Rex Stout

Three Doors To Death

Introduction

Let's face it.

We can stare at each other over designer coffee and natter on about the spiritual and intellectual benefits of immersing oneself in haute litterature, but most of us read fiction to get away from the drudgery of our lives.

And what a wonderful sanctuary Rex Stout has provided millions of readers for over half a century by introducing the world to Nero Wolfe.

As the century fades, Wolfe lives on, fresh and current as ever. One reason is the way he lives – a self-contained, blatantly self-indulgent existence in a Manhattan brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street surrounded by gleaming paneling, fine furniture, gourmet food, servants, exotic orchids, the power to control life's nasty little intrusions. What a glorious end-of-day tonic for clock watchers, straphangers, and freeway slaves. How many of us wouldn't commit minor mayhem in exchange for an Archie Goodwin to cheerfully run our errands and tidy up our scutwork, or a Fritz Brenner to prepare and serve our sweetbreads en croute on bone china? With a suitable wine. (Interestingly, Wolfe's cozy world also burlesques the isolated, self-indulgent life of the writer and, in that sense, can be regarded as Stout's wicked slant on the artiste.)

Stout had wicked slants on lots of things and a gift for phrasing and rhythm and irony that remains remarkably contemporary. Consider lines such as these: "Her chin hinges began to give"; "the sort of greasy voice that makes me want to take up strangling"; "he was slender, elegant, and groomed to a queen's taste, if you let him pick the queen." And let us not forget the hilariously truistic: "Escorting a murderer on a subway without handcuffs is a damn nuisance, so I chose a taxi."