{"id":2959,"date":"2010-01-13T14:14:05","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T19:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=2959"},"modified":"2010-07-16T09:53:58","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T14:53:58","slug":"the-red-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=2959","title":{"rendered":"The Red Box"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s back to the Nero Wolfe series for book four of the year. I suppose I should point out that I’m not making any special effort to get through books faster than usual. This is pretty much my standard consumption rate for the written word – I did use the word “voracious” when I started posting these reviews last week.
\n
\nI talked a bit about the world of Wolfe back in my review of The Rubber Band<\/a>, so I’m not going to recap the whole cast of characters. In this book, Rex Stout hits on a recurring note with the relationship between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin; namely that Wolfe will frequently withhold information from Archie because he doesn’t want Archie to have to tell a lie. He claims that Archie can’t do so convincingly. As a reader it’s necessary to maintain suspense – Archie is the narrator of the stories – but it’s also kind of annoying. Archie is annoyed by it as well, which takes some of the sting out of the situation.<\/p>\n

There is one sort of meta-plot point in this book that perturbed me: Character “A” is under huge stress and is popping aspirin constantly. Character “B” has been killed with a box of poisoned candies which, Wolfe establishes, were intended for “A”. Why does no one immediately confiscate “A”‘s aspirin supply? I don’t know if I’m just hyper-suspicious of this sort of thing, but it seems like a logical precaution.<\/p>\n

Apart from that one quibble, the book is a lot of fun to read. Archie Goodwin’s narration is a treat to read, fast, witty and full of energy. Wolfe’s more sonorous dialogue serves as ballast, keeping things down to earth with his grumbles and complaints.<\/p>\n

Page count: 257<\/p>\n

Total page count: 945<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s back to the Nero Wolfe series for book four of the year. I suppose I should point out that I’m not making any special effort to get through books faster than usual. This is pretty much my standard consumption … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[51,25],"class_list":["post-2959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2010","tag-books-2010","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2959"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3483,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions\/3483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}