Rating: 
Summary: Overlong, boring -- avoid if not a Wolfe junkie
Review: This was a disappointment. I'm a Wolfe fanatic and the author of a comprehensive webpage devoted to Wolfe, of as enormous size as Wolfe himself (see www.avenarius.sk/stout ), but compared to the masterpiece published only a year earlier than _The League_, I mean the very first Wolfe novel, _Fer-de-Lance_ (1934) -- compared to that first novel _The League_ is a "wash-out", to use Archie's term: tedious, overlong, and trite. I agree with the assessment of a previous Amazon reviewer (of August 1999).In _Fer-de-Lance_, it didn't really matter that the characters were all-new, created from scratch. You could feel the excitement of their being created, or having just been created, in Stout's prose; it was more careful and less unnecessarily verbose than in _The League_. Wolfe himself says in _The League_ that the art of writing is to leave out as much as possible without detriment to the substance: well, if _The League_ had only been 100 pages long instead of 200, it might have been entertaining! Wolfe talks too much, and Archie describes and theorizes and worries and rejoices too much in this novel. Inspector Cramer appears for the first time in this book, but he's not really himself yet. He smokes a pipe (!) instead of chewing an unlit cigar to tatters. Neither does he talk or otherwise behave like the later Cramer we love to hate. There's no red leather chair in the office yet, neither are yellow chairs there. No one-way glass panel at the door. As to the mystery angle in this book (a weak point in all of Rex Stout's books): the solution to the murder(s) is disappointing and can be guessed with many pages left to go. Hardly any suspense, certainly not to be compared with the likes of Agatha Christie. But, I've never cared for the mystery angle in Stout; it's the humorous interaction between Wolfe and Archie that makes Stout unique: Wolfe's and Archie's visions of life and the world. Neither Wolfe nor Archie are at their best in _The League_; the supporting cast (victims and suspects) are, equally, not nearly as interestingly portrayed as in _Fer-de-Lance_. _Fer-de-Lance_ is also much funnier to read; _The League_ leads us to smile, at most, every now and then -- but don't expect any Goodwinian belly-laughs. For the best in Wolfe and Archie, therefore, instead of _The League_ turn to masterpieces like _Fer-de-Lance_, _The Silent Speaker_, _In the Best Families_, _Too Many Cooks_, and _Plot It Yourself_.
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