An Exploding Cigar Without the Laughs

A FAMILY AFFAIR.
By Rex Stout.
Viking Press.
1975. 152 pages.

David Cranmer (THE EDUCATION OF A PULP WRITER, March 27, 2009) reviews a very, very late Nero Wolfe. Excerpt:

After Ducos explains he is targeted for murder, [Archie] Goodwin allows him to stay for the night and shows him to a guest room. Within minutes of being left alone, Ducos pulls a booby-trapped cigar from his pocket. The cigar explodes, taking half of his face with it.

Was Stout hardboiled? Not necessarily:

It has become a truism of criticism that Stout's work is halfway between Golden Age writers like Van Dine, and hard-boiled writers like Hammett. According to this view, Wolfe is in the Van Dine tradition, whereas Archie is a hard-boiled detective like Sam Spade. I cannot agree with this point of view at all, however, and find little to support it.

The social setting of Stout's fiction is consistently among the upper middle classes, as in the Van Dine school. We rarely if ever see the mobsters and toughs of the hard-boiled writers, nor are there underworld-run settings of nightclubs or casinos. There are few scenes of violence or brutality in Stout's fiction, although Archie on rare occasions indulges in fisticuffs . . . — Mike Grost

More about Nero and Archie is here.

Several English-language media versions of Wolfe have appeared over the years, including:

MEET NERO WOLFE (1936)

THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN (1937)

NERO WOLFE (1979)

NERO WOLFE (1981)

A NERO WOLFE MYSTERY (2001)

Category: Detective fiction