedding. And then there was the difficulty of explaining to my mother why we couldn’t have a champagne fountain if we were going to have the reception in the Baptist Church Hall. By the time of the wedding though, we had it all worked out, and in many, but not all, ways, the same is true for Meg and her weddings, although Meg (and the reader) are in for a few surprises along the way. 

But I digress, as so often happens. If you enjoy cozy mysteries set in the upper South with a strong dash of humor and an independent minded heroine as the narrator, give Murder with Peacocks a try. If you’re lucky, you’ll be as hooked on the series as I was and end up with hours of reading pleasure as you wind your way through the series. 

Bibliophilic Friday: LEVIATHAN WAKES by James S. A. Corey (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the science fiction series, The Expanse, written by James S. A. Corey. Mr. Corey is a pen name for two writers, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who wrote the series as a collaboration. I read the book for the first time upon a recommendation from Goodreads and I’m glad I did. The science part of this science fiction book is solid, and the situations the characters work to resolve have themes similar to situations working adults the world over find themselves in today.  

The book is set several centuries in the future. Earth has billions of people living on it and has evolved into a single government planet. Mars has not only been colonized but also has gained its independence while its people, who live in domes on the surface, work to terraform the surface. In addition, over ten billion people live in asteroids and the larger moons of the outer planets such as Saturn and Jupiter. When the novel opens, people have lived scattered around the outer planets in this matter for at least three generations.

What intrigued me the most about the first book is that, although not labeled as such, it is a mystery. James Holden, one of the two point of view characters, is the executive officer of an ice harvester spaceship called the Canterbury. Its sole job is to harvest ice from the rings of Saturn, then carry those blocks of ice to asteroids and other stations for their water supply. The other point of view character is Detective Miller, who is a member of the police force on Ceres, a large asteroid with a huge port and several million people living in it. In the first few chapters, Holden’s ice ship is killed by a mysterious stealth ship which destorys it with nuclear missiles while Holden and four other crew members are on a salvage mission nearby in one of the ship’s shuttles, and Detective Miller is handed a missing persons case to work on outside of his regular hours. The novel then takes twists and turns until you learn both who killed the Canterbury and why, and what happened to the missing person. 

The story is told in an alternating format. One chapter tells the story from Holden’s perspective, then the next chapter goes back to Miller, even after the two storylines meet. Ultimately both men find the answers they’re looking for, although those answers do not necessarily provide an “and they all lived happily ever after” ending. The answers and resolution of the novel are, however, satisfying and make sense within the context of the story.  

The writing and pacing are riveting. The plot is action-packed, but you also get to know and like multiple characters.  There is a lot of food for thought on the nature of freedom and right and wrong throughout not only the first book but also the series. Leviathan Wakes also perfectly sets up the rest of the nine-book series. Each book is an interesting, entertaining and sometimes horrifying case study of what various people do when confronted with tools and weapons of unimaginable power. And yet all nine books together explore an overarching riddle that is finally solved in the last novel.  

If you’re looking to expand your reading into a different genre, give Leviathan Wakes a try. 

Bibliophilic Friday: A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

 A Study in Scarlet was published on December 1, 1887, and was the first appearance on the literary scene of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. James Watson.  Originally, the book was off to a slow start, but it experienced increasing popularity once the Sherlock Holmes/James Watson short stories in the Strand magazine became wildly popular in 1891 and 1892 on both sides of the Atlantic.  

The book, narrated by Dr. Watson, has two halves.  In the first half of the book, the reader learns how Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes became acquainted and then became co-residents at 221 B Baker Street.  +While they are getting to know each other, Dr. Watson learns that Sherlock Holmes is a genius at deductions and is the world’s first consulting detective.  As part of this initiation into Holmes’ life, he travels with Holmes to the scene of the murder.  Two Scotland Yard inspectors, Gregson and LeStrade, are working on the case.  The reader then follows Holmes’ through his investigation of the murder, which leads to the capture of the killer at the end of the first half of the book.  The second half of the book begins decades earlier in Utah and tells the story of John and Lucy Ferrier.  It is not until midway through the second half of the book that the reader realizes that the story being told is the story of the murderer and of his motivation for the murder.  It is only after the murderer is taken to jail that Holmes explains to Watson how he deduced the murderer’s identity.  Watson also decides, upon learning that the two Scotland Yard Inspectors have taken full credit for the arrest, to begin chronicling Holmes adventures so they can be published, and Holmes receive the full credit he deserves. 

