The Black Mountain (A Nero Wolfe Mystery Book 24)

Product Information

The author, Rex Stout, wrote many other Nero Wolfe stories before this one. There is a reason in that factoid not to make this your first Wolfe read.

The Illegal: Wolfe and Archie are undocumented immigrants in Montenegro, but manage to avoid both imprisonment and deportation.Straw Character: Jube Bilic embodies all the nastiness, sneakiness, and hypocrisy which Rex Stout associated with communists, from spying on his father to wearing American blue jeans while condemning the United States. Wolfe, for his part, is highly appreciative of Archie’s abilities, even if he has his own way of expressing it: “I have noted, perhaps in more detail than you think, your talents and capacities. You are an excellent observer, not in any respect an utter fool, completely intrepid, and too conceited to be seduced into perfidy” ( The Silent Speaker, 1946). Oh, they’re not always in conflict.’ Harvey was smiling, not apologetically. ‘The interests of slave and master often jibe.’” Wolfe raised his voice. ‘If you please!….If the interests of author and publisher are in conflict, why a joint committee?’ Mood Whiplash: Wolfe and Archie's solemn tragical reflection about the murder of a close friend and major recurring character is humorously interrupted when Archie observes that Wolfe needs directions to find the Manhattan morgue despite the decades he's spent solving murders.

Translation Convention: The "Serbian" dialogue is represented as English, as Archie explains in the foreword. Dirty Communists: Gospo Stritar, Jube Bilic, Peter Zov, and the Albanians are all nefarious reds of one sort or another, but the Tito-Stalin split means they are not all on the same side.Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-01-23 18:34:48 Bookplateleaf 0003 Boxid IA1294705 City Thorndike, Me Donor I've never been a very big fan of the stories that take Wolfe out of his element. When he leaves the brownstone it's a momentous occasion, but rarely an extraordinarily good one. His character isn't made to travel. So, it's no major surprise that I found this novel--which takes Wolfe's traveling to extremes--to be a major disappointment. My notes from the pre-blogging days say I read this and, apparently, enjoyed it way more than I did this time. But I've forgotten everything I enjoyed about it. That unspeakable prepared biscuit flour…What they do to stomachs heaven knows, but that woman is ingeniously and deliberately conspiring in the corruption of millions of palates. She should be stopped!” Rex Stout, And Be a Villain 8. In the Best Families Abridged as "Dark Vengeance" in The American Magazine (June 1939); republished as The Mountain Cat Murders [1] :16–17Contains the short stories " Eeny Meeny Murder Mo", " Death of a Demon" and " Counterfeit for Murder" [1] :86

Those familiar with the massive detective know that he usually disdains the effort to get in and out of his chair, reach for the phone or use anything but his residence elevator to visit his orchids. That pattern of behavior persists for almost the entire universe of Wolfe stories, except for this one. Insistent Terminology: Wolfe absolutely refuses to refer to Podgorica by its new name "Titograd", even at the risk of drawing unwanted attention.Eiffel Tower Effect: Mount Lovcen is the most famous feature and namesake of Montenegro (and also the origin of Wolfe's first name), and most of the action in Montenegro occurs close to the mountain. That doesn’t mean that Archie’s constant digs don’t annoy him sometimes: “Some day, Archie, when I decide you are no longer worth tolerating, you will have to marry a woman of very modest mental capacity to get an appropriate audience for your wretched sarcasms” ( Fer-de-Lance, 1934 ). So—a dedicated misogynist or a man with a protective shell because his wife came close to murdering him…or both? I’ll leave it to others to decide. A Family Affair is an unusual Nero Wolfe mystery in that Archie reveals his (correct) opinion of the killer's identity well before Wolfe does so in the closing chapters.