The Sherlock Holmes stories, both novels and short stories, are great favorites of mine, and I enjoyed this first novel as much as I have enjoyed the others.  The only jarring moment in the novel is the opening of the second half, where I was left wondering the first time I read the book how on earth we got from London to Utah and what had happened to Watson and Holmes.  It was not, however, jarring enough to stop my reading.  

I would caution you that if you are sensitive to how Mormonism is portrayed as a religion, parts of this book will offend you.  Other than that, though, if you haven’t yet tried the Sherlock Holmes stories, give this book a try (or any of the others, for that matter.)  

Interesting fact:  This book was banned from the 6th grade required reading list by the Albemarle County School Board in Virginia in August 2011 because parents and students complained that the book was derogatory towards Mormons.  Albemarle County instead moved the book to the tenth grade reading list.  It also left the book in its school media centers for all grades.    

What Is Bibliophilic Friday by Nancy L. Eady

Writers Who Kill is published by a group of talented writers (and me) who work together to present fresh content for you, our readers, every day. One way we do this is by having designated blog days. Shortly before August of 2023, I picked up the third and fourth Fridays of every month. The first Bibliophilic Friday blog was published the third Friday of August, and I have tried to keep the tradition going since then, except for November, 2023 and our December hiatus. 

But I never took the time to explain what Bibliophilic Friday is.  It’s probably time I did so. A bibliophile is a person who loves books, so my posts on Bibliophilic Friday are about books I love. And that is the only qualification for a book to be featured in my Bibliophilic Friday column. A Bibliophilic Friday post cannot, in all fairness, be considered a book review since it will invariably be positive. I have a couple of unwritten rules in my own mind for no particular reason that I’m sure I’ll break at some point, including one that the books I choose to write about must have been around for a while, preferably decades, but at a minimum, years.  

I have been a reader ever since I can remember. I am the oldest of three girls, all of us readers.  When we were in grade school in California (Navy brats) and participating in a summer reading program at a library in Chula Vista, California, the librarian becoming suspicious of the number of books we had listed. She questioned us, and to her surprise, we had read all the books on our lists. After that, we were some of her favorite (juvenile) patrons. 

I have enjoyed mysteries as long as I have loved reading, cutting my teeth on Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden and Encyclopedia Brown. I also like science fiction, fantasy, history, science, some classic works (including Polybius’s History of Rome, Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Wars, and Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars —English translations, not the original Greek or Latin thank you very much). Lest you think I’m too high brow, Barbara Cartland, Isabelle Holland, Phyllis Whitney, and Mary Stewart are my favorites for romances. 

So, I thought I’d take this Bibliophilic Friday to give you fair warning that you’ll never quite know what I will be writing about on the third Friday of every month—except that it will be about a book I loved. 

What are your favorite types of books? How long have you enjoyed reading? 

Bibliophilic Friday: The Ghost of Marlow House by Bobbi Holmes (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

Published in 2014, The Ghost of Marlow House is the first of the Haunting Danielle series by Bobbi Holmes.  The latest installment in the series, The Ghost and the Poltergeist, will be released around April 30. 

Danielle Boatman arrives in Fredericksport, a fictional small town on the Oregon coast, to take possession of a three-story, turn-of-the-century mansion, left to her by her great-aunt, which she intends to turn into a bed and breakfast.  Her friend Lily has come with her to help for the summer.  However, when Danielle goes into Marlow House for the first time, she discovers it already is occupied – by the ghost of Walt Marlow.  Danielle has a gift that allows her to see spirits other people normally can’t.  So, Danielle can see Walt, and Lily can’t.  While Walt is not aware that he is dead when he first meets Danielle, she quickly helps him adjust to his “new” reality.  Walt can’t remember how he died, so he asks her for help to find out.  After Danielle discovers that the town believes Walt Marlow committed suicide in 1925, he begs her to help him discover the truth about his death so he can “move on.”  He is adamant that he did not commit suicide.  Intertwined with the mystery of Walt’s death is the mystery of the “missing Thorndike,” a priceless necklace that also vanished in the 1920”s. 

The fun in this series is not just solving the mysteries but getting to know the characters and the town of Fredericksport.  Danielle, Lily, and Walt are fun people to get to know and the complications Danielle encounters as the only person able to hear Walt add humor to the novel. The ingenuity, doggedness and determination Danielle uses to solve both mysteries are the mechanism giving the reader their introduction to many of the characters that populate the series.  

The Ghost of Marlow House is a fun, cozy mystery that will invite you back to the town and its residents again and again.  If you like cozies, and are looking for a new book, and/or a new series, I recommend The Ghost of Marlow House and its sequels. 

Bibliophilic Friday: Cover Her Face by P.D. James (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

First published in 1962, Cover Her Face is the first of P. D. James’ mysteries with Detective Inspector, Adam Dalgliesh, as the protagonist. Although you do not learn this fact in the first Adam Dalgliesh book, he is also a poet. 

In today’s world, writers are told that they should “drop the body” as soon as possible in the narrative. Cover Her Face was written in a different time, so the first two to three chapters of the book set the scene for the mystery, an English country manor house which the Maxies have owned for over three hundred years. In 1962, however, the family is slowly sliding down the ranks of the gentility due to the high taxes imposed in post-war Britain. Not only do the first few chapters set the scene, they also serve to relentlessly push the reader forward into a sense of unease. The reader knows someone soon will be murdered but is not entirely sure who and how. 

When the victim is found murdered in her bed, with her infant child awake and in his crib, the reader is no wiser than Detective Dalgliesh as to who did the killing. And Baroness James (P. D. James was given a life peerage by Queen Elizabeth in 1991) deftly winds the reader through the labyrinth of cryptic clues and red herrings that Detective Dalgliesh patiently deciphers, brick by brick, until he can lay the answer bare to all concerned. The writer has a gift for describing life in a small British town, as shown by this short excerpt.  The writer describes Mrs. Maxie, one of the suspects at the manor house, being greeted by other shoppers at the local grocery store shortly after the murder: 

The little village store was rather busier than usual and the buzz of talk which stopped as soon as she appeared left her in no doubt as to the subject of conversation. Mrs. Nelson was there, Miss Pollack, old Simon from the Weir cottage who was claimed as the oldest inhabitant and seemed to think that this absolved him from any effort at personal hygiene, and one or two of the woman from the new agricultural cottages whose faces and personalities, if any, were still strange to her. There was a general murmur of “Good morning” in reply to her own greeting and Miss Pollack went so far as to say, “Lovely day again, isn’t it?” before hurriedly consulting her shopping list and trying to conceal her red face behind the barricades of breakfast cereal….

Two central themes in the book are the treatment of unwed mothers, and issues that arise in a society with stratified classes. Because of this, it is important to remember that this book was written over sixty years ago when different mores were in place.

If you are looking for an interesting read, and don’t mind a slightly slower pace, I highly recommend this book. 

Bibliophilic Friday: Life: An Intimate History of the First Four Billion Years by Richard Fortey, Review by Nancy L. Eady

Today on Bibliophilic Friday, we are going to detour from mysteries to science.  One of my  favorite non-fiction books on science is Life:  An Intimate History of the First Four Billion Years by Richard Fortey.  Nor am I alone in my admiration of this book; it was selected, along with another book by Richard Fortey, by the Folio Society.  The Folio Society publishes high-end editions of carefully selected books, and to have a book included as one of their offerings is an honor. 

The Folio Society Cover for Fortey's Book

I love to read about science, all aspects of it.  Richard Fortey is one of my favorite science writers because of the engaging way he discusses his topics and the trick he has of making complicated concepts comprehensible to non-scientists.  In Life, he covers the evolution of life from the first single-celled organisms through the present – and does so in a way that keeps you reading.

As you read Life, you pick up on Fortey's enthusiasm for his subject and learn about fascinating creatures - and not all of them are dinosaurs.  With Dr. Fortey’s words, even the simple algal mats that once populated the earth in enough abundance to transform our atmosphere from primarily carbon dioxide to primarily oxygen are interesting.  Remarkably, there are a few areas of the world where such algal mats still flourish.

A Trilobite - Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Fortey's academic specialty is the study of trilobites, animals that swarmed the oceans for over 270 million years but which became extinct about 250 million years ago.  Trilobites were arthropods, which means they are distantly related to insects, arachnids and crustaceans.  Their closest living relatives today appear to be the horseshoe crabs, which are often considered to be "living fossils".  The horseshoe crabs are arthropods, too. Dr. Fortey admits in one of his books that he has a secret wish/hope that maybe just a few trilobites are still swimming around in the ocean, may in some deep-sea canyon, that have yet to be discovered.  I think that would be spectacular.

Horseshoe Crabs from Wikimedia Commons

Sorry - I digressed. The point is that if you are looking for an informative, entertaining read that sets out a comprehensive history of life as currently understood by science, this is the book for you.

Bibliophilic Friday: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

 

Agatha Christie is recognized as the grande dame of mystery writers, but I, unfortunately, have not read all that many of her books. One of her books that I have read, and recommend highly, is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Set in a small town in rural Britain, where Hercule Poirot has retired to raise vegetable marrows, the mystery is engaging and has an ending that I did not see coming yet is totally plausible. 

For those of you with inquiring minds, a vegetable marrow is “the mature fruit of certain Cucurbita pepo cultivars used as a vegetable. … The immature fruit of the same or similar cultivars is called …. Zucchini (in North America, Japan, Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, and Austria.)” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrow_(vegetable)#Nutrition

Marrows in British Supermarket, Photo by Dbfirs, published under the following license:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Poirot does not make an immediate appearance in this book; rather, as is true of most Hercule Poirot books, the narrator is someone other than Poirot, in this case, Dr. James Sheppard. At the opening of the book, Dr. Sheppard only knows that he has a new neighbor that grows vegetable marrows whose name is something like “Mr. Porrott.” Shortly thereafter, Dr. Sheppard is almost hit by a vegetable marrow that Poirot throws over the fence in frustration. He meets Poirot then, but it is only after Roger Ackroyd, one of the leading figures in the village, is murdered, that Dr. Sheppard learns that his neighbor is, in fact. Hercule Poirot, the supposedly brilliant detective from London, who has retired. 

Dr. Sheppard accompanies Flora Ackroyd, the niece of Roger Ackroyd, to Poirot’s house, where Flora implores Poirot to solve her uncle’s mystery. As with most Christie novels I have read, there are a host of possible suspects: Roger Ackroyd’s stepson, Ralph Paton; his niece, Flora Ackroyd; her mother, Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd; the housekeeper, Miss Russell; Raymond, Roger’s secretary; and Major Hector Blunt, a friend of Roger’s. We meet the suspects before we meet Hercule Poirot again through Dr. Sheppard, who is invited to supper by Roger Ackroyd to meet with him privately over a matter of some concern following the death of his former fiancée, Mrs. Ferrars. It is after that supper and the meeting, after the doctor has returned home, that we learn that Roger Ackroyd has been murdered. 

The story winds through the host of suspects, all of whom have secrets they do not wish exposed, to a more than satisfying conclusion that will cause you to sit up and take notice. If you have the time to add this book to your “to be read” list, I highly recommend doing so – and plan for a second reading even if you rarely do so. The book, and the solution to the mystery, are worth it.

Bibliophilic Friday: The Thin Woman, by Dorothy Cannell (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

This English manor mystery with comedic twists launched esteemed mystery writer Dorothy Cannell’s career. First published in 1984 as a contemporary mystery, this book is funny and intriguing.  In spite of being almost 40 years old, the book is not dated, although it is refreshing to remember a world where our smartphones weren’t forever glued to some portion of our body. It also is the first of thirteen mysteries in the Ellie Haskell series. Ellie Haskell is the main protagonist in the series, at least through the first four books. (I still have several to read; I’m working through them in order.) 

When we meet Ellie Simons in The Thin Woman, she is single, an interior decorator and living in a flat in London with her cat Tobias. Ellie is overweight, as she freely admits.  Her friend Jill, thin and into most New Age movements she encounters, lives in the same building. When Ellie receives an invitation/summons to a family reunion with her Great-Uncle Merlin’s family, she decides to visit Eligibility Escorts, run by the widowed Mrs. Schumacher, to rent an escort for the weekend to pose as her boyfriend. During the family reunion, Ellie promotes her escort from pretend boyfriend to pretend fiancé. 

The fun really starts a few weeks after the reunion, when she learns that Uncle Merlin has died, and left most of his estate to her and her escort, Ben Haskell, on four conditions: 1) She and Ben Haskell have to live at the mansion, Merlin’s Court, for six months; 2) Ellie must lose four stone (56 pounds) in six months, 3) Ben must complete a novel which contains not one swear word within the same six months, and 4) they must discover the secret “treasure of the house.” If they fail to meet the conditions, then Ellie’s relatives inherit the estate in equal shares. 

Ellie narrates the book in a delightful voice—full of dry wit, keen observations, and touches of self-deprecating humor. The story contains enough twists and turns to captivate the reader, and the ending is both satisfying and unexpected. 

If you enjoy cozy mysteries with humor, try this book out—and move on to the second book, The Widows Club, which starts out with one of the most unusual, yet effective, strategies I have ever seen to keep the reader glued to its pages without sacrificing one iota of the humor and originality of The Thin Woman.

Bibliophilic Friday: A Review of Fer-de-lance by Nancy L. Eady

        I grew up as a Navy junior. (My sister insists that there are Army brats and Navy juniors.) Until I was 16, the year my parents divorced in that great naval metropolis of Montgomery, Alabama, we moved every two to three years. When you move with the Navy, the amount they will move for free is restricted by weight. Since books weigh a great deal, and we already had a lot of them, book space was at a premium. Since all three of us girls were big readers, libraries were very important to us.

          When you move frequently, you find permanence in factors beyond geography. One of the fixtures of life that comforted me was the sure knowledge that wherever we moved, there would be a library with some Nero Wolfe books. The Nero Wolfe series was written by Rex Stout. When I became an adult, I resolved to own at least one copy of each book in the series. I’m not looking to own first editions or anything; the shabbiest, dog-eared paper back counts. But over the years the collection grew very slowly until the Nero Wolfe books started coming out on Kindle. I’m still not sure I have every book, but I’ve got a decent start, anyhow.

          The very first Nero Wolfe book, Fer-de-lance, was published in 1934 during the Great Depression. A fer-de-lance is a pit viper from South America with extremely potent venom. To tell you the significance of the snake and its venom would give away key points in the book, so I’ll leave it to your imagination. The book itself is a fun read, introducing many of the key characters in the series, not least of which is the protagonist who tells the story, Archie Goodwin, and his boss, Nero Wolfe. It’s hard to believe that a detective who weighs an eighth of a ton, never leaves his house except in extraordinary circumstances and then only if Archie is driving him, raises orchids on the third floor and has a live-in housekeeper and gourmet cook, can be successful but with Archie to do the leg work for him, Wolfe manages. In fact, he is successful enough to maintain the three-story brownstone in New York City and three full-time staff members, Archie Goodwin, the detective who does Wolfe’s leg work, Fritz Brenner, the housekeeper/gourmet cook, and Theodore Horstmann, the gardener who tends the orchids.  

Fer-de-Lance sets the tone for the rest of the series, which continued to be written by Rex Stout until 1975 with the publication of A Family Affair. Mr. Stout died on October 27, 1975. Fer-de-lance is narrated by Archie Goodwin; as with most books in the series, his delivery is fast paced, just enough tongue-in-cheek to recognize that he is a man of the world and yet serious enough about the taking of human life and bringing the killer to justice to keep you rooting for Wolfe and Archie to be successful. The denouement of Fer-de-lance ends with a stunning act on Nero Wolfe’s part, whether gallant or horrific I will leave for you to decide when you hopefully read the book.